By
Kenneth R.
Timmerman
Iranian President Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad thinks he has our number. He is convinced he can continue
to flout a U.N. Security Council demand that Iran verifiably suspend
its uranium enrichment operations, and get the Europeans, the
Russians and the Chinese to convince us to continue talking.
Last Tuesday, at the very moment European negotiator Javier Solana
was trying to jawbone the Iranians in Tehran, Iran told the
International Atomic Energy Agency that it had restarted
enrichment.
Let's be very clear about this. Mr. Solana had been charged with
delivering an ultimatum from the Permanent Five members of the U.N.
Security Council plus Germany, and the Iranians gave an immediate
answer: No.
The choice Mr. Solana delivered to the Iranian regime went like this:
You must immediately suspend in a verifiable manner all uranium
enrichment activities, and if you do here is a list of the good
things we will do for you. If you refuse, however, I have a second
list, which details all the pain we intend to inflict on your
regime.
Mr. Solana emerged from the talks with Iran's top negotiator, Ali
Larijanai, saying he was "optimistic." He repeated that on Wednesday
after reporting to French President Jacques Chirac in Paris. Iran
gave its answer; but no one seemed to be listening.
The indifference of the West must have been frustrating to Mr.
Ahmadinejad, because on Thursday he made his rejection of the Western
offer clear.
Speaking to a crowd in Qazvin, home of one of Iran's previously
secret nuclear weapons research sites, Mr. Ahmadinejad reiterated his
longstanding insistence Iran would never give up its "definite
rights" to uranium enrichment. "If they think they can threaten and
hold a stick over Iran's head and offer negotiations at the same
time, they should know the Iranian nation will definitely reject such
an atmosphere," he said.
That is not coded diplomatic language, nor subject to interpretation.
The Iranians have consistently used the same terms whenever they have
flouted the International Atomic Energy Agency or the U.N. Security
Council over uranium enrichment. It is their right, they insist;
therefore, no one can demand that they give it up, even
temporarily.
In Washington, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack has refused
to comment on the Iranian moves, or on Mr. Ahmadinejad's
statements.
He should not be faulted personally. After all, he is just a
spokesman, not a policymaker.
But Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice needs to step up to the
plate, and make clear -- yet again -- that the Six Power offer to
Iran is not a negotiating position, or an opening ante. It is exactly
what she said it was when she first announced it on May 31. It's a
choice that the Iranians must make. And now they have made it.
The worst possible outcome of the nuclear showdown with Iran would be
for the West to ignore the Islamic Republic leaders when they clearly
announce their choice. It's called the slippery slope. Take one step
down that road, and it's a quick bone-crushing ride down the chute to
failure. And in this case, failure means a nuclear-armed Iran.
In making their offer to Iran, the Great Powers did not do the right
thing, or the moral thing: provide massive assistance to
pro-democracy forces in Iran; the bus-drivers, the students, the
women, the teachers and the young people who repeatedly take to the
streets in defiance of club-wielding police and paramilitary
hooligans.
When things really get rough, as they did last August in the town of
Saqqez in northwestern Iran, the regime will not hesitate to call out
helicopter gunships to mow down crowds of protesters. And yet, the
protesters keep coming.
The moral thing would have been to provide the protesters and their
leaders with massive assistance in their efforts to get rid of this
regime.
It also would have been the most effective threat to have included on
the list of "or else" that Mr. Solana was supposed to have delivered
in Tehran, since outside help for pro-democracy forces is the one
thing this regime truly fears.
Mr. Ahmadinejad and the ruling clerics know far better than Western
chancelleries just how unpopular and vulnerable they truly are.
Although the regime and its supporters still insist voters turned out
"massively" to support his election last year, opposition groups
claim Iranian voters massively boycotted the poll.
TV footage of large crowds, fed by state-run television to foreign
networks, turned out to have been taken during previous elections,
according to Banafsheh Zand-Bonazzi, a human rights activist and
journalist who translated the old election posters in the
background.
Many polling places in Tehran happened to be at places where the
Tehran municipality had installed video traffic cameras, which can be
viewed on the Internet. I monitored a half-dozen of them on election
day, and saw hardly a person enter the polls.
If the Great Powers are not yet ready to do the moral thing and
support the legitimate aspiration to freedom of the Iranian people,
then the very least they can do is hold firm on the conditions of the
offer Mr. Solana made.
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