Monday, March 02, 2009

Iran Clenches Its Fist

Bolton in The Wall Street Journal

Iran Clenches Its Fist

The danger is that direct talks may facilitate, not reduce, threats to U.S. interests.

By JOHN R. BOLTON

As Iran prepares to fire up its Bushehr nuclear reactor -- and as the International Atomic Energy Agency governing board meets this week, again confronted with further progress by Tehran's nuclear program -- it is worth asking how the Obama administration is responding.

Well, the State Department recently named Dennis Ross, a seasoned Middle East negotiator, as a "special adviser" to the Gulf region -- a bureaucratic but important prerequisite for direct talks with Iran. Unfortunately, a new envoy and a new diplomatic tone cannot disguise the ongoing substantive collapse of U.S. policy and resolve in the teeth of the Islamic Republic's growing challenge.

Tehran welcomes direct negotiations with Washington. Why not, given the enormous benefits its nuclear programs have accrued during five and a half years of negotiations with Europe? Why not, with America at the table, buy even more time to marry its impending nuclear weapons with its satellite-launching ballistic missile capability?

We have yet to see any evidence that Barack Obama (any more than George W. Bush) knows how to stop Iran. Consider these four blunt threats to our interests that direct talks may only facilitate, not reduce.

First, diplomacy has not and will not reduce Iran's nuclear program. Ironically, European leaders are belatedly feeling hollow in the pits of their diplomatic stomachs, now that their failed diplomacy has left us with almost no alternatives to a nuclear Iran. Imagine their dismay that President Obama is now "opening" to Iran, thus eviscerating their tentative efforts to "close" the diplomatic cover under which Iran has almost achieved the worst-case outcome, deliverable nuclear weapons.

The West's collective failure to stop Iran's nuclear ambitions has persuaded Iran that it faces minimal risks in greater adventurism on other fronts as well. Mr. Obama's discovery of "carrots and sticks," after a half decade of European failure to make that mantra a successful policy, will lead Tehran's mullahs to one inescapable conclusion: They have won the nuclear race, absent imminent regime change or military action.

Second, dealing with Hamas, Hezbollah and Syria as though they are unrelated to Iran's broader threat is exactly backwards. Mr. Obama is again following Europe's mistaken view that ending the Arab-Israeli conflict will help to resolve other regional problems. But concentrating on Gaza only increases Hamas's leverage, just as negotiating with Syria only enhances its (and thereby Iran's) bargaining power.

We should deal instead with diseases, not symptoms. Changing Tehran's Holocaust-denying regime could end its nuclear program, as well as eliminate its continuing financing of and weapons supplies for Hamas and Hezbollah, reduce its malign hold over Syria, and strengthen Lebanon's fragile democracy. Taming Iran is not a magical cure-all, but surely addressing the central threat is more sensible than haphazardly dealing with the symptoms separately.

Third, Iran opposes a freer, more stable Iraq, and U.S. diplomacy will not change that. Given the recent political and military progress in stabilizing Iraq, Tehran holds a weak hand. Accordingly, legitimizing Iran as a factor in Iraqi affairs via diplomacy is patently illogical and would only strengthen Iran at the very moment Mr. Obama has announced the reduction of America's presence and clout in Iraq.

Iran's theocracy knows God's law without the help of mere voters, and it has no taste for the democracy to which Iraqis are growing increasingly accustomed. It is telling that Iran's Baghdad ambassador is a commander of the Revolutionary Army's elite Quds force.

Lastly, Iran has no incentive to "help" in Afghanistan, especially on narcotics, despite a domestic narcotics problem. Tehran's approach to Afghanistan is more subtle and complex. Whatever the desire to reduce its own drug problem, why should Iran not welcome increased sales to the decadent West and a weaker Kabul government? Moreover, if Iran cannot have its own puppets in control, it will welcome a corrupt, divided and incompetent Afghan government, rather than help us achieve the opposite result. As with Iraq, weak and divided neighbors on its borders are assets not liabilities for Tehran -- and ample reason not to assist us in changing these realities.

Hordes of U.S. officials with vague and overlapping mandates -- special envoys, ambassadors, cabinet officials, and, of course, the vice president -- are racing to be in the first photo-op with Iran. But what should focus our attention is the substantive risk that Tehran will use its opportunity to employ diplomacy to undermine U.S. interests.

Iran has already made clear how it will proceed. By recently withholding visas for the U.S. women's badminton team, Iran symbolically dashed administration hopes to update "ping pong" diplomacy. Perhaps in Iran they still play badminton with a clenched fist rather than an open hand.

h/t Atlas Shrugs


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Someone needs to show the administration this video. Most of the American people, too. Who would find it too "politically incorrect" too "unsettling" to watch.

AMERICANS -- THIS IS WHO YOU WANT TO FUCKING NEGOTIATE WITH? YOU REALLY WANT TO TALK TO THESE ANIMALS? WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU? YOU GET THIS WRONG AND YOU'LL BE NEXT ON THE CRANES!






HEY! ANNETTE BENING & FELLOW TRAVELERS! ARE YOU FUCKING LISTENING?! OPEN YOUR EYES YOU GODDAM PUBLICITY WHORES!
or you'll be wearing that trendy black hijab permanently

9 comments:

Epaminondas said...

This is all because neocon jews have a stranglehold on america, the congress and the media!

Otherwise we would all be holding hands and laughing and singing .. oh that's right, no singing in Islam. Oh that's right no humor in Islam

midnight rider said...

That's right. Nothing but bruises on our foreheads and arthritic knees from kneeling on concrete.

Anonymous said...

Or, as in the case of Shiites, scars and bloody lacerations all over your back from self-inflicted flagellation by a nine tails. The Festival of Ashura, the Islamic version of partying:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/2b/PICT0871.jpg/800px-PICT0871.jpg

midnight rider said...

Just Cause -- I'm the LAST person (ok, maybe Pasto's the last person) you need to apologize to about language. That video is a couple years old so I forget their exact crime but, if I remember right, in the U.S. it would not have been a crime (homosexuality, adultery) or a very minor one. Point is that still goes on today.

Total -- I put a few pics up of Ashura this year. http://ibloga.blogspot.com/2009/01/ashura.html

sick fuckers even cut their kids.

Anonymous said...

MR,

For some reason I haven't seen those pics before. I'll add that to the kids with AK-47s and suicide vests file. These people are straight up fucking sick.

Rebellious Kafir said...

oh.my.god. did it seem to anyone else besides me that the woman struggled much longer than the men? was her noose positioned in such a way as to make her strangulation take longer? or am i being an over sensitive-semi hysterical female after witnessing this depravity?
how fitting, the word verification for this response is "swoon"

midnight rider said...

Mary -- her noose does seem positioned a little more toward the front than behind the ear or back of the head, her head tilts back not shutting the windpipe as efficiently as it it were forced forward. Also I think her chador helps cushion against the rope.

I've also read that some condemned actually have sedatives smuggled to them or given to them if they can afford it. If not, you struggle longer. I don't know how true that is.

Anonymous said...

Join the club IMI. I saw it too. This vicious form of hanging by strangulation is practiced precisely because it prolongs the agony. In some cases it can take up to 15 or even 30 minutes. It is obscene in intent and practice.


Oh good, it's not just me who thinks the word verifications are getting spooky lately. As Pastorius is my witness, I found myself face-to-face with "porked" a couple weeks back.

Epaminondas said...

If these Hollywood assholes REALLY wanted to do something, they'd arrive, link arms and chant that they were all gay in front of massed cameras.