A Bipartisan Bill To End Software Sanctions On Iran
Much of the current mood among American politicians toward Iran can be summed up in one word: Tough. Members of Congress are eager to strike conspicuous postures of getting tougher with the government of Iran, rattling sabers in order to assuage constituents’ fears and create an appearance of personal strength of character. The trouble with this pose of toughness is that, in terms of practical policy, tough is often counterproductive.
One of the suggested actions for getting tough with Iran is to increase sanctions. The idea is that, though the Iranian government may be acting recklessly now, if the U.S. imposes additional sanctions, then the Iranians will be sorry and comply with our demands.
This plan ignores the fact that the U.S. has imposed sanctions against Iran for almost three decades now, and the sanctions haven’t done a good job of making the Iranian government more compliant with American demands. Instead, these sanctions have helped to keep Iran’s government radical, and have at the same time handicapped activists who are seeking to move their nation in a moderate direction.
Three members of the House of Representatives have been courageous enough to take a break posturing with policies of irrational toughness to suggest a policy of intelligent sanctions instead. The bipartisan trio of James Moran, Bob Inglis and William Delahunt has introduced H.R. 4301, the Iranian Digital Empowerment Act, which would create an exception to American sanctions against Iran, making it legal to sell software and related services that can be used to help Iranian citizens communicate more freely, independent of their government’s efforts at censorship.
Their vision is an American policy that does more than just send Iranians a universal “no”. They want a policy that says “yes” to Iranians asking for ways to use new information technologies to build grassroots communications networks, allowing “large numbers of users to bypass censorship and surveillance technologies, for the purposes of promoting Iranians’ unfettered access to the Internet, which is a civil liberty that should be enjoyed by all people.”
Although, I personally am so far to the left that even the democrats appear to me to be “right-wing,”… cut and pasted spam deleted. please don’t leave the same comment here as you left on 20 other blogs. it’s easy to tell the difference.