Fox News Republicans are talking more nonsense about foreign policy, their some time vocation of the past 15 years. First, it was the phony War on Terrorism, and the disastrous War in Iraq. Then it was our catastrophic intervention in Libya, as I write shedding boat-full’s of refugees on to European shores, and our ill-advised support of rebels in Syria, which has lead directly to the new crisis in Iraq. Then, the pundits of Fox-world, and their Republican pawns on Capitol Hill, began clamoring for a new cold war with Russia (do these people have reservations in a secret nuclear-proof bunker that the rest of us don’t know about?). Now they are fomenting phony-Churchillian indignation over Iran.
To these dangerous ignoramuses, blind tough-talking is always the answer. They actually believe that antagonizing Iran in perpetuity, a country of more than 80 million people, which is sure to develop a nuclear bomb some day, if it really wants to, actually enhances our national security. Do they honestly think that a country as large, and rich in natural resources as Iran, as long as it remains a mortal enemy of the United States, can really be prevented from acquiring a nuclear weapon? If your country had been under economic sanctions for decades, imposed by a foreign power who not only fought on the opposite side of a war against you (the Iran/Iraq war in which we were allied with Saddam Hussein), and said you were part of unique an Axis of Evil, the pariah of the world, then you would want nuclear weapons, too. The only reason for you not to become a nuclear power would be if this foreign power suddenly wanted to make peace. This is what the Obama administration has tried to do in its talks at Lausanne, and they are much to be commended for doing so.
As usual, the Fox News tough crowd, who have been ranting against this deal with Iran, have no idea what they are talking about. They do not understand the extent to which we have made willful enemies of Iran since the Islamic Revolution, and the hostage crisis of 1979. They do not remember that, as allies of Saddam Hussein’s invading armies, who laced Iran with American-made chemical weapons, we initiated the largest single naval offensive since the Second World War, called operation Praying Mantis, which was later condemned outright by the International Court of Justice. They do not remember that, in the same year, the U.S.S Vincennes, sailing in Iranian waters, “accidently” shot down Iran Air Flight 655 in Iranian air space, for which no one was prosecuted. They do not understand that after the end of the Iraq/ Iran war, we nonetheless refused to reestablish diplomatic relations with Iran, as if we were somehow too high-minded to deal with the mullahs in Tehran, but were not above making friendly relations with the Butchers of Tiananmen Square. Nor, in those years, were we above doing deals with the Russians, which, incidentally, won us the Cold War.
Fox World does not realize that a majority of Iranians actually have a positive view of Americans and American culture, though not its foreign policy, and that the only reason Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was elected in 2005 was that liberals boycotted the vote after their candidate lost in a previous round. They do not, therefore, understand, that the seeds of a friendly U.S Iran partnership are already present, and that a belligerent foreign policy towards Iran allows its hardliners to continue to stave off their inevitable fall from power by using the U.S as a boogeyman. The Fox News crowd probably does remember the 1979 hostage crisis, but for them there is a straight line of un-alloyed evil on the part of Iran, and unalloyed goodness on the part of the United States, all the way through Bush’s adolescent “Axis of Evil” speech, and up to the present day.
Oh, but Iran is a state sponsor of terrorist organizations, such Hezbollah and Hamas! Granted, that is no secret. But what country has not ever sponsored terrorist organizations in its time. Much of the cold war was a proxy battle between our terrorist friends, such as the contras, and the Russians terrorist friends, such as the PLO. This was a secret to no one. Both of us had nuclear weapons. But the world did not end. Yet somehow, if Iran gets a nuclear bomb, it will pass it on to
its friends in Hezbollah to detonate in Tel Aviv, as if anybody would be fooled as to where it came from. Oh, and apparently, as proud a nation as Iran, with a rich cultural history stretching back thousands of years, including many of political dominance in the region, wouldn’t mind being obliterated from the face of the earth, which everyone knows would be the consequences of either they or their proxies using a nuclear bomb. The Soviets famously sought to fight the U.S using leftist proxy groups precisely because a traditional war between nuclear powers was not practicable. Clearly, that is what Iran has in mind for its proxy gorilla groups. You do not build a nuclear bomb because you want to use it. You do it because somebody very powerful is your mortal enemy, and, short of a reconciliation, it is the only way to make him back off.
But Fox-World doesn’t want reconciliation. They want war. But the question is not whether Iran will be able to develop a nuclear weapon. I do not believe for a moment that a nation seriously hostile to the United States can really be prevented from developing nuclear weapons, an over 60-year-old technology. The real question is what we will do to support the liberalization of Iran in the meantime, and to pursue friendlier diplomatic relations with the Iranians. Surely, if we can do business with Saudi Arabia, we can do business with Iran. The sooner we make friends with them the better.
