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Monday, Nov 9, 2009
President Bush's demonizing of Iran is a shortsighted move that misses a rare opportunity to improve relations with a crucial regional player.
Feb 12, 2002 | If the surest sign a country has achieved evil empire status is when it becomes a joke on David Letterman, Iran has arrived. The late-night comedian cracked Friday that "my favorite event, of course, is the four-man jihad."
But the Bush administration's new move to demonize Iran is no joke. In fact, it could be one of our biggest foreign policy blunders in years.
In his State of the Union address two weeks ago, President Bush made news when he identified Iran, along with North Korea and Iraq, as being part of an "axis of evil." In the strongest language used by an American president against Iran in a long time, he accused the Islamic Republic of exporting terror and seeking weapons of mass destruction, "while an un-elected few repress the Iranian people's hope for freedom." Hinting at pre-emptive action, President Bush warned that the United States would "not permit the world's most dangerous regimes to threaten us with the world's most destructive weapons."
In response, hundreds of thousands of Iranians took to the streets Monday to protest, in the biggest mass demonstrations against the United States in years. If Bush's intention was to unite Iran's reformers and its hard-liners, who have been locked in a bitter struggle, he succeeded.
With the war on terrorism enjoying massive popular support, hawks have jumped onto the Bush bandwagon, stepping up their calls for the United States to openly attack regimes they deem dangerous -- a list to which Iran has suddenly been added. Conservative pundit William Safire has led the charge. Pointing to Israel's recent seizure of Iranian arms destined for Arafat's Palestinian Authority while ominously invoking Iran's nuclear program, in a New York Times column last month Safire essentially called for a preemptive military strike against Iran. (Safire backpeddled a bit later, calling for "surgical" military strikes only if Iran developed nuclear weapons.) In recent weeks, American officials have accused Iran of harboring al-Qaida escapees and trying to destabilize Afghanistan's new government. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld charged that Iran runs terrorist training camps in Lebanon's Bekaa Valley. Even Secretary of State Colin Powell, a Bush administration moderate, threw down the gauntlet to Iran.
These bellicose statements from the administration and influential pundits -- driven by a desire to justify missile defense and a bloated defense budget and maintain a climate of fear that will guarantee President Bush's popularity -- are certain to resurrect Americans' worst fears about Iran, painting it as an extremist monolith bent on supporting every terrorist group across the globe that has an anti-Western tilt.
That image is inaccurate. And expanding America's war on terrorism to include Iran would be a serious, if not catastrophic, mistake. At this crucial moment, with a suspicious Islamic world watching the United States' next move and our European allies increasingly dismayed at American unilateralism, it is critical that our government doesn't retreat into outmoded stereotypes and simplistic good-versus-evil distinctions. Vital foreign policy decisions must not be driven by newly empowered hawks who are using the national consensus against terrorism to try to push through narrow, flawed and ultimately dangerous agendas.
It is long past time to ask some honest questions regarding our Iran policy, questions that go well beyond the rudimentary analysis offered by the Bush administration. Do we continue our confrontational stance towards Iran, which has completely failed over the past 20 years, or escalate it even further to open hostilities? Or do we seek to constructively engage with a flawed but dynamic, increasingly democratic and fast-evolving country? The stakes are high. No nation is more crucial to the entire direction of America's future foreign policy, especially with regard to the Muslim world, as Iran. And every substantial strategic and tactical argument points to adopting a new policy of American engagement.
Contrary to what the Bush administration and its entourage of conservative hawks would like us to believe, contemporary Iran is not a nation of maniacal zealots but a complex blend of tradition and modernity, pluralism and authoritarian rule.
