Donald Trump has confirmed Secretary of State Blinken’s statement that Iran is trying to assassinate him. But there is a second story from a few weeks ago that has not received enough attention. Iran hired several people to rape an Iranian dissident in Germany. Of course, the Trump story is important, but the two are related. Because we never punish any crime Iran commits, they now dare to go further and try to kill Trump.
Here’s a list of some of Iran’s assassinations abroad:
In 1991, Iran’s agents assassinated the Shah’s last prime minister, Shapour Bakhtiar.
In 1992, Iran sent its agents to assassinate Kurdish–Iranian dissidents in Germany.
In 1992, dissident and intellectual Fereydoun Farrokhzad was assassinated in Germany.
In 1994, Iran directed Hezbollah to bomb a Jewish community center in Buenos Aires, killing dozens of Jews and injuring hundreds more.
In 2011, Iran tried to kill the Saudi ambassador to the U.S. in Washington, D.C.
In 2020, a former Iranian judge who had defected was mysteriously killed in Romania.
These have been going on for decades. Here’s a list of people Iran has kidnapped or tried to kidnap abroad, taking them to Iran and executing them there.
In 2007, British–Iranian citizen and political activist Frood Fouladvand disappeared in Turkey and was later executed in Iran.
In 2013, dissident Abbas Yazdi, with U.K. citizenship, was abducted in Dubai.
In 2019, Roohollah Zam, a resident of France who had successfully organized mass protests inside Iran in 2017, was abducted and later executed. The French government possibly assisted in his abduction.
In 2020, California resident Jamshid Sharmahd was also kidnapped in Dubai and is awaiting his execution.
In recent years, Iranian–American journalists Mahsa Alinejad and Roya Hakakian have also been targets of kidnapping attempts, uncovered by the FBI.
Foreign governments have done nothing to stop these. Quite the opposite. The French might be directly complicit in one case. In other cases, they have encouraged Iran to continue its illegal activities by doing nothing. In some cases where the plotters were arrested, they were later released in prisoner swaps.
The U.S. government has a similar approach. Every time Iran tries to assassinate or kidnap someone, be it an American citizen abroad or on U.S. soil, America treats it as a law enforcement problem. A high-profile recent case is Salman Rushdie. His would-be assassin is held solely responsible in court, and the Biden–Harris administration is entirely ignoring the encouragement and possible support from Iran.
It is not just that we don’t punish these things. We also reward them. Just months after the plot against the Saudi ambassador, Barack Obama sent Jake Sullivan, who is now Joe Biden’s national security adviser, to meet with Iran’s diplomats for the first time to beg for a nuclear agreement. In 2014, a year after Iran abducted a U.K. citizen, the United States and its allies and partners, including the United Kingdom, reached an agreement with Iran that lifted sanctions and ended up giving $170 billion, a quarter of the Iranian GDP, to Iran. Despite all these recent attempts, successful and failed ones, the U.S. and European governments have stopped enforcing sanctions on Iran. Instead, we are releasing Iran’s frozen assets and enriching Iran.
The only surprising thing is that some people are surprised that Iran now has the audacity to plan and try to assassinate Trump, John Bolton, and Mike Pompeo. That is how it works. When you don’t punish something, the bad guys move the goalpost. Worse, others learn to do the same thing.
The Biden-Harris Administration is naively confident that Iran cannot kill Trump, Bolton, or Pompeo. But Iran is confident that, if it succeeded, nothing would happen. If history is any guide, we will arrest the assassin and try him in court, but the government of Iran will escape unscathed.
But imagine if Iran succeeds in killing Trump. America might explode. Conspiracy theories will be everywhere. Nobody will trust anything anymore. There will be civil unrest, and America will be humiliated. For sure, it will be a victory for Iran and every bad guy out there to see America in chaos. This is exactly what Iran wants. Remember, Iran is trying to influence our current election and ignite discord and division. And if anyone is confident that Iran will not succeed, they might have missed the news that Trump recently got shot.
This is no joke. We have never drawn a line that Iran cannot kidnap or kill our citizens or commit atrocities in our country. We keep treating this as a law enforcement problem, whereas for Iran it is national security policy. To stop this, we need to get on Iran’s frequency and also treat it as national security. If they try to kill someone in our home, any American citizen, then our response should be severe and disproportional.
Now, people are going to say that this could lead to war or that it’s risky. It will not. See the current situation in the Middle East as an example. Iran DOES NOT want to get into a war with us. But also, what’s the alternative? Letting them continue running their murderous and terrorist enterprise unfettered.
There is no Middle East peace until Iran starts being taught some real lessons.
Note: the opinions expressed herein are those of Chuck Warren only and not his co-host Sam Stone or Breaking Battlegrounds’ staff.
