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      in US Politics

      'What a spectacle!': US adversaries revel in post-election chaos

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      Rivals and enemies of the United States have come together to revel in the messiest US election in a generation, mocking the delay in vote processing and Donald Trump’s claims of electoral fraud in barely veiled criticisms of Washington’s political activism abroad.“What a spectacle!” crowed Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. “One says this is the most fraudulent election in US history. Who says that? The president who is currently in office.”With a large dose of schadenfreude, Washington’s fiercest critics declared deep concern about the US elections and the state of the country’s democracy.Russia’s foreign ministry spokeswoman on Thursday panned the “obvious shortcomings of the American electoral system”, calling the framework “archaic”.“It’s a show, you can’t call it anything but that,” Vyacheslav Volodin, the chairman of Russia’s Duma, said earlier this week. “They say it should be seen as a standard for democracy. I don’t think it’s the standard.”In China, state media savaged the delayed results, with one daily writing that the process looked a “bit like a developing country”.Venezuela’s president, Nicolás Maduro, could not resist baiting the US over what he called its “surprising electoral process”, and seemed so amused that at one point he broke into song with a rendition of the theme tune to the Miss Venezuela beauty pageant: “On a night as beautiful as this, either of them could win,” he crooned, before adding with a chuckle: “The United States. I don’t stick my nose in.” In two recent local elections, he noted, all the votes had been counted by 11pm.As a parliamentary campaign kicked off in Venezuela this week, Maduro claimed there were important lessons the US could learn from its elections rather than lecturing the world about democracy. Venezuela was a showcase of “civilised and peaceful” voting using “proven and transparent technology” and biometric voting machines that provided same day results, he said.Trump has spent the last two years unsuccessfully trying to topple the Venezuelan president and in a Wednesday night broadcast Maduro delighted in the electoral confusion gripping his northern neighbour.“The state department puts out statements that say: ‘In this country we don’t recognise the election. In that country we don’t like the election. In the other country we don’t like this or that,’” Maduro said, adding that the US would be better off focusing on its own problems.As Trump demanded states stop counting mail-in ballots, the US embassy in Abidjan issued a poorly timed statement urging Côte d’Ivoire’s leaders to “show commitment to the democratic process and the rule of law”. “We also need a Côte d’Ivoire statement on US elections,” quipped one BBC editor on Twitter.For many, it was a chance to give the US a taste of its own medicine. “Neither free nor fair,” wrote Margarita Simonyan, the head of Russian state-backed RT, parroting the language of a UN or Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) statement.And the OSCE itself did weigh in, with mission leader Michael Georg Link attacking Trump for making “baseless allegations of systematic deficiencies” and “[harming] public trust in democratic institutions”.The irony was not lost on many at home. A cartoon by the Russian critic Sergei Elkin made the rounds on Thursday, featuring an elderly babushka lugging buckets of water past a man in a rundown village somewhere in Russia. “They still haven’t finished counting in Pennsylvania and in Michigan,” the man says. A stray dog walks along an unpaved street behind him. More

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      in Elections

      Russia and Iran obtained US voter data in bid to sow unrest before election, FBI warns

