Are We Gonna Talk to Iran?

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http://www.globalpolitician.com/articledes.asp?ID=1896&cid=1&sid=27

Suggestions of Bilateralism
Should the U.S. Talk to Tehran?
By Nicholas M. Guariglia
May 24, 2006

You have to hand it to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. His lunatic rantings, denials of the Holocaust, anti-Semitic verses, apocalyptic predictions, messianic boasts, and calls for the destruction of Israel and the United States have only earned him the attention, recognition, and fear he wanted. Pundits of all political persuasions are suddenly urging the Bush administration to hold direct bilateral talks with Khamenei, Ahmadinejad, and the rest of the Iranian mullahs. European delegates offer packages of incentives for the regime to quit uranium enrichment, which the mullahs promptly dismiss as insulting: “Do you think you are dealing with a four-year-old child to whom you can give some walnuts and chocolates and get gold from him?”

So there we stand. We are in a strange period, either very much akin to the euphoria in Eastern Europe sixteen and seventeen years ago –– where we may soon see emboldened democrats rise up in Iran, Syria, and across the region –– or the Afghan and Iraqi expeditions are the battlefield equivalent of Doolittle’s Raid and Kasserine Pass, and we are nowhere near the end, or the beginning of the end, but, to quote Sir Churchill, the “end of the beginning.”

From these perspectives there are so many contradictory claims, regarding Iran specifically, it is hard to know where to begin. Either the U.S. wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have “overthrown enemies of Iran,” which means we have strategically goofed up and have inadvertently aided Iran (and therefore make little sense when we single out and isolate the mullahs), or the wars on Iran’s two flanks have resulted in the “American encirclement of Iran,” and therefore the mullahs have “every reason” to seek a nuclear deterrent.

Articles pop up predicting the U.S. is prepping for a first-strike nuclear assault on Iran –– characterizing the Bush team as psychopathic zealots undeterred by difficulties in Iraq –– while other articles, sometimes by the same op-ed editorialist, predict the administration is nursing its Iraq wounds and would never and could never mount a war against Iran. It is the now familiar obstructionism that switches back and forth, between labeling our Middle East efforts as incompetent, idealistic, and hopeless the one moment, and bullying, cynical, and self-serving the next moment. Either we shouldn’t do what we can do… or we can’t do what we want to do…



This tango played by the voices of capitulation explains why sudden calls for “talking to Tehran” have become so prevalent, and as the thinking goes, coming from saner and more rational mediators. What a reversal from just a few years ago, where we were assured the only way to solve diplomatic problems was to go the multilateral route and include everyone and their mother into whatever “process” –– usually a euphemism for “not accomplishing anything” –– we were engaged in.

Madeline Albright, who has recently voiced her displeasure with President Bush’s rhetoric as not morally ambiguous enough for our enemies’ liking (I wonder if she thinks her “it’s worth it” comment on dead Iraqi children under Clinton-era sanctions angered the Arab masses?), now chastises our Iran policy of multilateral diplomacy. This coming from a woman who wined and dined with Kim Jong Il, toasting champagne glasses and smiling for the cameras, while the North Korean kleptocracy oversaw a state-induced famine and violated every nuclear contract in the bilateral 1994 Agreed Framework.

Europeans who felt their noses were pressed to the glass on Iraq –– which usually happens when your pockets are lined, as well –– were given the diplomatic lead on Iran for the past few years, as the so-called EU-3 –– Germany, France, and the U.K. –– tried to negotiate with the Islamist theocracy, while us cowboy and unilateral Americans watched with keen interest from afar. The results were unsurprising: Europeans unable to efficiently play Good Cop to our Bad Cop, fascists unimpressed with European verbal warnings, and now an international realization that these men who talk into wells, predict the nearness of the end of days, and assert the omnipresence of Allah when they speak (rendering everyone listening as incapable of blinking), are now ever-so-closer to obtaining the atomic prominence they seek. What else were we expecting in two years of weak-kneed diplomacy, after a decade-plus of it with Iraq?


There has been another element to this standoff, and that is Ahmadinejad’s eighteen-page letter to President Bush, which some have described as an affirmation of his insanity, while others have highlighted as evidence of the regime’s benign agenda. It seemed as if the letter was littered with Howard Dean’s talking points, complaining about everything from Guantanamo Bay, to secret CIA prisons in Europe, to a failure to find chemical weapons in Iraq. This, along with questioning Bush’s faith and the usual Alex Jones-type conspiratorial gibberish about a possible U.S.-Israeli role in Sept. 11, weren’t exactly a good start to the “open dialogue” leftists claimed Ahmadinejad was trying to ignite.

But spectators are overlooking one overriding fact: while the Iranian leadership blows off possible U.N. sanctions, calls for Israel to be wiped off the map, cracks down on democratic dissidents, and scoffs at European carrots knowing American sticks are not yet imminent, Ahmadinejad and the regime call for direct talks with the United States, knowing, despite its pacifist nature, the international community as a whole is focused on and opposed to their enrichment of uranium. Ayatollah Khamenei, his clerical council, the mullahs, and their puppet, President Ahmadinejad, know their Shi’a brethren westward in Iraq have, unlike their own subjects, freely elected (with all candidates capable of running) a representative, constitutional, and democratic parliament. And they know their sponsorship of Hezbollah, intermingling with warlords in Iraq, and green light for terrorist attacks against Americans worldwide since 1979 does not rest well with the current administration.

President Bush has said diplomacy with Iran is “just beginning,” all options “are on the table,” the notion of a U.S. attack on Iran is “ridiculous,” we’d “use military might to defend Israel,” we’d like to “solve this diplomatically,” we “think we will solve this diplomatically,” and an Iranian bomb would be “unacceptable.” It is a good thing to see Ahmadinejad reaching out, curiously, not knowing what Bush truly thinks… judging from his comments, we Americans cannot even know what he thinks. “Is he just talking tough or is he really as crazy as we once half-jokingly said he was?” These are all very good positions to be negotiating from.


A shrewd guesstimate would be, as promised, this administration will not allow the current status quo to continue on past its time in office. Minus a mass uprising by the Iranian people –– not as unlikely as you may believe –– which results in the overthrow of the mullahs, the current diplomatic standoff inside the U.N. Security Council will not go on forever. Iran is anywhere between three to five years away from physically acquiring a nuclear weapon, and perhaps one to three years away before it has the technological know-how to master perpetual uranium enrichment.

The nuclear clock and the peaceful regime change clock are ticking, side-by-side. On the one hand, if there were to be a democratic revolution before the acquirement of nuclear weapons, the new government would either give up its nuclear ambitions (as former Soviet satellites and others once did) or the world would accept a democratic Iran with nuclear prestige, much as we accept India with them (and would accept Taiwan, South Korea, or Japan with nukes over North Korea). One the other hand, were there to be a nuclear Iran in 2010, with subsequent democratization in 2012, it may be wise to accept a shaky two years of a nuclear-armed Khamenei, knowing a peaceful transformation was just twenty-four months away.

Unfortunately we do not have the luxury of knowing what the future holds. While possible, there is no guarantee the current regime will internally collapse anytime soon. Minus complete and unequivocal obedience –– giving up nuclear aspirations, renouncing and rejecting terrorism, etc. –– as the Libyans have done, the Iranian problem will not be passed on, as it stands, to the next presidency. The trio of Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld –– all of which enter retirement and permanently leave public service at the end of this term –– know damn well there would be no assurances that the next administration would have the political will to do what needed to be done. So we sit, wait, watch, and guess… until someone decides we’ve reached the point of no return.