Kerry's Doomed Policy on Supporting Anti-Democracy in Iran

[Rudey]

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

[IowaStatePhiPsi]

it's hard to consider invading Iran when they, unlike Iraq, have the capacity to return fire with WMD.

[Rudey]

Originally posted by IowaStatePhiPsi
it's hard to consider invading Iran when they, unlike Iraq, have the capacity to return fire with WMD.

Right. Iraq only used them.

-Rudey

[IowaStatePhiPsi]

I dont remember any of our guys coming under attack from WMD. Maybe you have this confused with WW1

[Rudey]

Originally posted by IowaStatePhiPsi
I dont remember any of our guys coming under attack from WMD. Maybe you have this confused with WW1

Umm no. Had you paid attention to what I said, learned to read better, or chosen not to fib you wouldn't make me sound confused about "our guys" coming under WMD attack.

Again, Iraq used those WMD (in fact it used them against Iran) and Iran soon will have the potential to fire nuclear weapons into American land. Kerry, as this article by a very prominent Democratic publication notes, has a ridiculous policy in regards to Iran.

-Rudey

[IowaStatePhiPsi]

Iraq only had WMD since the Reagan Admin sold them...
As for Iran: leave them alone, their internal conflicts will erupt within the next 5 years and democracy will emerge like Phoenix from the flames.

[Rudey]

Originally posted by IowaStatePhiPsi
Iraq only had WMD since the Reagan Admin sold them...
As for Iran: leave them alone, their internal conflicts will erupt within the next 5 years and democracy will emerge like Phoenix from the flames.

RE: Iraq
- I don't remember asking who sold them. Perhaps you're a bit too sensitive. I posted this article and it seems the first thing you do is try and take a shot at the Iraq war and saying there are no WMD. By the way your statement on the Reagan administration is deceiving (as usual). The US administration at the time, along with much of Europe, and most Arab region countries sold weaponry to Iraq at the time - it was France that took them nuclear. Additionally your first sentence of Iraq not having WMD is now negated by this statement.

RE: Iran
-Funny how growing up in the farms of Iowa prepared you to understand the Iranian people and how there will be democracy in 5 years (precise number really). Large amount of Iranian farmers out in Iowa? You're wrong says I, the Iranian.

-Rudey

[IowaStatePhiPsi]

2/3rds of Iranians were not born when the Islamic fundamentalists overthrew the Shah (who was a bastard on Human Rights conditions).
If you, a Iranian, kept up with news on Iran you'd see that the reform movement is about on pace with reform movements of the Soviet Bloc in the early 80s. 5years is my (probably optimistic) opinioned time frame for democracy to emerge.

[Rudey]

Originally posted by IowaStatePhiPsi
2/3rds of Iranians were not born when the Islamic fundamentalists overthrew the Shah (who was a bastard on Human Rights conditions).
If you, a Iranian, kept up with news on Iran you'd see that the reform movement is about on pace with reform movements of the Soviet Bloc in the early 80s. 5years is my (probably optimistic) opinioned time frame for democracy to emerge.

Again, dearest Anglo, you know nothing about Iran and you know nothing about the Shah. The country has taken a million steps back in regards to human rights, yet quite a few light hued Anglos all over the world thought they knew better when they just jumped on that bandwagon.

Regardless, the fields of Iowa do not prepare you to even understand Iranians in the slightest bit or to make any such statements like that. In fact perhaps you should do more reading on the region since you've made many false statements. If you really are so interested, you would find you are wrong in your thinking.

-Rudey
--And if you had stuck to the article, written by a Demo outlet, you would have difficulty defending Kerry I believe

[IowaStatePhiPsi]

why would I be defending Kerry?


As for my comments regarding Iran, they are for the most part correct. Unrest continues to grow in the population in Iran that has no remembrance of the past. The reform movement continues to grow stronger. Attempts by the ruling council to limit the participation of the reform movement is seeing greater pressure on the parts of the populace to move towards these reform measures. Democracy is just a few years off.

[Rudey]

Originally posted by IowaStatePhiPsi
why would I be defending Kerry?

As for my comments regarding Iran, they are for the most part correct. Unrest continues to grow in the population in Iran that has no remembrance of the past. The reform movement continues to grow stronger. Attempts by the ruling council to limit the participation of the reform movement is seeing greater pressure on the parts of the populace to move towards these reform measures. Democracy is just a few years off.

Regarding Kerry: This whole thread was started about Kerry on Iran but instead you took it off track, and, might I add, with deception and ignorance as the engine.

And your comments are lies. By you making a comment and saying it's true, it isn't true. There were few reform minded citizens and the reforms they envisioned are still by and large nothing big - not like the green party. The student protesters felt their faces broken in with sticks and leaders that wanted to implement these so called "reforms" were banned from running in elections. A couple stayed and are considered sellouts and hated.

-Rudey
--Next time, if you actually care open up a book and if you don't, stop talking about things you know nothing of.

[IowaStatePhiPsi]

I'll conceed my knowledge of Iran is slim (most recent articles I have read were back before their recent elections). However I will stand by my opinion that democracy will happen in Iran in the near future.

[Rudey]

Originally posted by IowaStatePhiPsi
I'll conceed my knowledge of Iran is slim (most recent articles I have read were back before their recent elections). However I will stand by my opinion that democracy will happen in Iran in the near future.

Fine but I will stand by my opinion that Elvis is alive.

-Rudey

[IowaStatePhiPsi]

Originally posted by Rudey
Fine but I will stand by my opinion that Elvis is alive.

-Rudey

He's on top of Mount Whitney with John Denver, Princess Diana and JFK Jr- didnt you know?