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      Russia and Iran have obtained some US voting registration information and are attempting to sow unrest in the upcoming election, the government’s national intelligence director said in a rare news conference Wednesday night.“We have already seen Iran sending spoofed emails, designed to intimidate voters, incite social unrest and damage President Trump,” said John Ratcliffe, the director of national intelligence.The FBI director, Chris Wray, also spoke, saying the US will impose costs on any foreign countries interfering in the 2020 US election.Wray also warned against buying into misinformation about election results. “You should be confident your vote counts. Early unverified claims to the contrary should be viewed with a healthy dose of skepticism,” said Wray.Democrats immediately took issue with Ratcliffe’s emphasis that Iran was sowing disinformation to harm Trump, characterizing the intelligence director as a “partisan hack”. Ratcliffe is a former Republican congressman and Democrats have been critical of his choice to selectively declassify documents to help Trump.Chuck Schumer, the Democratic Senate leader, said on Wednesday night that during a classified briefing he received on the interference “I had the strong impression it was much rather to undermine confidence in elections and not aimed at any particular figure, but rather to undermine the very wellspring of our Democracy.”“I’m surprised that DNI Radcliff said that at this press conference,” he told MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow.Trump and many of his supporters have been among those spreading misinformation that votes aren’t going to be counted and alleging baselessly that ballots can easily be thrown out.Ratcliffe said Iran is also distributing video content “to imply that individuals could cast fraudulent ballots, including from overseas” – and warned Americans not to believe the disinformation. “These actions are desperate attempts by desperate adversaries,” he said.The news conference was held as Democratic voters in at least four battleground states, including Florida and Pennsylvania, have received threatening emails, falsely claiming to be from the far-right group Proud Boys, that warned “we will come after you” if the recipients didn’t vote for Trump.The voter-intimidation operation apparently used email addresses obtained from state voter registration lists, which include party affiliation and home addresses and can include email addresses and phone numbers. Those addresses were then used in an apparently widespread targeted spamming operation. The senders claimed they would know which candidate the recipient was voting for in the 3 November election, for which early voting is ongoing.Federal officials have long warned about the possibility of this type of operation, as such registration lists are not difficult to obtain.“These emails are meant to intimidate and undermine American voters’ confidence in our elections,” Christopher Krebs, the top election security official at the Department of Homeland Security, tweeted Tuesday night after reports of the emails first surfaced.He urged voters not to fall for “sensational and unverified claims”, reminding them that ballot secrecy is guaranteed by law in all states. “The last line of defense in election security is you – the American voter.”While state-backed Russian hackers are known to have infiltrated US election infrastructure in 2016, there is no evidence that Iran, which cybersecurity experts consider to be an inferior actor in online espionage, has ever done so.Before the FBI news conference began, the top members of the Senate intelligence committee released a statement warning: “As we enter the last weeks before the election, we urge every American – including members of the media – to be cautious about believing or spreading unverified, sensational claims related to votes and voting.”The statement came from Marco Rubio, a Republican of Florida, and Mark Warner, a Democrat of Virginia.“State and local election officials are in regular contact with federal law enforcement and cybersecurity professionals, and they are all working around the clock to ensure that election 2020 is safe, secure and free from outside interference,” they said.Foreign misinformation campaigns are far from the only source of confusion and chaos as the US heads to the polls. Concerns of voter disenfranchisement have been widespread, with Republicans scoring victories Wednesday in their ongoing efforts to restrict voting rights. In a Wednesday night decision, the Supreme Court allowed Alabama officials to ban curbside voting.The NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund and the American Civil Liberties Union and other challengers of the ban said that curbside voting would help the state slow the spread of Covid-19 while allowing those most vulnerable to the disease to vote safely.The plaintiff in that case, Howard Porter Jr, is a Black man in his 70s with asthma and Parkinson’s disease. “So many of my [ancestors] even died to vote,” he testified to a District Court. “And while I don’t mind dying to vote, I think we’re past that – we’re past that time.”The Iowa Supreme Court also upheld a Republican-backed law that could prevent election officials from sending thousands of mail-in ballots, by making it more difficult for auditors to correct voter applications with omitted information.Agencies contributed reporting More

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      in World Politics

      The Future of the Iran Nuclear Deal

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      The future of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) — the Iran nuclear deal — is uncertain. In the absence of US leadership, representatives of the United Kingdom, Germany, France, China, Russia and Iran met on September 1 in Vienna to discuss the accord.

      The deal, which imposes limitations on Iran’s civilian nuclear enrichment program, was agreed in July 2015 between the Iranians and the P5+1 group — China, Britain, France, Germany, Russia and the United States — and implemented six months later. The deal was struck when the Obama administration was in the White House following years of negotiations. The JCPOA gave Iran relief from international economic sanctions in return for dismantling major parts of its nuclear program and giving access to its facilities for inspection.

      Reworking US Policy in the Middle East and North Africa

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      Yet ever since Donald Trump was elected president of the United States in November 2016, the future of the JCPOA has hung in the balance. Trump made it a campaign promise to pull out of the Iran deal. He kept his word and officially withdrew the United States from the JCPOA in May 2018, saying the deal is “defective” and did not address Iran’s ballistic missile program or its interference in the affairs of other countries in the Middle East.

      Washington has since reinstated US sanctions on Iran and sought to penalize any nation doing trade with the Iranians, which has led to widespread criticism. In response, Iran has resumed its uranium enrichment at the Fordow nuclear plant, which is banned under the JCPOA.

