Diplomacy This Time Or
Dropping Bluster Bombs?
Iran is rapidly becoming another opening for military blunders by the United States under Bush.
As Rep. John Tierney, D-Mass., told a forum on Iran recently in Alexandria, Va., "It is clear to me that most congressmen know little about Iran." That could be applied to the public at large as well. That shortage of knowledge is raising the temptation to take a military action --surgical strike, air strike, or whatever--to halt any nuclear developments in Iran.
"Rationality is not guiding our decisions" in the region, Dr. Trita Par- si said. "We have not even tested diplomacy." Instead, the administra- tion is busy condemning Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for his bluster, without acknowledging at every step that he "is not the decision-maker" in Iran, Parsi said.
For his part, Ahmadinejad seems content to behave like Venezuela's Hugo Chavez, with insults and taunts to the United States designed to improve his standing in his country.
Rep. Jim Moran, D-Va., who organized the forum, said the more the administration rattles sabres in Iran's direction, the stronger Ahmadine- jad becomes.
People forget that some time ago, Iran was willing to help in the struggle against the Taliban and "wanted to cooperate" with the United States, Parsi said. Parsi, president of the Iranian-American Council, said Bush then gave his "Axis of Evil" speech, not the best way to gather support from Iran. After the misadventure in Iraq and the "Axis of Evil speech, Parsi said, Iranians are all tied up with, "Is the United States going to bomb us? Is the U.S. not going to bomb us?"
The intelligence available to the United States about Iran "is worse than in Iraq," forum speaker Lawrence Korb, of the Center for American Progress, said. Parsi said the Bush administration "equates (uranium) enrichment with the bomb," when enrichment is several steps and years away from production of a bomb, if that is Iran's intent. "We don't even have hard evidence" that Iran's enrichment plans have a bomb in mind, he said.
Even after enrichment capability is reached, it could be two to five years before a bomb could be produced, Korb said.
If the United States tries a military action in Iran, Iran could block the Strait of Hormuz and throw the world's oil market even further into chaos, Korb said. Because of that, and because of the shortcomings of intelli-gence and the strength of Iran's military, a war with Iran "would be 10 to 100 times more difficult than Iraq" and would require a military draft in the United States, Korb said.
"Sometimes, patience is the way to go," Korb said. Military action should be "a last resort," Tierney said.
He said a poll in Iran, which has a youthful population, showed that most Iranians are not very happy with Ahmadinejad, most want nuclear power without bombs, and most want peaceful relations with the United States.
Sounds like a fertile ground for American diplomacy rather than American military might.
-----Veritas
