Unlike dictatorships, totalitarian states are structurally incapable of reform. Iran’s Islamist terror mafia can only and must be degraded, ultimately defeated. The Iranian people know this. But democracies are actively, deliberately emboldening their existential enemy, even as its tentacles grow. What is it about Islamism that makes even classical liberals cower? The USSR was a far more powerful state than the Islamic Republic, but Iran’s tyrants have the West’s self-loathing and acquiescence on their side, and after Iraq/Bush, Syria/Obama,

Barely recognized by Western feminists, the Iranian women’s movement is the forefront of a valiant struggle for human dignity against a fascist ideology determined to deny Muslim girls & women the rights & freedoms rightly cherished in the West. #LetUsTalk quillette.com/2019/01/20/the… While Iranian women are braving arrest and violent repression to defy draconian religious dress codes...college campuses have either looked the other way or asked us to admire those women who adhere to Islamist norms in defiance of “Westernization.” #LetUsTalk

In @AlArabiya_Eng I note failures of JCPOA & big leverage US now has. Biden admin should lift sanctions on Iran only in exchange for verified improvements in freedom, via Helsinki Accords model. I also offer more policies to foster democratic transition. english.alarabiya.net/en/views/news/… "Following the deal...the regime’s sponsorship of annihilation of the Syrian nation was put on overdrive; its global terror, imperial dominion, proxy wars, & killing of US soldiers expanded; & nothing of the financial windfall delivered to the mafia state reached the people."

Forgive this long thread. In case of interest, these are my thoughts on the US election--
I've been a strong, outspoken supporter of Trump Iran policy. As someone focused on achieving democracy for my homeland, I see it as more effective & morally just than any before. But... despite unprecedented progress to counter the regime, expose its repression & corruption, & amplify, support the democratic aspirations of Iranians, I cannot bring myself to vote Trump. For most people (& nearly all Republicans) I know, voting #BidenHarris is obvious, but for me

Parts of an email I wrote in 2013 to @tparsi, copying those in DC who have since realized we’ve been right all along:

#NAICLobbies4Mullahs —

“How shameful that you purport to represent the will of the Iranian-American people... ...you have] a morally perverse, dishonest propaganda campaign aiming to achieve the one and only mission your so called ‘association’ has ever had: the removal of sanctions against the Islamic Republic of Iran and a soft, appeasing American foreign policy...

While Iranian women are braving arrest & violent repression to defy draconian religious dress codes, gender apartheid,& day-to-day humiliations, college campuses have either looked the other way...
#InternationalWomensDay
quillette.com/2019/01/20/the… or asked us to admire those women who adhere to Islamist norms in defiance of “Westernization.” These ostentatious displays of cross-cultural intersectional tolerance are effectively silencing and denigrating the courageous uprising of women...