The Office of Multicultural Programs & Services considers Emory to be a “community of care … built on equity and justice in which all members feel valued and recognize the value of others.” The students, faculty and administration take great pride in affirming the values of equity, justice and mutual respect on campus. In contrast, the regime lead by Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei that rules the Islamic Republic of Iran does not value these principles; its governance has created an illiberal nation built on hatred, intolerance and extremism.
It has been nearly impossible to avoid hearing about the events unfolding between Iran and world powers over the last month, and they could not be more relevant to our futures beyond our lives at Emory. Tehran is more than 6,800 miles from Atlanta, but what happens in Iran and in the Middle East over the next 15 years will without a doubt change the course of history and the course of our lives. For the students of Emory, these next 15 years will be some of the most important in our lives, but in the context of foreign affairs, 15 years is no time at all, especially in Iran where the Supreme Leader’s rule continues until his death. The prospect of war, involving both the United States and our allies in the Middle East, is a very real one should the issue of Iran and its nuclear activities not be handled carefully and properly. Whether you’re aware of it or not, we as college students have a significant, vested interest in making sure that that prospect is diminished as greatly as possible.
For years, the international community has punished Iran with crippling economic sanctions for its continued development of a nuclear weapons capability, despite the regime’s agreement to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. In November 2013, Iran finally agreed to negotiate the termination of its nuclear weaponization activities, which led to an agreement between Iran and the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council plus Germany, that was announced in July. The agreement has been hotly debated among all citizens and politicians alike, but on Sept. 17 this year, 42 Democratic senators blocked a vote on a Resolution of Disapproval that ended the entrenched legislative battle.
I have never been so disappointed with the American political system than I am now. No matter how our representatives in Congress felt about the deal, this resolution deserved to go to a vote. This nuclear agreement is potentially the most significant foreign policy decision of our generation, and Congress had a historic role to play in its approval or rejection. The Executive Branch does not own foreign policy; the Constitution establishes checks and balances for this exact reason, and the American people spoke. According to the Pew Research Center, nearly 50 percent of Americans disapprove of the deal, while only 21 percent support it. In both houses of Congress, bipartisan majorities voted for disapproval. Putting aside all the arguments for and against the deal, these two facts say it all.
However, what is now important in the face of the passing of this deal is awareness. As students of a “community of care,” we must recognize the egregious behavior of the Iranian regime and, if nothing else, seek to maintain exceptional vigilance on it within and beyond the scope of the agreement. We must ensure that our representatives hold Iran to every letter of this deal.
Outside its borders, Iran is considered a state sponsor of global terror. While Iran supports many terrorist organizations throughout the region, its funding of Hezbollah has been most noted and criticized. Hezbollah is well known for its role in the Lebanese political system; however, it has currently devoted most of its resources to vie for power in the vacuum that Syria has become, contributing to the some 200,000 deaths that have occurred there in the last four years. Iran has also been historically linked to Hamas, the organization that presently dominates the Gaza Strip and is known for its several conflicts with Israel in which it has fired thousands of rockets into Southern and Central Israel.
On the domestic front, rallies in Tehran attended by hundreds of hardliners in which participants yell “Death to America” and “Death to Israel” are commonplace. While it is true that a majority of Iranians do not support these extreme viewpoints, it is quite evident that Iran’s leaders do. In the two months since the deal has been announced, Iranian government officials, including the Supreme Leader himself have made it very clear that their aggressive attitude toward the “arrogant” United States will not change. Just this week, Khamenei announced that he hopes “the Zionist regime” — Israel — will be gone in the next 25 years. Moreover, the radical wing of Iran’s government, known as the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, is responsible for the persecution, detention and execution of political dissenters, members of the media, homosexuals and minority ethnic groups. In 2009, the world watched disturbing images of Iran putting down the Green Movement, which began as a push to remove the now former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad from office, but later became a larger movement to democratize the nation. The conflict resulted in widespread arrests, brutal assaults and some 30 deaths involving mostly students. Since then, the movement has not been heard of.
These actions taken by Iran, domestic and abroad, do not represent the values that we cherish and foster here at Emory or in the greater United States. Iran is a regime that cannot be identified with, cannot be appeased and certainly cannot be trusted. President Obama insists that his deal is not a deal based on trust but one based on verification. Now that international support for this deal will be complete with the congressional vote blocked, we must do everything possible to make sure our leaders in the executive branch and in Congress uphold that sentiment and maintain strict vigilance. There is far too much at stake to ignore Iran.
