Iran — VOICES for REASON

Dispelling misconceptions about the Arab/Israeli conflict is a focus of Efraim Karsh’s writings, and in his oped in today’s NYT, he brings to a wider audience key facts about the character of self-professed Arab champions of the Palestinian cause. He lays out a historical case that Arab states — who routinely jockey to be seen as advancing Palestinian goals — have in reality exploited that cause for their own power-seeking ends.

Agreeing with the thrust of Karsh’s article, I’d add this point: even if these backers had been genuine in their motivations and truly sought to serve the cause, that too would be deplorable. From my reading of the issue, the Palestinian movement has at its root an antipathy to Western political values, such individual freedom, and it has pioneered in the vile tactic of terrorism. Regimes that back that movement, for whatever reason, are complicit in its aggression.

(I explore the Palestinian movement and its goals in a course on the Arab-Israeli conflict. In chapter seven of Winning the Unwinnable War, I touch on a prevailing dynamic in Mideast politics that sheds light on what motivates contemporary backers of the Palestinians (e.g., Iran, Syria, and Saudi Arabia).)

The U.N. is about to pass another round of sanctions on Iran over its nuclear program. Is it despite the three earlier rounds of U.N. sanctions that Iran has geared up to produce even more nuclear material — or because of them?

Past sanctions were puny to begin with, then eviscerated by friends of Tehran at the U.N. (Predictably, the regime has sidestepped existing sanctions.) But even if credibly effective sanctions could be imposed — which at the U.N. is fantastical — Iran’s decades of pro-jihadist aggression demand a far more assertive response. Tehran is a belligerent theocracy stained with American blood. Ending the mounting threat from Iran requires a resolute, confident policy on our part, but by pursuing mousy “sanctions” and extending Tehran countless second chances, we’ve appeased the regime.

No wonder Iran’s leaders (credibly) brag of realizing their nuclear goals. Our weakness in the face of this malignant regime empowers it.

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The U.S. is not only a founding member of the U.N. but for a long time has been its largest financial backer. What are we getting for our money? An institution that makes a mockery of protecting rights around the world. Consider this report from veteran U.N. observer Anne Bayefsky, cataloguing just some of the recent perversities of the U.N.’s (notorious) Human Rights Council.

The Council, which meets in Geneva, is the personal playground of the Organization of the Islamic Conference. They hold the balance of power by controlling the Asian and African regional groups, which together form a majority at the Council. The Council’s agenda is accordingly fixated on issues of priority to the Islamic bloc— number one, delegitimizing Israel; number two, trumping free speech in the name of Islam; and number three, avoiding any criticism of human-rights violations in their own backyards. None of which has anything to do with protecting human rights.

Later, Bayefsky observes, “The Obama administration lost every time it called for the vote on a resolution at the Council session.” But don’t be misled into thinking that Obama’s diplomats were all that energetic. Read the rest of this entry »

Thursday marks the 31st anniversary of the coalescing of Iran’s Islamist revolution. But on this deeply symbolic day, which Tehran usually spends glorifying its militant, tyrannical rule, millions of Iranian citizens will likely attempt another show of mass defiance and repudiation of the regime.

That’s precisely what Tehran fears. It fears having its veneer of popular endorsement torn away altogether. Witness its preemptive crack down. Critics and student activists have been rounded up and tossed in prison. Earlier this month, to build up the intimidation factor, the regime began executing dissidents. The IranTracker project is compiling a record of Tehran’s intimidation tactics in the run-up to the day. The list is horrifyingly long.

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Over at AEI’s blog, Danielle Pletka detects signs that the Obama administration is changing its approach toward Iran. After getting nowhere with attempts to lure Iran into negotiations, suddenly “the administration has started pouring it on from all spigots: sending Patriot batteries to Qatar, the UAE, Bahrain, and Kuwait, lengthening deployments to the Gulf, and otherwise talking up the stakes. So what’s the deal? Is Iran a major threat to the United States and our allies? Did this suddenly dawn on the administration?  . . . Hint: Something has changed. Second hint: It’s not Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. About time too.”

Allow me to register a dissenting perspective.

