Thinking

From Slate and others…

“Last week, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice asked the Senate Foreign Relations Committee for $75 million in emergency funding to promote internal opposition to Iran's fundamentalist regime…”

Gosh! $75 million is a really, really small amount of money. If you are supposed to be serious about winning over the Iranians, you won’t insult them with that meager amount. Too late…we already did.

“…Many Iranians, probably a majority of them, despise their rulers. They want a real democracy… they even like the United States… as anyone who knows anything about Iran's history would emphasize, these same Iranians deeply distrust outsiders who try to interfere in their domestic affairs.

You would think that there might be one person in our State Department who would try to consider how another nation would react if they were being meddled with. Start by asking, “How would we react?”

This distrust goes all of the way back to 1953, when the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) plotted, along with British oil interests, to overthrow Iran's premier, Mohammad Mossadeq, and replace him with the Shah. Iran's current president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is certainly not the same as Mohammad Mossadeq; but he was democratically elected. If the United States tried to remove him; he would quickly assume the martyr's role.

This (1953) has to be one of the most embarrassing moments in our relationship with Iran, yet we have never apologized for it…maybe most Americans don’t even remember it, but it’s guaranteed that every Iranian schoolchild is taught this fact.

Kenneth Pollack tells an instructive story in his book, The Persian Puzzle: The Conflict Between Iran and America. Shortly after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Bush officials started meeting with Iranian officials. The two countries shared an interest in overthrowing the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, and they took cooperative steps toward that common goal; two decades of mutual hostility began to melt away. Then, in January 2002, President Bush delivered his State of the Union Address—linking Iran with Iraq and North Korea as an "axis of evil"—and the Iranians instantly ended all talks. More than that, the Western-leaning factions within the Iranian regime were delegitimized and crushed.”

And another opportunity was lost…