      The events surrounding the Iran deal have seen their ups and downs, but one thing is for sure: The collapse of the JCPOA is in no one’s best interest.

      A Rocky Year

      Several incidents have marked 2020 as a critical year for Iran. In January, the US assassinated Iranian General Qasem Soleimani in an airstrike in Baghdad, which led to a further escalation in tensions. In response, Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said, “Severe revenge awaits the criminals.” The Iranians later revealed they would no longer comply with the limits set to uranium enrichment under the nuclear deal.

      In July, a fire broke out in Natanz, Iran’s enrichment site. The Iranian Atomic Energy Organization claimed the explosion was the result of “sabotage,” and officials further stressed that the incident “could slow the development of advanced uranium enrichment centrifuges.” Both the assassination of Soleimani and the explosion in Natanz have rocked the nuclear deal, which is standing on its last legs.

      Making Promises and Breaking Them

      The JCPOA is not the first international agreement the US has withdrawn from under the Trump administration. In August 2019, the US officially pulled out of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, an agreement signed by Washington and Moscow in 1987 that sought to eliminate the arsenals of short and intermediate-range missiles of both countries. Russia reciprocated and called the INF Treaty “formally dead.” Just months later, in May 2020, the US announced its decision to withdraw from the Open Skies Treaty, an accord that allows unarmed aerial surveillance flights over dozens of countries.

      When it comes to bilateral agreements, the world has experienced challenges with enforcing arms control and nonproliferation agreements, particularly since Trump was elected. The New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) — which, despite its own uncertainty, is the last remaining arms control pact between the US and Russia — is one clear example. The fact that Trump wants to strike a new deal with Iran but is quick to pull the trigger at torpedoing international agreements — including the 2015 Paris Climate Accord — does not bode well for building trust with the Iranians.

      Embed from Getty Images

      Considering that US–Iran diplomatic relations are a nonstarter under the Trump administration, the result of the US presidential election on November 3 will be critical. President Trump has promised to reach a new deal with Iran “within four weeks” if he is reelected. If he wins, his administration would have to reshape its approach toward Iran in a constructive way to meet the timeline he has set. On the other hand, if Democratic nominee Joe Biden wins, his administration would likely rejoin the JCPOA, as well as seek additional concessions from Tehran. In a recent op-ed for CNN, Biden stated, “If Iran returns to strict compliance with the nuclear deal, the United States would rejoin the agreement as a starting point for follow-on negotiations.”

      Biden served as the vice president under the previous Obama administration, which, together with the P5+1 group, negotiated the JCPOA back in 2015. Therefore, it is safe to say that the future of the nuclear deal might just rest on the outcome of the US election.

      A Regional Arms Race

      For now, however, the US withdrawal from the JCPOA has weakened the impact of the accord. More importantly, the near-collapse of the deal could have a direct impact on the next Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons Review Conference in 2021, potentially drawing criticism from non-nuclear-weapon states that may wish to pursue civilian programs of their own.

      The JCPOA is not only important for global nonproliferation efforts, but also for stability in the Middle East. The complete failure of the deal would have severe implications. It would make neighboring countries feel less secure. As a result, this would encourage not just states but potentially non-state actors — such as terrorist groups — to focus on developing nuclear weapons. This would lead to an arms race in the geostrategic Middle East.

      Developing a civilian nuclear program is a long and expensive process that involves extensive oversight by international bodies. Therefore, while it may be an unlikely scenario, regional states like Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates may think that nuclear weapons are essential for national security due to their rivalry with Iran and start building their own arsenal. The potential collapse of the JCPOA clearly has global ramifications that could be catastrophic for nuclear nonproliferation.

      Sanctions on Iran

      On August 20, France, Germany and the UK issued a joint statement saying they do not support the US request for the UN Security Council to initiate the “snapback mechanism” of the JCPOA, which would reimpose the international sanctions against Iran that were lifted in 2015. As the US is no longer a party to the JCPOA, it has limited influence over its enforcement. Therefore, the Security Council rejected the US move.

      The Iranian economy was already fragile before President Trump withdrew from the JCPOA, and US-enforced sanctions are further complicating the situation. High living costs, a deep recession and plummeting oil exports are just the tip of the iceberg.

