Secretary of State
Condoleeza Rice threw down the gauntlet on Wednesday, offering the
Iranian regime a clear choice between confrontation and accommodation
with the West.
If Iran immediately suspends all uranium enrichment activities in a
transparent, verifiable manner, she said, “the United States
will come to the table with our EU-3 colleagues and meet with Iran’s
representatives.”
If not, then the U.S. and its partners have agreed on a package of “progressively
stronger political and economic sanctions” that will inflict “great
costs” on the Tehran regime.
Rice took great pains to spell out clearly the types of rewards a
compliant Iran could expect if it chooses to “persuasively
demonstrate that it has permanently abandoned its quest for nuclear
weapons.”
The U.S. will back Iran’s civil nuclear energy aspirations, and
gradually could expand economic cooperation. Ultimately, this could
lead to “a beneficial relationship of increased contacts in
education, cultural exchange, sports, travel, trade, and investment,”
she said.
At first blush, it would appear that Rice has acceded to those who
have been urging the administration to offer a “grand bargain”
to Iran.
Among the many advocates of doing business with the Tehran regime are
U.S. oil giant CONOCO, Boeing, and any number of trade associations,
whose interests are obvious.
Their views have been packaged and given a policy veneer by the likes
of Brent Scowcroft and Zbigniew Brzezinski, who urged the Bush
administration in a 2004 Council on Foreign Relations paper to lift
U.S. trade sanctions and seek an accommodation with the mullahs in
Tehran.
Ka-ching! as my friends at CNBC would say.
I have always taken issue with the economic arguments of the policy “realists,”
because we are not dealing with a realistic regime.
For the past eleven years, this regime in Tehran has endured
sanctions. U.S. efforts to block foreign investment, while not
entirely successful, have prevented Iran from enjoying the fruits of
the oil boom, which are so immediately obvious to Iranians who travel
to neighboring Dubai.
Why should a regime that is on the verge of fulfilling a
long-standing effort to acquire nuclear weapons, pursued at great
cost, now abandon that effort just because we say please and offer a
few goodies?
Former German foreign minister Joschka Fisher offered a more Faustian
argument for accommodation with Tehran.
Writing in the Washington Post on May 29, Fisher abandoned the
niceties of the lobbying crowd and got right to the point. “There
can no longer be any reasonable doubt that Iran’s ambition is
to obtain nuclear weapons capability,” he said.
That is precisely why the West should offer the mullahs in Tehran a “grand
bargain,” he argued – if by so doing we can prevent the
regime from acquiring a nuclear weapon and using it to “become
a hegemonic Islamic and regional power.”
As part of the “grand bargain,” Fisher believes the
United States and its European partners must offer Iran “binding
security guarantees,” including a permanent recognition of the
regime. The “horrible consequences” of war “must
force the United States to abandon its policy of no direct
negotiations and its hope for regime change.”
Joschka Fisher is right about one thing. Legitimacy is the only
currency the regime in Tehran truly covets, because U.S. support for
their opposition is the only threat they truly fear.
For the United States to acknowledge the legitimacy of the regime of
velayat-e faghih – absolute clerical rule – would
be taken as a great victory in Tehran.
It would sound the death knell to the aspirations of the Iranian
people to freedom, and would remove whatever restraints still remain
on the barbaric behavior of a regime that continues to stone women to
death, rape children in jails, and pursue Christians and Jews and
Bahais and others because of their religious beliefs.
This is a regime that throws students out of third-floor dormitory
rooms, for the “crime” of demanding freedom.
This is a regime that murders freedom in Iraq, and boasts of
recruiting thousands of suicide bombers to launch against
America.
Unlike Fisher, Condoleeza Rice acknowledged a moral component to
American foreign policy.
"The nuclear issue is not the only obstacle standing in the way of
improved relations," Rice said. She cited the regime's support for
terror, its involvement in violence in Iraq, and its efforts to
violate Lebanon's sovereignty as additional “barriers to a
positive relationship.”
More importantly, she refused to offer the regime any guarantees. And
that is why the regime will make the wrong choice (as far as its
survival is concerned), and refuse this last best offer from the
United States and the international community.
President Ahmadinejad has said repeatedly Iran has a “sacred
right” to nuclear technology, and has no intention of
abandoning its efforts to enrich uranium. He revels in defying the
international community.
The state-run Islamic Republic News Agency noted just hours after
Rice made her offer public that Iran considered it “a
propaganda move.”
IRNA quoted Kazem Jalali, a spokesman for the Foreign Policy and
National Security Committee of Iran’s Islamic Consultative
Assembly as noting that the regime “has announced repeatedly
that suspension of uranium enrichment is not in Iran’s agenda.”
The hard work begins tomorrow, or next week – whenever Iran
makes its refusal known officially and our European partners finally
recognize that it’s all over.
It is not yet time to unleash the dogs of war. It is time instead to
help the Iranian people to achieve their freedom.
Given the high stakes, we have a moral imperative to attempt what no
American administration has attempted before: to give the Iranian
people the means they need to build a massive non-violent movement,
well-coordinated and well-organized, to challenge the clerical
tyranny that is bent on leading Iran to devastation.
Because devastation is the only alternative future for this regime,
for the Iranian people, and for the entire region, should the United
States fail to lead and fail to accept the moral imperative of
freedom.
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