Iran

Well. And oh, my.

Just last night I posted about a joke, seeing it as a harbinger of a change in American thinking on the threat from Iran. This morning, as I made my rounds of news and blog sites, I see lots more evidence of this change.

In a commentary piece in the Wall Street Journal ($), Michael Rubin leads us through an analysis of the unserious Iranian approach to the nuclear “negotiations”. He concludes this way:

While diplomacy necessarily involves talking to adversaries, Washington should not assume that the ayatollahs operate from the same set of ground rules. During his long exile in Najaf, Khomeini endorsed taqiya, religiously sanctioned dissembling. From his perspective and that of his followers, the ends justify the means. Hence, Khomeini saw nothing wrong when he told the Guardian newspaper, just months before his return to Iran, “I don’t want to have the power of government in my hand; I am not interested in personal power.” Tehran may still conduct diplomacy to fish for incentive and reward but, at its core, Iranian diplomacy is insincere. The Iranian leadership will say anything and do anything to buy the time necessary to acquire nuclear capability. That Foggy Bottom still advises against any strategy that might undercut the possibility of some illusionary breakthrough signals triumph not of realism but of negligence. Diplomacy cannot succeed if one side is playing for real and the other only for time.

Translated into street English: the Iranian “negotiators” are lying through their teeth and their only objective is to buy their nuclear scientists and engineers more time to build nuclear weapons. Diplomatic efforts with Iran are worse than useless — they’re playing straight into the enemy’s hand.

Then yesterday at the U.N., President Bush gave an excellent speech that included this piece, where he spoke directly to the Iranian people:

To the people of Iran: The United States respects you; we respect your country. We admire your rich history, your vibrant culture, and your many contributions to civilization. You deserve an opportunity to determine your own future, an economy that rewards your intelligence and your talents, and a society that allows you to fulfill your tremendous potential. The greatest obstacle to this future is that your rulers have chosen to deny you liberty and to use your nation’s resources to fund terrorism, and fuel extremism, and pursue nuclear weapons. The United Nations has passed a clear resolution requiring that the regime in Tehran meet its international obligations. Iran must abandon its nuclear weapons ambitions. Despite what the regime tells you, we have no objection to Iran’s pursuit of a truly peaceful nuclear power program. We’re working toward a diplomatic solution to this crisis. And as we do, we look to the day when you can live in freedom — and America and Iran can be good friends and close partners in the cause of peace.

I interpret this not as diplomacy, but as an effort to win the hearts and minds of the 70% of the Iranian population that is under 30 and largely secular. I hope (and believe, based on the little bits and pieces and hints that have emerged over the past couple of years) it’s true that this public part is but a tiny piece of a much larger and more vigorous covert effort.

And then after the Pope started speaking frankly about the need to apply reason to the clash between fundamentalist Islam and the rest of the world, the former Archbishop of Canterbury gets into the act in a classy way:

THE former Archbishop of Canterbury Lord Carey of Clifton has issued his own challenge to “violent” Islam in a lecture in which he defends the Pope’s “extraordinarily effective and lucid” speech.

Lord Carey said that Muslims must address “with great urgency” their religion’s association with violence. He made it clear that he believed the “clash of civilisations” endangering the world was not between Islamist extremists and the West, but with Islam as a whole.

“We are living in dangerous and potentially cataclysmic times,” he said. “There will be no significant material and economic progress [in Muslim communities] until the Muslim mind is allowed to challenge the status quo of Muslim conventions and even their most cherished shibboleths.” …

Lord Carey, who as Archbishop of Canterbury became a pioneer in Christian-Muslim dialogue, himself quoted a contemporary political scientist, Samuel Huntington, who has said the world is witnessing a “clash of civilisations”.

Arguing that Huntington’s thesis has some “validity”, Lord Carey quoted him as saying: “Islam’s borders are bloody and so are its innards. The fundamental problem for the West is not Islamic fundamentalism. It is Islam, a different civilisation whose people are convinced of the superiority of their culture and are obsessed with the inferiority of their power.”

Which gets right to the heart of the Iranian regime’s motivations for acquiring nuclear weapons. That last bit is particularly interesting — Lord Carey believes there is no practical distinction between fundamentalist Islam and mainstream Islam on this question. I hope he’s very wrong about that last bit, as mainstream Islam is a lot bigger foe than the fundamentalists.

And then I read in der Spiegel that other Arab countries are starting to talk about an “Arab bomb” (again). It seems they’re worried about Iran’s nuclear weapons development program will upset the balance of power in the Middle East — the Persians of Iran are historically enemies of the Arabs. And it’s also very clear that the Arabs aren’t buying the Iranian’s posturing about their “peaceful” nuclear program.

Is the world suddenly waking up to the Iranian and fundamentalist Islamic threats, and starting to treat them seriously? Oh, I hope so — it would be so comforting (for me, and the West) if that is true…