Iran’s Enemy du Jour: A Guy Who Runs a Think Tank
The same weekend Iran’s foreign minister showed up unexpectedly in France as world leaders met, his ministry went on the attack. Iran, it said in a statement, was suffering under a campaign of “economic terrorism,” pushed in part by an institution with what it called “a deceitful name”—the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD)—and its CEO, Mark Dubowitz, both of which would henceforth be sanctioned.
And with that, a regime locked in a tit-for-tat escalation with the United States—the world’s biggest economy, the biggest spender on national security, and a global superpower with intelligence and military resources around the world—focused its rage on a guy who runs a think tank.
How a 60-odd person organization became the enemy du jour in Tehran is a story about the Washington, D.C., influence game as seen from the receiving end. Yet it also illustrates how what happens here doesn’t stay here, and how a Beltway reputation can reverberate far from the city’s policy debates.