Matthew Roomberg is a College freshman from Gaithersburg, Maryland.
what a joke of an editorial, demonize much?
There is a difference between writing the truth and demonizing. Matthew has written the truth something, that for whatever reason, you have a difficult time handling.
ya, right, judging from your past posts, there’s really no need for me to “debate” this article with you.
Yeah, right. I corrected your judgment of Matthew’s article. A judgment in which you attack Matthew not the points he brings up, and then you turn around and attack me too.
Seems like the common denominator here is your inability to debate the issue at hand and to instead projecting your shortcomings onto others.
Grow up. Learn how to debate like an adult. And quit accusing others of being you (although it’s clear you don’t even understand you are doing so.)
once again, i think your previous posts say it all. go ahead and have the last word.
Was it Kerry or Chamberlain who said, “Peace in our time”?
As you know, Matthew, it really does not matter for Khameni is today’s Hitler and Kerry is today’s Chamberlain.
You sound as coherent as Dick Cheney. And that’s not a complement in case you couldn’t tell.
Pure hyperbole & typical incessant gibberish from someone with a Jewish bias. There should be no double standards in the world. We should first criticize our violent history & zest for world domination before we judge other nations. We have no business being in the Middle East, that’s not our geopolitical arena. Iran has been there for over 2500 years and they are not the lover of the U.S. empire for very good reasons.
Iran is a member of the NPT & as such has every right to enrich uranium for peaceful purposes. This is a contrast to Israel, an apartheid masquerading as a democracy, and the occupier of Palestine. Israel has a massive 4.5 million imprisoned refugee problem within its sphere of influence & it is in possession of illegal nuclear weapons & other WMDs.
They developed their illegal nukes under a surreptitious and deceitful program supported by France & the U.S., two NPT member states that violated the agreement by helping Israel.
Read your history dude. You’ve got a lot to learn before you start writing articles.
It would help to at least have completed a semester in college. Your op-Ed reflects the high school education you’ve received. I can’t decide what’s more insulting – your thinly veiled bias masked as concern and a call for your generation to act OR the fact that you would use an Emory phrase and policy meant to build and nurture inclusivity in order to spew hate at a people. Your article is only further inciting an anti-Iranian and anti Middle Eastern sentiment that’s going to negatively affect a campus and your classmates. It’s become perfectly acceptable to push that level of xenophobia and Islamophobia – and to see that kind of hate and intolerance take shape in a campus I love and remember fondly is disappointing at the very least. Emory Wheel, can you please make a policy for your contributors to at least have spent a semester at Emory? How can one of them write about a community of care when he’s only a month and has yet to fully experience or embrace the campus culture? And what kind of image did you have one of your staff draw? What’s it supposed to convey? This whole article seems amateur at best, hateful at worst. Do better. Take your role in building a better Emory more seriously. Right now you’re nothing more than a right-leaning, ignorant outlet. We already have Fox News for that.
Really , Matthew Roomberg needs to complete a semester in college to be able to voice his opinion. Your demeaning vitriol shows your immaturity and lack of knowledge in both subject matter and the world in general. You should respect my opinion, because by your standards I am much more qualified than you( I have lived on this earth for 56 years, and have a BA, MS, MD and MBA degrees as well as a post MD residency in Radiology). You have no clue about Mr. Roomberg and his qualifications to address the subject matter at hand, the Iran nuclear deal. Except for hate speech, there is nothing contained within your response that rises to the level of addressing the issues at hand. They are that after Russia, Iran is the biggest clear and present danger to the future of world peace and our democracy. It is not wrong to be conservative and it is not wrong to be liberal, but it is wrong to be what you were in the above reply. Maybe you should take a course in sensitivity training and diversity before you enter the real world.
You may be a bit confused here. The treaty did go to a vote in Congress, which had the opportunity to prevent the United States from committing to. Additionally, many of the nuclear weapons-related sanctions require Congressional authorization to be lifted. If you mean a nation-wide referendum, well, that’s not how our government works.
As far as verification procedures are concerned, they are myriad. It would behoove you to read the full text of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, here: https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/2165399/full-text-of-the-iran-nuclear-deal.pdf