Obama’s so-called diplomatic outreach has treated Iran as a morally worthy interlocutor and estranged friend, whose goodwill it is our duty to cultivate. And that entire initiative is predicated on evading Iran’s bloody record and militant ideal of global Islamist rule. It’s a long way to go from that to a clear-eyed recognition of the regime’s character.  Obama would have to do, and publicly say, a lot more to convince me — let alone convince Tehran — that the administration now views the regime as fundamentally hostile and is willing to use military force to eliminate the threat it poses. Everything our president has done since taking office has reinforced the contrary view.

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The Afghan government floated a new plan “offering jobs, security, education and other social benefits to Taliban followers who defect” in the hope of quelling, if not crippling, the Taliban-Islamist resurgence seeking to take over the country. The Islamist response? A massive, coordinated suicide attack on the presidential palace, ministry of justice and central bank in Kabul.

It was meant to deliver a message — which the Taliban’s spokesman put into words afterward: “We are ready to fight, and we have the strength to fight, and nobody from the Taliban side is ready to make any kind of deal.”

Horrific scarcely begins to describe the attack, but there was ample reason to expect the baksheesh (bribes) to elicit that kind of response from the Islamists. There are many parallels you could draw, but take just one: the current U.S. approach toward Iran.

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The clerics in Iran have led crowds in chants of “death to America” for 30-plus years, but now protesters in Iran are reportedly shouting “death to Khamenei.” Bear in mind that the cleric Ayatollah Khamenei is the supreme leader in a regime predicated on the supremacy of religious law. Not only have the protesters dared to defy the government, to risk death while resisting the security forces sent to disperse them; they’re (again) challenging the legitimacy of the Iranian theocracy.

Could 2010 be for Iran what 1989 was for the USSR?

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President Obama has sought to buy off Iran with concessions and talks, so that Tehran will agree to end its nuclear program. This policy of so-called engagement (in reality, appeasement) has quite predictably shipwrecked (the administration is admitting as much). I have been arguing that Obama’s policy of appeasement works to galvanize Tehran in its belligerence, including notably its nuclear program. That appears to be an intensifying trend.

Secretary of State Clinton starts making noises that the time has come to “pressure” Iran with the additional sanctions. Iran scoffs at a bill in Congress that would sanction its fuel supply. And it successfully test fires an enhanced long-range Sejil 2 missile.

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“[I]f countries like Iran are willing to unclench their fist, they will find an extended hand from us,” Barack Obama suggested, nearly a year ago. Since then the Iranian regime has found itself inundated by the administration’s cordial invitations (to a July Fourth barbecue; to talks over its nuclear program; etc.) and unctuous affirmations of our good will (see this video). Even after the mass protests in Iran challenging the theocracy’s legitimacy, Team Obama declined to lend its support to the protesters and thereby endorsed the regime that was gunning them down in the streets. By the logic of Obama’s policy, all this should have induced Tehran to put aside its “decades of mistrust” (of us), and halt its nuclear program and its patronage of Islamist terrorism.

So how’s this working out?

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I thought I’d heard every last pseudo-explanation for why the militant regime in Iran really is seeking nuclear technology as a means, not to threaten others, but for some kind of peaceful purpose. Until recently.

The other week I attended a panel discussion on Iran featuring Hans Blix. Dr. Blix is a Swedish diplomat and the head of an outfit called The Weapons of Mass Destruction Commission (notably, he was involved in the UN inspections of Saddam Hussein’s Iraq). The venue for the panel, moreover, was the annual conference of the Middle East Institute. All of which is to say that he is sufficiently respected a figure to be invited to address this informed, specialist audience. At the opening of his remarks, he seriously suggested that Iran could well be seeking nuclear technology, not for weapons, but for energy, because . . . nuclear power has the “ecological” benefit of avoiding pollution.

Yet: Iran has not sought to hook up its existing nuclear facilities to the electrical grid. More than that, who could seriously believe Iran cares one iota about the fate of its citizens, let alone the air they breathe (as Blix implies in re avoiding pollution)? Who could seriously believe that a regime that crushes its own people when they challenge its legitimacy; that tortures and murders political opponents; that funds vicious groups like Hezbollah and Hamas and the PLO; that has waged devastating attacks on American targets for years; who could seriously believe that a regime with such contempt for the lives of individuals within and without its borders could really have benign motives for its nuclear program? There’s no empirical basis for that belief.

Blix, like so many others, seems willing to dream up all manner of rationalizations for continued (so-called) diplomacy with Iran, rather than face the true nature of that regime and the need to stop its malignant ambitions.

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