By Andrew L. Jaffee

Just as a coincidence — all sarcasm intended — Iran’s terrorist, Islamist rulers have released Akbar Ganji, “Iran’s most prominent dissident.” Some coincidence. This just happens to be a time when Iran’s leaders are facing international pressure for their “alleged” nuclear weapons program, and the country’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is shooting his bellicose mouth off about annihilating Israel. Token gestures or not, Iran is a serious threat for which no amount of appeasement (”engagement”) will cure.

The BBC was kind enough to point out that:

…many Iranians thought Ganji, 46, would never be freed from jail, even though his sentence was due to end.

The release comes days before the United Nations Security Council is due to discuss Iran’s stand-off with Western nations over the country’s nuclear programme.

The problem is that the West, most likely Europe and Canada, will buy this cynical move by Iran’s mullahs. It will give the trembling, weak hands of their political elite yet another excuse to put off referral of Iran to the Security Council for consideration of punitive sanctions.

This misguided placators of the International Herald Tribune believe Iran is not really that much of a threat, and that the Bush administration should play nice with the crazy mullahs:

…it’s time for Washington to call Ahmadinejad’s bluff by playing the card the hard-liners fear most: a dramatic U.S. offer of reconciliation, including a security guarantee like that offered North Korea. Such a move would expose the rifts in the regime, deny the hard-liners the confrontation they court, and deprive the bankrupt revolutionaries of their Great Satan.

Bold moves have never been a part of Washington’s game plan toward Tehran. But a power play like rapprochement may be the best chance to deal a new deck that includes mutual respect rather than the same old cards of mutual confrontation.

Yes, we’ll woo them with weakness. Mutual respect for the world’s “most active state sponsor of terrorism?” For a regime that supports Hamas and Hezbollah, groups devoted to destabilizing the Middle East? For a regime that is actively working to undermine democracy in Iraq? Mutual respect for a regime that Wednesday threatened the U.S. with “harm and pain?”

The New York Times may even be worse than the Trib, stating:

If all other options are worse, could the world learn to live with a nuclear Iran?

My, how soon we forget history. President Clinton provided aid to North Korea in exchange for a promise that they would not build the bomb. They went ahead and built their nukes all while receiving American taxpayer money. We played nice — “engaged” — with Yasser Arafat, forced Israel to play along, and the Jewish state got the “most sustained wave of Palestinian suicide bombings in Israeli history” in return. Neville Chamberlain sought to pacify Hitler, only to see Brits hiding in basements from the blitzkrieg a few years later.

“Give Hitler the Sudetenland, then he’ll be happy. Oh, now he wants Poland. Let’s give it to him; then he’ll be done.”

Rome paid tribute to the barbarians clamoring at her gates, but the ransom only postponed the inevitable sacking, burning, and looting of the empire’s capital. How many more examples of failed appeasement should I list? As Bob Marley said, “Know your history; in the abundance of water, the fool is thirsty.”

The Trib goes even further, pooh-poohing the threat posed by Iranian President Ahmadinejad:

Myth: Ahmadinejad’s incendiary rhetoric is the rambling of a madman. The president’s nuclear saber-rattling and Holocaust denials are, in fact, deliberate provocations. Lacking a popular mandate, he uses his nuclear posturing to align him with the vast majority of Iranians who insist they will never relinquish their “right’ to a nuclear program. In fact, Ahmadinejad might welcome punitive action by the West. Economic sanctions would afford him a scapegoat for failing to make good on his wide-eyed campaign promises to redistribute wealth to the poor.

I beg to differ regarding Ahmadinejad’s “madman” status. Daniel Pipes points out that Ahmadinejad fervently believes in — has a “presidential obsession” with — mahdaviat, “the restorer of religion and justice who will rule before the end of the world.” Not apocalyptic enough for you? Pipes continues:

When addressing the United Nations in September, Mr. Ahmadinejad flummoxed his audience of world political leaders by concluding his address with a prayer for the Mahdi’s appearance: “O mighty Lord, I pray to you to hasten the emergence of your last repository, the Promised One, that perfect and pure human being, the one that will fill this world with justice and peace.” …

On returning to Iran from New York, Mr. Ahmadinejad recalled the effect of his U.N. speech:

…one of our group told me that when I started to say “In the name of God the almighty and merciful,” he saw a light around me, and I was placed inside this aura. I felt it myself. I felt the atmosphere suddenly change, and for those 27 or 28 minutes, the leaders of the world did not blink. … And they were rapt. It seemed as if a hand was holding them there and had opened their eyes to receive the message from the Islamic republic.

Still not enough for you? In Iran there is no figuring things out through consensus; no control of WMD’s by an elected assembly. There is only the (Orwellian) Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. He has ultimate control over all decisions. His thugs banned Western music in December (no more “George Michael’s ‘Careless Whisper,’ Eric Clapton’s ‘Rush’ and the Eagles’ ‘Hotel California…’” and “…tunes by saxophonist Kenny G.”). Iran’s theocracy hung two boys for being gay last July. The mullahs banned access to the BBC’s website. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad urged that Israel be “wiped off the map,” has denied that the Holocaust ever occurred, called for Israel’s Jews to be moved to Europe (ethnically cleansed), and has planned to host a conference to “prove” that Hitler’s extermination of Jews (and gypsies and gays) was a “myth.”

Not even the Washington Post buys the Trib’s appeasement:

[Ganji] is returning to a political scene where hard-liners have all but silenced Iran’s reform movement. …

Since his arrest, hard-liners took over parliament and pro-reform President Mohammad Khatami was replaced in elections last year by ultra-conservative Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has moved to purge reformists from government. Dozens of pro-reform newspapers have been shut down and those that remain have largely been cowed into toning down their criticisms. …

Ahmadinejad’s victory last year all but sealed the downfall of the reform movement, whose supporters largely shunned the vote in disillusionment at prospects for change. Since then, Ahmadinejad has taken a more confrontational stance toward the West, rallying hard-liners around Iran’s nuclear program and tough rhetoric toward Israel.

There will be no reasoning with Iran over its impending nuclear arsenal. The mullahs see nukes as their ultimate guarantee to staying in power. Economic sanctions will hurt Iran more than they will hurt the developed world. With Iran’s massive oil reserves, there remains an “ever-widening gulf between the rich and poor,” according to Oxford Analytica, which adds:

Despite its crowd-pleasing tone and tenor, Ahmadi-Nejad’s economic agenda provides neither a solution to Iran’s economic woes, nor an assurance of its people’s medium-term economic welfare. Nearly all the targets of his critical focus are systemic, and inseparable parts of the Islamic Republic’s politico-economic order. None can be decisively dealt with without a wholesale restructuring of the Iranian political economy, or in a four-year period.

The last quote calls into question the litany of “myths” trotted about by the Trib. Venezuela, Nigeria, Russia, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, etc., etc., and even Iraq can pick up any of the slack which Iran would be no longer able to export — if we ever get to sanctions, that is. Sanctions against Iran may cause a spike in oil futures prices, but not forever. There are plenty of other countries eager to sell oil to the developed and developing worlds. Bottom-line: sanctions will hurt Iran more that they’ll hurt us. This risk is worth it. One could say, “defy the ego-maniac Ahmadinejad at your own peril.” Au contraire, he will defy us at his own country’s economic and socio-political peril. How long will Iranians put up with a saber-rattling cook who pushes them further into poverty and international isolation — all before he even has a viable nuclear weapon?

The time to move is now. Refer Iran to the Security Council. Impose sanctions. Support dissidents both within and without Iran. Up the funding for Voice of America broadcasts into the county. And always keep the military option on the table.

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Related: United States, Iran

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