Iranians to the Biden Administration: Do Not Lift Sanctions on Iran

The Biden administration is considering easing sanctions on the Iranian regime before reaching a nuclear agreement, a move that would only jeopardize the national security interests of the U.S and its Middle East allies. The Iranian people also consider such a move to be dangerous.

The Biden administration must maintain and even increase sanctions related to Iran’s support for terrorism, its ballistic missile program and ongoing human rights violations.

Some in Washington are urging the Biden administration to lift U.S. sanctions on the Islamic Republic, saying they are hurting the people in Iran. However, many Iranians advocate taking the exact opposite course.

Recently, Ahmad Obali, a Chicago-based talk show host who broadcasts to the Islamic Republic and is well-known in Iran, asked his viewers on live television: Should the U.S. sanctions be lifted or remain in place? The response was overwhelming, 48 out of 50 callers said they want the Biden administration to maintain sanctions on Iran.

The vast majority of these calls came from inside Iran. Some Iranian callers asked for the sanctions against the regime to be increased until “it’s choked.” Others said that after the Obama administration lifted the sanctions, not a single dollar went to the people.

According to a caller from Shabestar, near Tabriz, the regime used the billions of dollars received from the Obama administration to “build palaces for themselves and feed terrorists.”

Even under the “maximum pressure campaign” the U.S. continued to allow humanitarian goods, including food and medicine, to enter Iran.

The Trump administration offered direct medical assistance to Iran, after the regime’s failure in handling the global coronavirus pandemic. The Islamic Republic’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei rejected the help, saying in a televised speech on March 22, 2020, that the U.S., “Could be giving medicines to Iran that spread the virus or cause it to remain permanently.”

The maximum pressure campaign imposed by the Trump administration succeeded in bringing the regime to the verge of economic collapse. According to the International Monetary Fund, Iran went from having $122.5 billion of accessible monetary reserves in 2018 to $4 billion in 2020. This gave the Iranian people hope that the regime was weakened and they would finally be able to realize their aspirations for freedom.

On February 1, 2021, 38 activists sent a letter to President Joe Biden, asking for his administration to maintain a maximum pressure campaign on the regime. These activists, who live in Iran, put their lives on the line to send their message. Most of the signatories have been arrested or imprisoned for peaceful political and social activism.

In the letter, the activists explained that relieving the regime of sanctions would bring nothing but an increase in its malign activities in the region.

“The regime spent billions of dollars gained from the [2015] Iran nuclear deal on exporting its totalitarian ideology by providing funds to terrorist networks, developing missile technology as offensive leverage to dominate the Persian Gulf and beyond, and causing chaos in the Middle East,” they wrote.