Nuclear Terror: Some Obama advisers have a dubious strategy to prevent a nuclear-armed Iran: Present “a common front” including Russia and China and “demonstrate U.S. respect” for the Islamofascist regime.
It may be judged the most astonishingly naive analysis of Tehran’s nuclear ambitions ever unveiled.
Last week, the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP) — a think tank founded by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), and which should know better — released a report titled “Preventing a Cascade of Instability: U.S. Engagement to Check Iranian Nuclear Progress.”
Among the paper’s signatories: Sen. Evan Bayh, D-Ind.; House Middle East foreign affairs subcommittee chairman Gary Ackerman, D-N.Y.; Dennis Ross, a former Bill Clinton Mideast envoy and current special adviser for the Persian Gulf to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton; and Nancy Soderberg, a foreign policy adviser to Bill Clinton, Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., and New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg. Soderberg’s 2005 book “The Superpower Myth” argues that U.S. foreign policy be based on internationalism and humility.
WINEP has often been accused of being part of the Israel lobby, so it is odd indeed to find it playing into the hands of Islamists.
The paper views the gathering nuclear storm in Iran as an opportunity “to demonstrate U.S. commitment to multilateral diplomacy,” while “even a successful strike” by Israel destroying Iran’s nuclear facilities could be seen internationally “as both a failure of and a setback for the treaty-based nonproliferation system.”
The goal of the Obama administration should be “convincing Iran that its nuclear program is bringing it little strategic advantage at an increasing cost.”
At the heart of this thinking is a false premise: that the mullahs’ Islamofascist, apocalyptic regime in Tehran views geopolitics the way we do, or even the way, say, the Saudi royal family does.
The reality is that these are fanatics who only in the last week or so called the state of Israel a “cancer,” who held a conference for commentators who deny the Nazis’ genocide of the Jews and who await the arrival of a Muslim messiah who will lead a holy war to impose Shiite world rule and relegate Western civilization to museum exhibits. Their idea of “strategic advantage” is an eventual mushroom cloud over Tel Aviv, London or New York.
The WINEP report focuses on the importance of “strong international support for diplomatic initiatives” as “perhaps the single best way to increase the prospect that Iran will accept a compromise.” It repeatedly insists that “Iran does not want to be isolated.”
But who can deny that staunchly uncompromising Iran already is isolated, has been for years and seems to be enjoying its solitude immensely?
The paper recommends that “ways should be found to demonstrate U.S. respect … .” But can anyone really imagine Iranian President Ahmadinejad bringing the good news to Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Khamenei: “The Great Satan respects us now, your holiness. So with your permission the Revolutionary Islamic Republic of Iran will now start being friendlier to the infidels.”
Then there’s the assertion that “a common front presented by influential members of the international community, including Russia and China, is particularly important for affecting Iran’s willingness to compromise, but looks quite difficult to achieve.”
No kidding; impossible is more like it.
“Any offer on the nuclear issue” to Tehran should come from Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany, not just the U.S., the report emphasizes.
“Progress at the U.N. Security Council would be easier,” it suggests, “if Washington could convince China that Iran’s nuclear program is a strategic threat to its own interests and could persuade Russia that its interests are best served by cooperating fully with the West on this problem.” Doing so “will require skillful diplomacy.”
It might require alchemy, truth be told. Has it escaped the authors’ notice that Russia and China, the former especially, have for years been instrumental in facilitating Iran’s nuclear program? Or that these two murderous regimes might want a nuclear 9/11 courtesy of an Iranian-built bomb, because it could hasten the fall of the free West and the rise of the totalitarian East?
There is one solitary nugget of insightful value in the WINEP analysis. It notes that Israel sees a limited window for the bombing of Iran’s nuclear sites “over the next one to two years.” By then Russia will have delivered its S-300 surface-to-air missile system so this terrorist client state can protect its nuclear program from attack.
We hope President Obama isn’t naive enough to take advice like this report seriously. If not, we may be saddled with the most geopolitically illiterate administration since Jimmy Carter.
http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=321490186663137
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