Aftandilian in The Arab Weekly Trump’s Iran Strategy
Gregory Aftandilian, Lecturer at the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University, published a recent Op-Ed on United States President Donald Trump’s desire for regime change in Iran and how such a policy could backfire.
Aftandilian’s Op-Ed, entitled “Is Regime Change Trump’s Goal in Iran?” was published in The Arab Weekly on June 3, 2018.
From the text of the article:
Comments by US President Donald Trump and his top foreign policy advisers suggest that the United States’ withdrawal from the Iran nuclear agreement is not aimed at achieving a better deal but rather at bringing down the regime in Tehran.
Early hints of this strategy came in May 2017 during Trump’s speech in Riyadh at the Arab-Islamic-American summit. There he stated that until the Iranian regime is willing to be a partner for peace, all nations should isolate it, deny it funding and “pray for the day when the Iranian people have the just and righteous government they deserve.”
During his State of the Union address before Congress in January, Trump said: “When the people of Iran rose up against the crimes of their corrupt dictatorship, I did not stay silent. America stands with the people of Iran in their courageous struggle for freedom.”
Trump not only wanted to differentiate himself from his predecessor, Barack Obama, who was sharply criticised by Republicans for not being supportive enough of the Green Movement’s large street demonstrations in Iran in June 2009. Trump was also signalling encouragement to a segment of the Iranian people to continue their anti-regime protests.
Aftandilian spent over 21 years in government service, most recently on Capitol Hill where he was foreign policy adviser to Congressman Chris Van Hollen (2007-2008), professional staff member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and foreign policy adviser to Senator Paul Sarbanes (2000-2004), and foreign policy fellow to the late Senator Edward Kennedy (1999).