US academics urge Biden to confront Iran with aim of stopping Middle East chaos

A sizable list of US academics is urging President Joe Biden to take a firmer stance against Iran and come out in support of democratic resistance aimed at overthrowing the country’s autocratic government in response to the chaos enveloping much of the Middle East after 7 October.

The date, which marked a deadly attack by Hamas militants against civilian and military targets in Israel, has also come to signify the beginning of a new era for the Middle East which has been thrown into disarray by the outbreak of war in the Gaza Strip. Violence stemming from the conflict has already spread to nearby Jordan and Lebanon, while in the Red Sea militants linked to Houthi rebels in Yemen have attacked merchant ships bound for Israel and other vessels including US warships.

Several of the militant groups on the edge of being drawn into the fighting including the Houthis and Hezbollah militants in Lebanon are thought to be supported tactically and financially by Tehran, a factor the US once tried to mitigate through the now-abandoned 2015 nuclear accord. Now, with little cooperation between the US and Iran to speak of, many groups backed by Iran remain in a sort of soft conflict with the West.

This week, a group of US academics including some with Iranian-American backgrounds re-issued a letter to the US president urging him to formally support democratic resistance movements within Iran and cease efforts to appease the regime in Tehran through diplomatic means. Some Iran hawks with allies in the former Trump administration have pushed for such a policy to be the official course pursued by the US for years, arguing that Washington should follow a path of maximum pressure including sanctions against the Iranian government and