      The Instrument in Support of Trade Exchanges (INSTEX) is seen as an important mechanism to organize trade between Germany, France and Britain on the one side, and Iran on the other. INSTEX allows European companies to do business with Iran and bypass US sanctions. On March 31, these three European countries confirmed that INSTEX had “successfully concluded its first transaction, facilitating the export of medical goods from Europe to Iran.”

      Although INSTEX can be helpful for Iran, US sanctions have dealt a fatal blow to the country’s economy. According to the World Bank, Iran’s GDP “contracted by 7.6% in the first 9 months of 2019/20 (April-December 2019),” mostly due to a 37% drop in the oil sector.

      For the US, sanctions are a strategic way to deter Tehran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. Yet they can also be counterproductive. Iran is aware of the strategic benefit the JCPOA has for other states. This includes global and regional security. In this regard, the joint statement on upholding the nuclear deal during the recent meeting in Vienna came as no surprise. But if multilateral sanctions are reimposed, that could be the final straw for Iran. This may lead the Iranians to walk away from the JCPOA and up the game with its nuclear program.

      Nuclear Nonproliferation

      With all of this in mind, it is vital that the remaining parties to the JCPOA continue with constructive dialogue to try to uphold the agreement. Everyone benefits from the deal, and its success depends on each side’s fulfillment of their responsibilities and commitments, particularly Iran’s full compliance.

      Most importantly, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action is necessary for the future of nuclear nonproliferation. If the deal collapses, then the world enters uncharted territory.

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      in US Politics

      Trump and Biden offer starkly different visions of US role in world

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      The World’s Election

      Trump and Biden offer starkly different visions of US role in world

      The security council chamber at the UN headquarters in New York.
      Photograph: Valery Sharifulin/TASS

      The world is anxiously watching the election, with the candidates far apart on issues such as the climate crisis and nuclear weapons
      by Julian Borger in Washington

      Main image:
      The security council chamber at the UN headquarters in New York.
      Photograph: Valery Sharifulin/TASS

      Foreign policy barely gets a mention in this US election, but for the rest of the world the outcome on 3 November will arguably be the most consequential in history.
      All US elections have a global impact, but this time there are two issues of existential importance to the planet – the climate crisis and nuclear proliferation – on which the two presidential candidates could hardly be further apart.
      Also at stake is the idea of “the west” as a like-minded grouping of democracies who thought they had won the cold war three decades ago.
      “The Biden versus Trump showdown in November is probably the starkest choice between two different foreign policy visions that we’ve seen in any election in recent memory,” said Rebecca Lissner, co-author of An Open World, a new book on the contest for 21st-century global order.
      In an election which will determine so much about the future of America and the world, the Trump campaign has said very little about its intentions, producing what must be the shortest manifesto in the annals of US politics.
      It appeared late in the campaign and has 54 bullet points, of which five are about foreign policy – 41 words broken into a handful of slogans such as: “Wipe Out Global Terrorists Who Threaten to Harm Americans”.
      The word “climate” does not appear, but there are two bullet points on partnering with other countries to “clean up” the oceans, and a pledge to “Continue to Lead the World in Access to the Cleanest Drinking Water and Cleanest Air”. (The phrase ignores a series of US scandals about poor water quality – and the fact that millions of Americans can no longer afford their water bills.)
      The US remains the world’s second biggest emitter of greenhouse gases and the average American’s carbon footprint is twice that of a European or Chinese citizen. More

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      in Elections

      Trump First now drives US foreign policy. Even if it leads to war… | Simon Tisdall

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      It’s clear Donald Trump will do almost anything to cling to office. Lie about Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s dying wish? Go for it. Label Joe Biden a radical socialist? Silly, but worth a punt. Start a war with China or Iran? Pause right there. This is not beyond the realms of possibility, given his pathological need to win.As November’s poll nears, Trump is weaponising foreign policy – not to defend US security and national interests, but to help him grab a second term. It’s not about putting “America First”. It’s all about putting “Trump First” – by any dangerous means, and at any cost.Trump has no big international successes to his name. On the contrary, he has trashed America’s global reputation and alienated its friends. His North Korea jamboree was all hot air. His Afghan policy is retreat without honour. Israel’s shabby deals with Gulf dictatorships, stitched up by the White House, undermine the quest for Middle East peace.Scornful of traditional diplomacy and lacking significant achievements, Trump chooses confrontation. He exploits visceral fears, just like he does when campaigning at home: fear of nefarious foreign foes, fear of the other, fear of difference.His China-baiting at the UN last week was typical scaremongering. He characterised the pandemic as a global war triggered by Beijing. Covid-19 was the “invisible enemy”, a “plague” and the “China virus” – terms intended to frighten and divide. Just in case Xi Jinping and the other watching Johnny Foreigners did not get the message, the US, he said, had spent $2.5tn on defence since 2016. “We have the most powerful military anywhere in the world.”Was this a threat? Maybe the entire planet should put its hands up and surrender. More

