WHY IRAN IS OUR ENEMY.

• Author: Farsad, Negin

Christ, I'm tired of the threatening-war-with-Iran news cycle of the past... forty years. It's SO BORING. The world gets it: The United States feels threatened. Iran might build a bomb. We have reason to believe it wouldn't but what if it did? Sanctions! Outrage! Resignation! Sanctions again!

After this many seasons, even Shonda Rhimes couldn't breathe new life into this storyline. It's the same thing over and over and over again. And here I am, an Iranian American, weighing in with my Iranian American take. Again.

The fact is, the administration of President Donald Trump doesn't want the kind of diplomacy with Iran that might lead to a fruitful and peaceful resolution. It wants to maintain an atmosphere of constant tension. It needs Iran as an enemy--so much so that it had to pull out of the nuclear deal to ensure Iran's enemy status. Pulling out of a multilateral deal that affected multiple countries and re-disturbed the world order shows real commitment to Iran-as-Enemy.

Now we're mad that Iran doesn't want to comply with a deal that we don't comply with. We're in some kind of circular logic hell-scape.

Trump needs enemies because Hillary is gonna work for only so long. At some point, Trump rally-goers will realize they're chanting "Lock her up!" about a middle-aged lady whose main activity is to walk her dogs in the suburban woods. Trump himself will eventually have to concede that Hillary is now just a random civilian.

But keeping the threat of Iran alive was complicated by its irritating compliance with the nuclear deal. So Trump had to get rid of the deal. Then, after blaming Iran for a tanker incident and for shooting down a $130 million drone, Trump actually ordered an attack on Iran, but changed his mind at the last moment.

There are legitimate reasons to be against the regime. The various human rights violations that Iran engages in every day. The journalists it detains, the general oppression of its citizens. There's even a ban on walking dogs in public places in Tehran. But, for some reason, human rights violations don't "land" with the administration or its perceived base. If human rights mattered, then Trump wouldn't be trying so hard to befriend Russia and North Korea. He would have threatened "obliteration like you've never seen before" on Saudi Arabia instead. But human rights abuses are not a problem for Trump.

Is Iran an enemy because we want to spread democracy? Here again, that's not a thing for this President. He's in...