What to do about the Iranian threat
Chicago Tribune, November 7, 2008
Alireza Jafarzadeh (Foreign Affairs Analyst)
A multitude of foreign
policy challenges, perhaps chief among them how to deal with
the ayatollahs' regime in Iran, awaits President-elect
Barack Obama.
The global consequences of a nuclear-armed theocratic regime
with an extremist, expansionist ideology were not lost on
candidate Obama. He expressed a keen awareness that as
president he must confront Tehran's quest for nuclear
weapons, subversion and terrorism in Iraq and strategy of
regional domination. In July he said: "We cannot tolerate
nuclear weapons in the hands of nations that support terror.
Preventing Iran from developing nuclear weapons is a vital
national security interest of the United States."
In March 2007, in an address in Chicago, Obama called
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad "reckless,
irresponsible and inattentive" to the needs of the Iranian
people. The U.S., he said, must engage in "aggressive
diplomacy combined with tough sanctions" to defuse Tehran's
nuclear threat.
U.S.-Iran policy has been described as the "Bermuda
Triangle" of U.S. presidents since 1979. What are the
mistakes the next administration cannot afford to repeat?
Negotiation, while clearly the most desirable means of
resolving international conflict, has time and again proven
futile in the case of Tehran. Iran's rulers consider their
supreme leader as God's regent on Earth. Successive American
administrations and their European allies have been down
that road, each time only to reach a dead end.
These failures have legitimized the theocratic regime,
emboldening more rogue behavior and demands. Even worse,
they have given Tehran time to advance its nuclear weapons
program.
The survival of this unpopular regime depends on being in a
state of perpetual crisis. The Iranian theocracy is
incapable of acting as a "normal" state or enacting the kind
of behavioral changes the free world demands. The ayatollahs
know, even if the West does not, that they cannot thrive by
acting "normal."
Tehran's strategic interests in advancing a nuclear weapons
program, establishing a client state in Iraq and ruling
through terror and suppression are fundamentally at odds
with international and regional order. These are red lines
the ruling clerics will not cross.
Kenneth Pollack of the Brookings Institution writes in his
book "The Persian Puzzle," "The problem with the Grand
Bargain is that it does not work in practice. Every American
administration since [Ronald] Reagan has put the Grand
Bargain on the table and tried to coax the Iranians into
accepting it. In particular the Grand Bargain was the
explicit core of the [Bill] Clinton initiative."
To avoid past policy failures, Obama should strike a new
course: Look to Iran's future and engage the movement for
democratic change. He, perhaps better than any world leader,
knows the power of change and of a nation's youth. These are
the very elements the ayatollahs most fear in Iran, where
there were some 5,000 anti-government demonstrations and
protests—primarily by the youth—in the last year alone.
Iran's ruling establishment is plagued by factional turmoil
compounded by the drastic fall in oil prices. Political
decay is fast spreading throughout the body politic. The
Iranian people have a history of rising against despots of
various stripes. They also have a nationwide resistance
movement—albeit blacklisted and shackled by the State
Department—at the center of their movement for democratic
change.
An Obama administration must bring much needed change to
what Defense Secretary Robert Gates described in October as
"a failed policy that has seen Iran strengthen its
position." Obama's promised "aggressive diplomacy" should
include strengthening of meaningful sanctions targeting
Tehran's means of proliferation, terrorism and domestic
suppression. In Iraq, by partnering with independent,
non-sectarian Iraqi political figures, including the
Awakening Councils, the next administration should confront
the subversive campaign of Tehran and its proxies.
At its core, this new policy must reach out to the Iranian
youth who aspire to a democratic, secular and non-nuclear
government. Obama must look to Iran's people and democratic
opposition as a partner seeking stability and tranquility in
the region and democracy in Iran.
Alireza Jafarzadeh is a FOX News Channel Foreign Affairs
Analyst and the author of "The
Iran Threat: President Ahmadinejad and the Coming Nuclear
Crisis" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007).
Jafarzadeh has revealed Iran's terrorist network in Iraq and
its terror training camps since 2003. He first disclosed the
existence of the Natanz uranium enrichment facility and the
Arak heavy water facility in August 2002.