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      in US Politics

      Woodward tells how allies tried to rein in 'childish' Trump's foreign policy

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      Four days before ordering a drone strike against the Iranian military commander Qassem Suleimani, Donald Trump was debating the assassination on his own Florida golf course, according to Bob Woodward’s new book on the mercurial president.Trump’s golfing partner that day was Senator Lindsey Graham, who had emerged as one of his closest advisers, and who urged him not to take such a “giant step”, that could trigger “almost total war”.Graham warned Trump he would be raising the stakes from “playing $10 blackjack to $10,000-a-hand blackjack”.“This is over the top,” the senator said. “How about hitting someone a level below Suleimani, which would be much easier for everyone to absorb?”Trump’s chief of staff at the time, Mick Mulvaney, also begged Graham to help change Trump’s mind.Trump would not be persuaded, pointing to Iranian-orchestrated attacks on US soldiers in Iraq, which he said were masterminded by the Iranian general, the leader of the elite Quds force of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard.Suleimani was killed in Baghdad on 3 January, triggering a retaliatory Iranian missile strike against a US base in Iraq, but so far not the large-scale conflict Graham and others warned the president about.The golf course exchange is described in a forthcoming book, Rage, a second volume on the Trump presidency by Woodward, a veteran investigative reporter famous for covering the Watergate affair and the consequent fall of an earlier scandal-ridden president, Richard Nixon. More

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      in World Politics

      What Iran Can Learn From Saudi Arabia

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      Over three years have passed since Mohammed bin Salman became the crown prince of Saudi Arabia. The challenges he has faced throughout this time have been too colossal for a 35-year-old leader to accommodate. Yet the prince has sought to give the impression of a strong social reformer. Indeed, some of the changes he has introduced will significantly transform the public image of Saudi Arabia and global attitudes toward the kingdom, at least in the long term.

      Where Is Mohammed bin Salman Taking the Saudi Kingdom?

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      Under Mohammed bin Salman, the de facto ruler of the kingdom, Saudi Arabia has repealed a longstanding ban on women driving, allowed female singers to perform publicly, relaxed male guardianship laws on women, implemented employment discrimination protection and allowed women into sports stadiums. These are some of the most notable steps the crown prince has taken to socially liberalize a conservative country. Add to the list the curbing of the religious police’s powers and efforts to appeal to international tourists by introducing an e-visa system and you could say that Saudi Arabia is changing.

      The crown prince has also faced his fair share of criticism. The assassination of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018, Riyadh’s deadly and costly war in Yemen, a diplomatic spat with Qatar, deteriorating relations with Syria and tensions with rival Iran are only some of the issues that have caused critics to rail on Mohammed bin Salman.

      MBS Is Popular in Saudi Arabia

      Despite this, the future Saudi king has undoubtedly scored significant gains both domestically and internationally. MBS, as the crown prince is commonly known, is popular among young Saudis, and he has a favorable public image in the eyes of Western political and business elites.

      Embed from Getty Images

      In 2018, the Arab Youth Survey found that more than 90% of young people in Saudi Arabia between the ages of 18 and 24 endorse the crown prince’s leadership, believing that he is moving the country in the right direction. The Economist has dubbed the reforms spearheaded by MBS as a “social revolution,” and The New York Times has described the measures he introduced as “Saudi Arabia’s Arab Spring.”

      What is important is that MBS has admitted that Saudi Arabia has enforced a rigid reading of Islam for a long period of time. This is reflected in the restricted level of civil liberties and social freedoms granted to its citizens over the years, as well as the stringency of Saudi Arabia’s bureaucratic and judicial processes. The prince thinks it’s time for a change.

