The Right Way to Deal With Iran
The loud, angry and sterile debate over the Iranian president’s visit to Columbia University raises a more serious problem that has long confounded American policymakers: How to cope with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s real masters, the corrupt regime of mullahs who determine both foreign and domestic policy in Iran. Their rule has meant awful suffering for the Iranian people, whose democratic aspirations remain frustrated as their wealth is squandered and plundered, and instability for the Mideast and the world, as the leadership in Tehran constantly seeks provocations to distract from its own crimes and failures.
Now the same geopolitical geniuses who promoted the invasion of Iraq—and thereby endowed the mullahs with more power and influence than they had ever enjoyed before—insist that the only solution to the problem of Iran is another war. In fact, they claim that we are already at war because the Iranians are assisting Shiite militias in Iraq, and that we should begin bombing Iranian nuclear and military sites as soon as possible.
What we should have learned after nearly 30 years is that neither blustering threats, diplomatic isolation nor secret arms deals have advanced our interests, but have only bolstered the power and prestige of the worst elements in the Iranian autocracy. And what we could begin to learn this week is that direct engagement, even to the point of entertaining a demagogue like Mr. Ahmadinejad in a prestigious educational forum, may eventually prove more useful.
Once merely a small-time populist politician in his hometown, Mr. Ahmadinejad has become a folk hero throughout the Muslim and Arab worlds thanks to his provocations against America, Israel and the West. Sunni Muslims and secular-minded Arabs who might otherwise oppose Shiite authoritarianism applaud him because they perceive him as standing up for them against Western oppressors. Each expression of American outrage against the Iranian president from afar, every screaming tabloid headline and radio rant, only inflates the significance of this unimpressive and fundamentally unimportant man. And the constant threats of war from within the Bush White House and its neoconservative echo chamber intensify the effectiveness of his propaganda, both within his own country and across the Mideast.
The moment of dialogue at Columbia, by contrast, shrank Mr. Ahmadinejad back down to a more realistic size. Unlike Tehran, where his thugs can intimidate, imprison and even murder those who dare to question him, he had to stand and listen meekly as Columbia’s president, Lee Bollinger, and student interlocutors demanded answers about his government’s repressive acts. Although Mr. Bollinger went over the top in parroting various White House themes in his brusque language, his commitment to free speech—even and especially to speech that we despise—nevertheless reflected well on the United States.
Now the U.S. government should make sure that the Columbia videotape is broadcast everywhere, proving that we live up to our ideals and do not fear the likes of Mr. Ahmadinejad. Let the world watch him respond with pious banalities, feeble dodges and absurd falsehoods—“we have no homosexuals”—and then judge whether he is a “hero” or a fraud.
Yet when the sideshow ends and the mullahs’ puppet returns to Tehran, we will still have to decide how to deal with the regime he represents. As Peter Galbraith explains in a penetrating essay in the current issue of The New York Review of Books, the Bush administration has vastly empowered the Iranian leaders by overthrowing their enemy Saddam Hussein and installing their Shiite allies as Baghdad’s new government.
With 169,000 American troops in Iraq, moreover, we are not exactly in the optimal strategic position to wage war against Iran, despite the bloody fantasies of Vice President Dick Cheney and senators such as Joe Lieberman and Jon Kyl. Unlike Saddam in 2003, whose armed forces disintegrated within days, Tehran has a real army and air force, and sufficient naval power to block the Iraqi ports. Our forces could be forced to fight not only the 800,000-man Iranian army but also the Shiite militias, who could swiftly cut our resupply route from the south.
It is an ugly prospect to contemplate, with potential losses that would dwarf our casualties in Iraq and an aftermath that would be still more chaotic, dangerous and ruinous to our reputation. Assuming we would eventually win with air power, would that mean taking control of Iran, with the same kind of “success” we have enjoyed next door?
The alternative is what Iran’s courageous democratic dissidents have long implored us to do, and what the Iraq Study Group urged last year. Engage the regime, draw Iran into the world economic system and penetrate its closed borders peacefully to strengthen its civil society and weaken its overgrown theocratic state. Stop making heroes of the villainous mullahs and their puppets, and start dividing the pragmatists and reformers from the fanatics. And cease the threats that in Iranian eyes justify a nuclear weapons program.
That would be the beginning of wisdom.
Hey Joe,
Agree with you and love your column, but I had a heck of a time getting to it. Since you guys have changed your web site arrangement, the link to you from the Drudge Report doesn't connect right to your page.
In other words, you're hard to find right now. Maybe you could talk to the Drudge Report about it?
However, considering your contrary views on most subjects, maybe Matt Drudge did it on purpose?
Keep up the good work,
Joe
When President G.W. Bush was 24/7 beating the drums to take the United States to war with Iraq, did the President of Columbia University was ever as direct with his questions to our President,VP Cheney,Rumsfeld,etc as he was with this Ayatollah servant?
Just wondering....
julio
The beginning of wisdom for you, Joe, is to stop pretending to be an expert in military or diplomatic affairs. You were part of the crowd that predicted tens of thousands of body bags of U.S. troops in battling Saddam's army in the first and second Iraq wars. Your dire predictions and downplaying of U.S. military might are as wrong now as they were then. Your trepidations, along with those of your fellow travelers, do not further the possibility of peace; they only help to cause and prolong war.
JOEL FROM PALM BEACH
Sorry pal, but your suggestion is a non-suggestion.
Are you so naive as to think that the Iranian regime would allow any real dialogue with their government? They won't even admit that there are many Americans unaccounted for in Iran. Their President is a raving lunatic and a hater, and you want a dialogue.
C'mon and grow up, look at reality rather than your misguided leftist dream.
You go talk to these peoiple if you're so smart.
