Experts: ‘Persian Spring Is Possible’ in Oppressed Iran

WASHINGTON, DC – Former Sen. Joseph Lieberman and retired General Charles Wall laid out their visions for the “the way forward” regarding the United States’ policy on Iran during a panel discussion at the National Press Club on Tuesday.

The event was the second in a series of discussions on the matter.

“We find ourselves in a time of great promise and of great peril,” Ivan Sheehan—an associate professor at School of Public and International Affairs, University of Baltimore, Maryland—who moderated the event, told those gathered.

He said “a Persian spring is possible” and noted that, while the formal designation of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as a terrorist organization was “valuable,” there is a need for increased action to cripple the regime so it can no longer engage in its terrorist activities.

Lieberman, who served in the U.S. Senate from 1989 to 2013 and was the Vice Presidential nominee in the 2000 election, said he does not see the Middle East conflict as a Sunni versus Shiite battle as much as a face-off between extreme radical dictatorial terrorists versus modernizers who believe in the rule of law and human rights. “And throughout the Middle East now, we see a response growing to the Iranian support for terrorism … and the subjugation of the new democracy in Iraq by Tehran.”

He noted that this “is part of a clear desire, a plan by the government in Tehran, to attain hegemonic power over the region. To rise again and pose its own extremist version of Islam, its dictatorial governmental form on as many of the nations in the region as possible. … So much of the instability in the region is now being centered on Tehran,” he said, adding that the U.S. State Department has stated over and again that the Islamic Republic of Iran remains the number one state sponsor of terrorism in the Middle East and beyond.
source:Experts: ‘Persian Spring Is Possible’ in Oppressed Iran