      In an interview with The Guardian in 2017, MBS said Saudi Arabia has been “not normal” for three decades. “What happened in the last 30 years is not Saudi Arabia. What happened in the region in the last 30 years is not the Middle East,” he added. The prince promised that Saudi Arabia will be pivoting to “moderate Islam” in preparation for changing the kingdom for the better. He echoed the same sentiments in a 2018 interview with Time magazine: “We believe the practice today in a few countries, among them Saudi Arabia, is not the practice of Islam.”

      And he was right. In a country labeled as the “most profoundly gender-segregated nation on Earth,” carrying the accolade of one of the most conservative cultures in the world, change was and is still needed. To abandon an unprogressive reading of Islam as a government-prescribed lifestyle is the first step.

      MBS has embraced those changes and introduced reforms that are meaningful and important in a troubled region riddled with conflict and the absence of democracy. It was only on April 24 that Saudi Arabia’s supreme court announced it had abolished flogging as a form of punishment, which will be replaced by imprisonment or fines. Moreover, the kingdom has rescinded the death penalty for juvenile offenders and minors who commit serious crimes, and the maximum sentence that can be handed down to them is a 10-year prison term.

      Saudi Arabia is still far from becoming a democratic state. However, the prince’s boldness in busting dogmas that were so entrenched in Saudi society that they couldn’t even be debated publicly should serve as an example for other Muslim countries that continue to curtail their citizens’ civil liberties and human rights. Iran, another religiously conservative nation, is a case in point.

      Meanwhile, in Iran…

      Both Iran and Saudi Arabia are regional rivals and have barely maintained cordial relations in recent decades. In denominational terms, they are on the two extremes of the spectrum. Iran is a Shia-majority nation at the helm of which is a Shia jurist who is the ultimate authority on all matters. Saudi Arabia is a Sunni-majority country founded on the puritanical doctrine of Wahhabism — an ultraconservative branch of Islam — that is deeply at odds with Shia Islam.

      Yet the two rivals are socially similar. In Iran, like Saudi Arabia, a conservative interpretation of Islam is practiced. Public celebrations that are not based on religion are rare. Some degree of male guardianship is enforced. For example, women need the consent of a male relative to apply for a passport. Iran’s compulsory hijab rules are highly strict, and religious police penalize non-Islamic, non-pious public behavior, including drinking and eating during Ramadan and dressing styles that violate governmental edicts. Foreign visitors are also subject to restrictions, including being required to follow the mandatory Islamic dress code of the state. Other than a few occasions since 1979, female spectators have not been allowed into sports stadiums. And the list goes on.

      Embed from Getty Images

      Although the revolutionary zeal of the early 1980s has subsided and civil liberties have grown to some extent, Iran is still a conservative country, and the government sees the orthodox enactment of Islamic decrees as its top priority.

      Characterized by tens of executions per year, a strict dress code for women and constant intrusion into people’s lives, Iran has not yet woken up to the threat of extremism pitting the public against the ruling elite and tarnishing its global image. The Islamic Republic’s religious and political authorities have not been willing to adjust their reading of Islam with life in the 21st century.

      This is particularly troubling because, in Iran, daily life is closely tied to religion and how it is construed. As Iranian leaders stringently proselytize the idea that Islam and politics cannot be separated, an “Islamic” prefix or suffix accompanies the name of most public bodies, the school curriculum has religious undertones and 80% of state TV programs have religious motifs.

      What Iran Can Learn

      Iran needs reform. To survive and thrive in a globalized world, attract foreign investment, put an end to decades of hostility with the US and the West, draw international visitors to nourish its tourism sector, decrease its debilitating reliance on oil revenues and diversify its economy, Iran must take bold steps and opt for change. Opening up to the world and reducing restrictions on social and political freedoms of its citizens are essentials that will help the country come out from the cold and have warm relations with the international community.

      Saudi Arabia’s reform bonanza on social life is perhaps the benchmark that Iran can build on to implement reforms of its own. Saudi Arabia is a member of the G20. This shows its economic prosperity and global standing. Iran is not short of resources for it to be in a similar situation. What it lacks is the courage to accept that it needs change. When Iran makes that admission, there will be better days for its citizens.

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More