Bush's appeasement plan for Iran

[falcon]

Frank J. Gaffney sums up GWB plan, we have now put ourselves in a box. The commie Ms. Rice has been successful in her overall plan. Besides does anyone think that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will hold negotiations with a female. This is another step by Bush to put the US on the same level play field as EU is under today, govern by appeasement. Bush is showing his true colors.


Burns fiddles while Tehran arms
(Washington, D.C.): In the face of intensifying Iranian intransigence and provocations, President Bush has decided to adopt the recommendations of appeasement-prone subordinates - notably, Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Nicholas Burns - to reward such behavior. The decision announced by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice today that the United States would be prepared to participate directly - as opposed to through European and United Nations proxies - in negotiations with the terrorist-sponsoring mullahocracy in Tehran, if only it will promise to suspend its nuclear weapons activities, will only reward and lead to more of such behavior.
In his column for Wednesday's Washington Times, Center for Security Policy President Frank J. Gaffney, Jr. argues for a very different approach. Instead of attempting to appease the Iranian Islamofascists, Mr. Gaffney argues for privatizing the effort to deny them the resources to make their nuclear weapons program, support for terrorism, and domestic repression possible.
Nick Burns is leading President Bush into a diplomatic morass from which it will prove exceedingly difficult, if not impossible, to extricate this country before the Iranian regime realizes its ambition to acquire, and perhaps to use, nuclear weapons. The folly of the Burns' appeasement approach will be further compounded if, as seems likely, the effect is further to legitimate the mullahocracy and alienate our natural allies in its removal from power: the Iranian people.



(Washington, D.C.): In the face of intensifying Iranian intransigence and provocations, President Bush has decided to adopt the recommendations of appeasement-prone subordinates - notably, Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Nicholas Burns - to reward such behavior. The decision announced by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice today that the United States would be prepared to participate directly - as opposed to through European and United Nations proxies - in negotiations with the terrorist-sponsoring mullahocracy in Tehran, if only it will promise to suspend its nuclear weapons activities, will only reward and lead to more of such behavior.
In his column for Wednesday's Washington Times, Center for Security Policy President Frank J. Gaffney, Jr. argues for a very different approach. Instead of attempting to appease the Iranian Islamofascists, Mr. Gaffney argues for privatizing the effort to deny them the resources to make their nuclear weapons program, support for terrorism, and domestic repression possible.
Nick Burns is leading President Bush into a diplomatic morass from which it will prove exceedingly difficult, if not impossible, to extricate this country before the Iranian regime realizes its ambition to acquire, and perhaps to use, nuclear weapons. The folly of the Burns' appeasement approach will be further compounded if, as seems likely, the effect is further to legitimate the mullahocracy and alienate our natural allies in its removal from power: the Iranian people.
Divest Iran
By Frank J. Gaffney, Jr.
The Washington Times, 31 May 2006 One of the most important public policy fights in years is taking place within the U.S. government. The debate is over how to deal with the growing danger posed by Islamofascist Iran.
In one corner are those who believe, against all historical experience, that appeasement of despots will work this time. Hence, their support of efforts by the so-called "EU-3" -- Britain, France and Germany -- to present concessions attractive enough to the Iranian mullahocracy to induce it to give up at least some of its program for developing nuclear weapons. United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan and the International Atomic Energy Agency's Mohamed ElBaradei champion this approach. So does the State Department bureaucracy, led by the Undersecretary for Political Affairs, Nicholas Burns.
Unfortunately, the record of recent efforts to appease Iran has been no more encouraging than were earlier efforts to divert other totalitarians from their chosen paths. To the contrary, Iranian officials have gleefully observed they are indebted to the Europeans and their supporters for "buying time" for the regime in Tehran, allowing it to bring its so-called "nuclear power" program to fruition. Some are becoming ever-more brazen in confirming that energy generation is not the object of the exercise; rather, they aim to obtain the Bomb.
Now, Nick Burns and Company are evidently supporting the international appeasers' demand that the United States "engage" directly with the Iranians. The argument is that, only by so doing, can the Bush administration demonstrate it has left no stone unturned in trying to avoid a showdown, including possibly military action against Iran.
Those in the opposing corner, believed to include Vice President Dick Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and President Bush are under no illusion about the consequences of such a step. It will not buy the United States any credit from its critics. Instead, it will embroil this country in talks whose sole purpose is to hamstring those threatened by the Iranian Islamofascists' support for international terror and pursuit of nuclear weapons -- if President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is to be believed, for apocalyptic purposes.
Speaking of Mr. Ahmadinejad, one of the most bizarre aspects of the debate about what to do about Iran is the use by the appeasement camp of his recent letter to President Bush. It has been widely portrayed in the press as a diplomatic "breakthrough," an opening for direct contacts that must not be allowed to slip away. In fact, a close reading of the document makes clear what the Iranian regime has in mind for the United States is war, not diplomacy. Notably, the closing passage is a direct quote from a message sent by the Prophet Muhammad as he prepared to launch a devastating attack on its recipient.
The alternative to appeasement of Iran should utilize the sorts of techniques Ronald Reagan employed to counter the last horrific totalitarian ideology that threatened our destruction, the Soviet Union. These include using every available means to delegitimize the regime. It also means helping those oppressed by our enemies, to assist them in undermining and, if possible, in bringing down their government -- a popular aspiration lately confirmed anew by a spate of tumultuous demonstrations across Iran.
Reagan placed special emphasis on one other initiative: drying up the funding streams that enabled the Soviet Union to build up its military threat and to pay for anti-Western revolutions all over the globe. The same must be done to Iran.
The most obvious means of doing so -- economic sanctions -- are not supported by Iran's strategic allies, Russia and China, and its business partners in many energy-hungry European nations and Japan. As a result, there seems little hope of multilateral sanctions comparable to the longstanding American ones on oil purchases and other trade with Iran.
According to a Page One article in The Washington Post on Monday, a Treasury Department-led task force is trying a variation on the theme: It is seeking the cooperation of allies in eschewing business with "every Iranian official, individual and entity the Bush administration considers connected not only to nuclear enrichment efforts but to terrorism, government corruption, suppression of religious or democratic freedom and violence" in neighboring states. Unsurprisingly, the response has been underwhelming to date. The Post reports that, "So far, four financial institutions have signed on to the U.S. effort."
Fortunately, America has an opportunity to bring more than moral suasion to bear on those who partner with our enemies and, thereby, help underwrite their threatening behavior: Make them choose whether they wish to do business with: us or with the Iranians.


Last month, the Louisiana sheriffs public pension fund became the first in the nation to adopt such an approach in the form of a terror-free investment policy. Its portfolio managers, including T. Rowe Price, have agreed that the sheriffs' retirement money will not be invested in foreign energy, telecommunications, banks and other companies that engage in commercial activities and investment in state-sponsors of terror like Iran.
The U.S. government should encourage this model -- call it Divest Iran -- to be adopted by the scores of millions of other American investors whose decisions to hold or dispose of stocks will probably have a lot more influence with Iranian-connected enterprises than will pleas from our "engagement"-minded officials. Such a privatization of the effort to end the danger posed by the Iranian mullahs may not only make for a more coherent U.S. policy. It may even make it possible to avoid the otherwise possibly necessary use of force against Iran.

[Sean Osborne]

What morons thought for a microsecond that Iran would ever negotiate with the US?





Damage Is Done
The Bush administration's bad Iran move

by Michael Rubin
National Review Online
June 1, 2006

It did not take long for Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad to slap down Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's offer of direct talks. "Rice's comments can be considered a propaganda move," Ahmadinejad told the Islamic Republic News Agency.
Rice's announcement that U.S. officials were prepared to both offer the Iranian regime new incentives and sit down with it was a strategic fumble. Not only did Rice provide Ahmadinejad with an opportunity to humiliate the "arrogant power" to his domestic audience, but she also undercut what little international credibility the U.S. retains.
On its surface, the U.S. initiative was traditional diplomacy. Rice offered both carrots and sticks: "We are agreed with our European partners on the essential elements of a package containing both the benefits if Iran makes the right choice, and the costs if it does not." But the devil is in the details. The stick—if Iran remains noncompliant—is a vague European and Russian commitment to consider sanctions at the United Nations. What specific sanctions? Not decided. What time frame? Undetermined.
Should Washington trust European and Russian sincerity when it comes to a fundamental threat to U.S. national security? In Bush's calculation, the worst outcome would be for the Islamic Republic of Iran to possess nuclear bombs. For many Europeans, though, the idea that the U.S. might act forcefully to deny Iran nuclear weapons is a greater threat. And so they encourage an administration more eager to please the international audience than lead it to once again entangle itself in multilateral obfuscation.
It is tempting to believe engagement can succeed, but precedent suggests otherwise. In early 1992, Berlin inaugurated a policy of critical engagement with Iran, believing that dialogue and concession could draw the Islamic Republic into the norms of international behavior. Soon after, on September 17, 1992, Iranian government assassins murdered four Iranian dissidents in Germany. On April 10, 1997, a German court found that a committee composed of Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, Iranian President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, and intelligence minister Ali Fallahian had ordered the hit. Rather than moderate, European concessions convinced Iranian leaders that they could get away with murder. They did.
After delivering to their Iranian counterparts a strongly worded tongue-lashing, European officials tried again. Between 2000 and 2005, European Union trade with Iran almost tripled. Oil prices surged. But rather than invest its windfall in civil society and basic infrastructure, the Iranian government—at the time in the hands of so-called reformists—poured its hard currency into a clandestine nuclear program. On September 24, 2005, the International Atomic Energy Agency found Iran in non-compliance with the nuclear non-proliferation treaty's safeguards agreement.
European negotiators tried once more. On November 15, 2004, the Iranian government agreed to suspend uranium enrichment—the same demand Rice made yesterday. Iran got what it wanted: A decision not to refer the matter to the United Nations. The next day, the Daily Telegraph reported, that Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said "he was confident that Tehran was taking its commitment seriously." European backslapping was short-lived. Iran decided to backslide on its commitment and again began to enrich uranium. It was typical Tehran behavior. Iranian diplomacy consists of one step forward, two steps back. Western officials meet backsliding—however large—with a click of the tongue; they mark forward progress, however slight, with concessions. That the net vector is backwards matters not when diplomats just seek to win the next promise or transitory deal.
European governments are not the only ones who have experienced Iranian insincerity. Washington has too. Prior to the Iraq campaign, the Iranian government pledged to not interfere. They broke their promise within days of the fall of Saddam Hussein. Today, Iranian intelligence has free reign over southern Iraq and, increasingly, Iraqi Kurdistan. None of this should come as a surprise to Washington. Iranian government officials consider U.S. red lines to be drawn with pencil on sand.
Foggy Bottom's fundamental misunderstanding of Iran is dangerous. There was little surprise to Rice's about-face. Undersecretary of State for Policy Nicholas Burns has long urged direct negotiation; he can be persuasive. There is a mantra in Foggy Bottom—inculcated in diplomats from their very first day in the A-100 class—that any problem can be solved with discussion and negotiation. In some cases this is true. But it also reflects a projection on the part of U.S. diplomats who feel that all problems are political and solutions lie only in discovery of some magic formula of incentives and compromises. But multiculturalism is not just about celebrating diversity. It is also about recognizing that those from other nations and cultures can have different ideologies, values, and thought processes. "Diplomacy is much more than just talking to your friends. You've got to talk to people who aren't our friends, and even people you dislike," former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage told the New York Times. Perhaps. But does Khamenei view diplomacy the same way? Where did Iranians learn the art of negotiation? In some swank Virginia institute or in the bazaar? How did a lifelong seminary education shape Khamenei's perception of the West?
If Rice's offer was just a misstep—to be forgotten like Madeleine Albright's—then no harm done. But Rice set a precedent. Her offer may have sought to solve one problem, but it signaled other nations that the path to concession and recognition lies through proliferation, not compliance. Washington's handicap has always been the triumph of short-term fixes over long-term strategy. Why should any country voluntarily forfeit a nuclear program as South Africa and Brazil once did, or nuclear weapons as did the Ukraine and Kazakhstan?
The damage caused by Rice's offer to the people of Iran may be irreversible. She can speak of how "President Bush wants a new and positive relationship between the American people and the people of Iran." But if so, why recognize and legitimize the unelected regime which is oppressing them? In 1953 and 1979, the U.S. government supported an unpopular leader against the will of the Iranian public. Why, in 2006, should we make the same mistake a third time?
During his second inauguration, Bush declared, "All who live in tyranny and hopelessness can know: The United States will not ignore your oppression, or excuse your oppressors. When you stand for your liberty, we will stand with you." Nothing could be further from the truth. The wholesale abandonment of those seeking liberty goes beyond Iran. When Rice announced the reestablishment of diplomatic relations with Libya, she did not mention democracy. Likewise, Rice has broken her promises to the Egyptian people. On May 25, Egyptian police beat and sodomized a 24-year-old protester Muhammad Sharkawi. His crime? Holding a sign reading, "I want my rights back." The Egyptian government has denied him medical attention, and those monitoring his case in Cairo say his breathing is labored due to cracked ribs, and he is urinating blood due to other internal injuries. Both the State Department and the U.S. embassy in Cairo remain silent.
On September 20, 2001, President Bush declared, "Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists." With Bush's decision to abandon freedom-seekers across the region, and reward a terror-sponsoring Iranian regime in noncompliance with its international commitments, the White House has signaled to the world, stand with us if you want, but we only respond when you're against us.

Michael Rubin, editor of the Middle East Quarterly, is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. He is co-author, with Patrick Clawson, of Eternal Iran: Continuity and Chaos.

[Brian Baldwin]

We should just shrug and push the little red button. Turn to the CNN cameras and say we tried.

[Sean Osborne]

Here's the deal we've worked out should iran elect TO not suspend its uranium enrichment process.


1. Russia and China will not oppose the imposition of sanctions against Iran. They also will not have to abide by whatever regimen of sanctions are applied by the international community - meaning Russia and China (among others) are free to conduct "business as usual" with Iran.


2. The sanction regimen selected will be picked from a rather large "menu" of items.

3. There is no military option involved. Period.



Bottom lines -

A.) BOIHICA (Bend Over Israel, Here It Comes Again).

2.) This diplomatic lunacy all but guarrantees a very large war with devastating results and repercussions for the entire world.