Iran talks yield less than nothing

Source: INVESTOR’S BUSINESS DAILY

Posted 5/29/2007
Diplomacy: Now that we’ve talked to the Iranians, we see what they really have up their sleeves in offering to help with Iraq. Simply put, they’re convinced we’re the world’s biggest chumps and can’t wait to humiliate us.

If that sounds like a harsh assessment of the current U.S.-Iran discussions regarding Iraq, it’s not. It’s bare-bones reality.

In talking officially with Tehran for the first time in 27 years, the U.S. hopes to get the Islamic republic to help us promote peace in Iraq. We’ve asked Iran’s leaders, at minimum, to stop funding terrorists and militias within Iraq and to halt the never-ending flow of arms from their country.

But Iran said it would take part in the talks only if the U.S. didn’t bring up Iran’s aggressive nuclear buildup. Even the U.N.’s weakling nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, believes Iran will have a destabilizing nuclear weapon in three to eight years.

For their part, the Iranians — while criticizing us for our "occupation of Iraq" — want the U.S. to take part in a new joint "security mechanism." This sounds like they want us to leave quietly and let them slip in the back door and take control.

The U.S. response? "We’re taking this step by step," said Ryan Crocker, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq. "We’ve laid out some concerns. We’ll be watching to see what action is taken."

Well, if it’s action we want, it didn’t take long. A day after the Baghdad meeting, Iran "acted" by charging three Iranian-born U.S. citizens with spying and cracking down on its own dissidents.

The three include a scholar with the Woodrow Wilson Center for Scholars, Haleh Esfandiari, who’s been held since early May in Tehran’s Evin Prison, a place that makes Guantanamo look like Walt Disney World. The other two are urban planner Kian Tajbakhsh and journalist Parnaz Azima.

Their arrests have coincided with a much broader crackdown on dissent. Women have been taken into custody for dressing immodestly, and hundreds of demonstrators — or "hooligans," as Iran’s official media call them — have been beaten up and arrested.

Last week, just days before the U.S. talks were set to begin, radical Shiite fundamentalist leader Moqtada al-Sadr returned to Iraq from his prolonged exile in Iran to stir up his thousands of militia members and extremist followers. Think that was an accident?

Such shenanigans make it clear that Iran’s goal in the talks was simply to embarrass the U.S. It has no intention of helping the U.S. foster a tranquil democracy within Iraq’s borders. Iran’s leaders don’t want that for their own people, who, even as you read this, are being brutalized by Iran’s secret police for daring to speak out against the regime of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

No, Iran is up to mischief. The mullahs’ only reason for allowing talks was to be able to sit directly across from U.S. representatives and spit in their faces — diplomatically speaking, of course.

Those who see something else are deceived. As Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei said this week, the U.S. is "colonial, bullying, arrogant and expansionist." This from a man who some in the media paint as a moderate compared with Ahmadinejad.

In dealing with such people, our government — and especially our worldly wise and sophisticated State Department — can be touchingly naive.

After all, Iran has committed repeated acts of war against the U.S., starting in 1979 with the seizure of our embassy in Tehran (by law considered U.S. territory) and holding 52 Americans hostage for 444 days.

The acts continue today with the funding, aiding and training of terrorist groups, including Hamas, Hezbollah and al-Qaida. All are intent on dislodging the U.S. from the Mideast, destroying Israel and ultimately spreading radical Islam across the globe.

Should Iran get a nuclear weapon, who knows what might happen? After all, would we attack a nuclear-armed Iran if we knew it might launch against our allies Israel, India or even Europe?

If that last possibility seems far-fetched, consider this: Claude Moniquet, head of the respected European Strategic Intelligence and Security Center, a think tank in Brussels, Belgium, told the British Parliament this week that Iran is drawing up plans to attack different sites in Europe. It has even carried out reconnaissance of Europe’s nuclear power stations.

Sorry, the Iranian threat is real. Ignoring it won’t make it go away. Talking with people who will use the pretense of talks to go on building a nuclear weapon isn’t helpful. It’s dangerous.