Away with the mullahs: Everything speaks for tougher sanctions against Iran’s officials

Any understanding of the mullahs’ regime in Iran must now come to an end. Since mid-September, thousands and thousands have been protesting against oppression and disenfranchisement, brave women in the lead. Many die. Support, and not just moral, shouldn’t be hesitated.

Now, after an agonizingly long time, there are corresponding signals of determination. The federal government and the European Union are examining every possible sanction: against individuals from the leadership, against more than 200 MPs who are calling for “mass executions”, against the Revolutionary Guards.

The youth are slaughtered.

Joschka Fischer, former foreign minister

Those are an important goal. That’s right: Up until now, there was no legal provision for declaring state institutions to be terrorist organizations – now that has to end too. The Guards are willing tools of those in power. They rob society of the future: “Young people are being slaughtered,” says former Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer, whose wife is of Iranian descent.

Recently, there was a heated debate in the Bundestag about whether Germany was doing enough to strengthen the resistance. Fischer’s green successor, Annalena Baerbock, found herself on the defensive, also because she was not yet able to say everything from discussions with her counterparts in the background.

Nevertheless, the demands on them remain high, as Baerbock demands a “value-based foreign policy”, and a feminist one at that, and it is the women in Iran who give everything, even their lives, for the values ​​of democracy. The minister will know what she owes them. The 80,000 demonstrators in Berlin some time ago will have contributed to a sharpening of conscience.

A “policy of minimal pressure on the regime”, as CDU foreign policy expert Norbert Röttgen etched in the debate, would indeed let the Iranian protest movement down. It is true that a “regime change” can rarely if ever be achieved from outside; but from the outside the pressure can be increased to the maximum.

Israel has always been right

For example, all those who are subject to sanctions and who are undesirable in the EU can no longer access their money abroad or see their children studying abroad. That hits. And the regime must not be able to access the many billions stashed away abroad with which it could buy nuclear-capable missiles.

Israel has always been right: not only the state of the Jews is threatened with annihilation; which is bad enough. The community of democracies as a whole needs to wake up. Because this regime builds nuclear weapons – and it is closer to it than German foreign policy before Baerbock wanted to admit – the awakening can be terrible. Any hint of naivety would be too much now.

In the meantime, however, the traffic light coalition and the Union opposition are in agreement, thank goodness, that the escalation in Iran must result in its own escalation: that of sanctions. Because all those who, like some influential Sunni clerics, rebel against the repressive course of those in power and the Islamic system of rule, must feel and see themselves strengthened.

The fact that Iranian Foreign Minister Hussein Amirabdollahian is threatening Germany with reactions is a sign that confronting the regime is the right way to go. The mullahs must understand that theirs is over.

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