We'll send you a saw when you're in their jail.(if you still have a head attached)
During a 23-year long career as an army officer I was involved in a civil war in Vietnam, studied insurgencies and later served in a military/diplomatic role as Army Attache. My experiences as a soldier diplomat have helped me appreciate the limitations of military force, including the inability to achieve military objectives via bombing alone, without having ground forces to seize and occupy territory.
Mr. Odom, who appears to reflect the neocon agenda of what I call "all war, all the time", shows no expertise in military and diplomatic affairs, as do all of the inexperienced bellicose neocons, starting with Norman Podhoretz. Neocons never consider the consequences of their actions. They seem to think that plans and forces sufficient for governance of seized territory once hostilities cease are not necessary. Career military personnel will tell you that these "minor details" are important integral parts of war planning.
Neocons show no concern for our men and women in uniform and their families, condemning them to repeated and frequent deployments to war zones. Casualties, whether US, Iraqi or Afghan also don't seem to trouble them. They avoid military service and are unwilling to place themselves in harm's way for wars they rabidly instigate. What a despicable group of cowards!
Your description of the consequences of bombing Iran are realistic, as are your suggestions for dealing with the Iranians. I hope your article receives widespread distribution.
I end with a quote from the great wartime leader Winston Churchill.
Never, never, never believe any war will be smooth and easy, or that anyone who embarks on the strange voyage can measure the tides and hurricanes he will encounter. The statesman who yields to war fever must realize that once the signal is given, he is no longer the master of policy but the slave of unforeseeable and uncontrollable events.
It may come as a surprise to you, Sir, but for many millions around the world "war" is a Hollywood film or some minutes of news on the TV (again, like a film)...
Visiting this site for the very first time, your arguments stroke me as a big open window.
It is naive to state it, but I'm so sorry for all the suffering so many have to endure all over this grotesque scenarios...
I don't know what to think about the US letting such awfull people like this iranians visit your amazing country.
Be assured that you're cherished and defended in surprisingly small places in the planet like my country.
Like you used to say: God bless you, most perticularly those in severe need.
Margarida
Joe Conason is absolutely correct..bring Iran into the global economic structure, just as we have done with Japan, China, India and others.
China and India have "the bomb" and we did not go to war with them....nither has vast oil supplies and neither have claimed that they LOVE American democracy more than American dollars.
Of course, we can consider dealing with Iran in the way we "deal" with Noth Korea..skip the war...just send the money!
Mr. Conason,
Your article, for me, is questionable with respect to the national security and well-being of our nation; and, at the same time, any person in agreement with the American conservative and neo-conservative outlook on the Middle East can be shown to be a complete idiot. And so, any form of a group or community that seeks to subordinate our national interests and security for the rest of the world, for me, is commiting a high crime. I have no sympathy for your articles general suggestion: we, The United State Of America, are not, and cannot be, global cops.
Joe;
I agree with you that we have to do what the people "on the ground" in Iran tell us they want. With undo respect, "Dubya" and Condi are running a completely dishonest two tiered attack on Iran. One tier is that *they* want to dialogue with "democratic forces" in Iran (unfortunately it takes a "democratic force" to know one). But, the dissidents tell us that they don't want any physical aid from the "West" since that will only set them up for greater repression.
Because of the fact that I realize the need to try to help the "democratic forces" in any way possible, I don't think that Mr. Bollinger at all reflected the best of the United States. He has hosted many people at the forum in question and I doubt he was ever as rude and accusatory to any of them as he was to Mr. Ahmedinejad. And he acted in this manner fully knowing the sabre rattling that the Bush Administration was engaged in. It is not the job of the presidents of our universities to stifle open debate by showing extreme bias to one side and effectively encouraging the bellicose elements in this country to push for war with Iran.
To demonstrate the lack of "research" involved in the Bollinger rant, Mr. Ahmedinejad has never said that Israel or the Jews living there should be wiped off the map. He said effectively that the Zionist regime is on the wrong side of history (but the total misrepresentation has had world-wide currency). He won't even mention "Israel" as an entity--as he refused to do on Charlie Rose last week. While I suspect the interpretation of his "homosexual" answer is probably correct (given the repression of gays in his country), the end of the statement "like you have in your country" is a phrase that could mean that there is no "gay liberatory culture" in the Muslim world (and there is not in the "Western" sense while homosexuality is almost open in some places). While he may be a small person and a bit of an ignoramous, Bollinger allied with the US press has turned him into a straw man who sensitive people are likely to empathize with--as do so many in the Muslim world.
This is War we're talking about--with rather bizarre nuclear consequences--if we continue to allow "Dubya" and his puppeteers to push for a casus belli through rhetorical acrobatics and lies. And Bollinger asking "why" Iran is supplying belligerents in Iraq--without any real proof--is exactly that.
IRAQ WAR FAUCETS
The American Neo-Con Republican president, George Bush, got elected on the solemn promise that there would be “no nation building”; then, on the pretense of a nuclear threat, he illegally turned on two faucets: out of one flows the American People’s precious wealth, and out of the other faucet flows their priceless blood.
This betrayal of the trust of the American People is a black mark on his name, which can never be erased, will damn him forever in history.
AMERICA TO IRAN - OUR SACRED CONSTITUTION PRESCRIBES HOW WE WILL HENCEFORTH DEAL WITH YOU:
THE RIGHT WAY FOR THE AMERICAN PEOPLE TO DEAL WITH IRAN IS THE CONSTITUTIONAL WAY: "AVOID FOREIGN ENTANGLEMENTS", AS EXPLICITLY STATED BY THE FOUNDING FATHERS.
Google: "Human Events Ron Paul Interview"; and, "Mearsheimer Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy".