http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?i=express&s=kaplan072304
DAILY EXPRESS
Engagement Announcement
by Lawrence F. Kaplan
Only at TNR Online
Post date: 07.23.04
Oops, we invaded the wrong country. Or at least this is the impression created by the final report of the 9/11 Commission, which depicts Iran as a transit point for Al Qaeda members during the run up to September 11. It is an impression the Kerry team has done nothing to dispel. Kerry adviser Charles Kupchan says the news about Iran shows that "rather than focusing on Iraq, where there was no imminent threat to American security," the United States should have been more vigilant about Iran, "where we know there's a weapons of mass destruction program, there's a fundamentalist theocracy." In a similar vein, the report has prompted the Kerry campaign's Ann Lewis to complain that "Iran, over the last couple of years, has been moving forward toward getting a nuclear capacity--nuclear capability--and yet this administration's policy is hard to discern." She's right. The administration's Iran policy is hard to discern. Before they walk into a bind of their own devising, however, Kerry's advisers would do well to take a closer look at their own candidate's stance toward Iran. It is not hard to discern. But it is hard to defend.
At times, Kerry seems to be taking his cues from Jimmy Carter's 1976 presidential run, sounding as though he's blasting his opponent from the right while he quietly offers up solutions from the left. Nowhere is this truer than in the case of Iran, where, when you strip away Kerry's hard-boiled rhetoric about preventing the country from acquiring a nuclear weapon, what the candidate offers is a facsimile of the Clinton-era policy of "engagement." Likening the Islamic Republic to a much less dangerous threat from long ago, Kerry seeks to "explore areas of mutual interest with Iran, just as I was prepared to normalize relations with Vietnam." Hence, Kerry says he "would support talking with all elements of the government," or, as his principal foreign policy adviser Rand Beers has elaborated, the United States must engage Iran's "hard-line element"--this, while the candidate tells The Washington Post he will downplay democracy promotion in the region. In fact, as part of this normalization process, Kerry has recommended hammering out a deal with Teheran a la the Clinton administration's doomed bargain with North Korea, whereby the United States would aid the Iranian nuclear program in exchange for safeguards that would presumably keep the program peaceful. To sweeten the deal, he has offered to throw in members of the People's Mujahedeen, the Iranian opposition group being held under lock and key by U.S. forces in Iraq.
Nor will you hear any of Kerry's foreign policy advisers calling for regime change in Iran, at least any time soon. Beers has long insisted on engaging the Islamic Republic, as have Kerry advisers Richard Holbrooke and Madeline Albright. So, too, have several big name contributors to the Kerry campaign from the Iranian-American community. Indeed, in 2002 Kerry delivered an address to an event sponsored by the controversial American Iranian Council, an organization funded by corporations seeking to do business in Iran and dedicated to promoting dialogue with the theocracy. In his eagerness to engage in this dialogue, of course, Kerry is hardly alone. The Council on Foreign Relations has just released a report calling for "systematic and pragmatic engagement" with Iran's mullahs, and the Atlantic Council is expected to release a report next month recommending the same.
Like these, Kerry's calls for a rapprochement with Teheran come at a rather inopportune moment. The very regime that Kerry demands we engage, after all, has just been certified as an Al Qaeda sanctuary--and by the very commission in which the Kerry campaign has invested so much hope. The report's finding, moreover, counts as only one of Teheran's sins. Lately its theocrats have been wreaking havoc in Iraq and Afghanistan, aiding America's foes along Iran's borders in the hopes of expanding their influence in both countries, even as they continue to fund Palestinian terror groups. Then, too, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has amassed a mountain of evidence pointing to Iranian violations of the Nonproliferation Treaty. With two nuclear power plants slated to go online in Iran, and IAEA inspectors stumbling across designs for sophisticated centrifuges, even the Europeans and the United Nations have nearly exhausted their efforts to engage the Islamic Republic.
So why hasn't anyone told John Kerry? To begin with, it's not so clear the Bush team has abandoned engagement, either. Deputy National Security Adviser Robert Blackwill refuses to surrender hopes for a nuclear deal, as does Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, who lauds Iran as a "democracy." To be sure, the president vows Washington will side with Iran's pro-democracy movement and that the "development of a nuclear weapon in Iran is intolerable." But long gone from the administration's rhetoric is any talk of regime change. As with so much else, when it comes to Iran, the administration finds itself divided between hawks at the Defense Department and Undersecretary of State John Bolton, on the one hand, and America's diplomatic corps and National Security Council staffers, on the other.
-Rudey
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