Via the Washington Monthly, from the Washington Post:
Since 2006, Iran’s leaders have called for direct, unconditional talks with the United States to resolve international concerns over their nuclear program. But as an American administration open to such negotiations prepares to take power, Iran’s political and military leaders are sounding suddenly wary of President-elect Barack Obama.
“People who put on a mask of friendship, but with the objective of betrayal, and who enter from the angle of negotiations without preconditions, are more dangerous,” Hossein Taeb, deputy commander of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps, said Wednesday, according to the semiofficial Mehr News Agency.
“The power holders in the new American government are trying to regain their lost influence with a tactical change in their foreign diplomacy. They are shifting from a hard conflict to a soft attack,” Taeb said.
For Iran’s leaders, the only state of affairs worse than poor relations with the United States may be improved relations. The Shiite Muslim clerics who rule the country came to power after ousting Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, a U.S.-backed autocrat, in their 1979 Islamic revolution. Opposition to the United States, long vilified as the “great Satan” here in Friday sermons, remains one of the main pillars of Iranian politics.
It took me a while, but I finally found a post (It’s often difficult for me to remember if I’ve actually written something, or just ranted to my wife or whoever happens to be at hand) in which I had made the point that both Bush and Ahmajenidad had a vested interest in demonizing each other: it was one of the ways in which they were both able to keep a hold on power. McCain continually attacked Obama for his willingness to negotiate with the Iranians, but it’s fairly obvious that Obama was absolutely right. Obama probably won’t go this far, but I think he could undermine the present Iranian government quite effectively by stating loudly and clearly that he will under no circumstances attack Iran and that he remains quite willing to negotiate with Iran to resolve our differences.
The ironic thing is that we have effectively delivered Iraq into the Iranian orbit, something that, at least given the present situation, is definitely not in our interest. It would be in our interest to see the present government of Iran replaced by a secular government that is neither a creature of the Muslim clerics or a creature of the U.S. You know, an independent, secular, democratically elected government. It’s not impossible; it’s just a rational policy away. The easiest way to do that would be by convincing the Iranian people that we are not a threat.
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