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The Secret Of America's Iran Policy Revealed

Rabbi Dr. Daniel M. Zucker - 4/8/2006

Shhhh! Don't let anyone else see this, it's top secret! I'm about to reveal to you a secret about America's policy towards Iran. It is so confidential that even Congress has no idea about it. Truth be told, neither does the administration, because, here it is, here is that top secret: no one knows it because it doesn't really exist!

Oh yes, there is the brand new "Office of Iran Affairs", rolled out on the red carpet on Thursday, March 2nd with great fanfare by the State Department, but this office is still seriously hampered by a lack of Farsi speakers as well as a lack of direction from on high as to what should be our policy towards the world's foremost state sponsor of terrorism. Twenty-seven years after a popular revolution toppled the dictatorial regime of the late Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, the revolution itself swiftly being hijacked by Islamic fundamentalists intent upon establishing a revolutionary Islamic state to be led by the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, our nation has not yet figured out how it wants to deal with a government that has declared from the start that it desires to destroy us and our way of life.

For nearly three decades we have decried the lack of even the most rudimentary of human rights in Iran; we have condemned Iran for its support and sponsorship of terrorism on a global scale, its interference in the internal affairs of its neighbors, and its ceaseless opposition to the Middle-East peace-process. At the same time we have bent over backwards to kiss the hems of the ayatollahs' robes so as to be able to do business with Iran. Our thirst for Iranian oil (20% of our imported oil) has led us to derail the Iranian resistance from its efforts to oppose the regime. When the ayatollahs told us that the cost of doing business with them required our declaring the principal Iranian resistance group to be a "terrorist organization", we readily complied. Had we been around two thousand years ago, we would probably have sold the wood for the cross to the Romans, and supplied the nails for free, all in the sacred name of "business".

For the last twenty plus years our State Department has followed a policy of appeasement of the ayatollahs. The Irangate fiasco of the mid-1980s evolved into a dual-containment policy as we tried to balance Iran and Iraq as implacable enemies, both with which we could do trade under the table. By 1997 we had our rose-colored glasses screwed on so tightly that we believed that the then newly elected President Mohammed Khatami was a "moderate" and that his "Dialogue of Civilizations" was genuine. At his request, the State Department put the Iranian resistance organization, the Mojahedin-e Khalq (MeK) on the Foreign Terrorist Organizations list despite the fact that the MeK had been welcome in this country for sixteen years at that point, and was well known to many in our government, including scores of senators and hundreds of representatives whose support the MeK enjoyed.

Eight years later our appeasement of the mullahs has rewarded us with the selection of the arch-terrorist Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as the president who Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khameneí chose to help Iran achieve membership in the nuclear club, and also to re-invigorate Iran's zeal for exporting the Islamic revolution. Iran's nineteen year old nuclear program has almost completed its mission, begun in secret, of producing an Iranian atomic weapon. Iran's refusal to cooperate with the IAEA and Ahmadinejad's bellicosity towards the West makes it crystal clear that our appeasement policy has been a dismal failure. Appeasement failed with Hitler and the Nazis in the 1930s; are our diplomats too young to know about that disaster? Is "Foggy Bottom" that foggy that the harsh light of reality never shines through the windows down there? Is "business as usual" that important that we are willing to allow Ahmadinejad to acquire the bomb and the missile technology to deliver it to Manhattan and Georgetown?

In the last few months the seriousness of the situation seems to be slowly percolating through the cracks in the shell with which the administration's diplomats had covered themselves. Iran has become a focus of our national concern. Ambassador John Bolton has led the effort to bring Iran's dossier to the UN Security Council. But our Secretary of State seems reluctant to spell out in clear terms what sanctions we would apply to Iran. The day before Iran's case finally was brought to the Security Council, she still was referring to the administration's request for $75 million to promote democracy in Iran as a way of pressuring Iran to change its behavior. If I were part of the Iranian regime (I thank God that I'm not), I would read Ms. Rice's remarks to mean that we have not even come to any consensus with our allies exactly as to what to do about sanctions. For those who have forgotten, we already have partial sanctions on Iran, but the operative word is partial, as we continue to buy oil and other imports from Iran and we sell a wide variety of products to the Islamic Republic. As long as we continue trading with Iran, and as long as we keep the Iranian resistance bottled up by keeping the MeK on the FTO, Teheran knows not to take us too seriously, and believe me, so far, they don't.

Lacking any solid policy for removing the nuclear threat, much less the continual threat of global terrorism that originates in Teheran, the State Department's "ace-in-the-hole" is its reliance on the Pentagon to mount an attack on Iran's nuclear sites if all else fails. Unfortunately, we don't have the necessary information to hit all the nuclear and missile production targets. A pre-emptive strike may succeed in delaying the mullahs' nuclear capabilities for a few years, but it will not topple the regime and end the threat. Meanwhile the regime will feel itself even more justified to use terrorism to strike back at us. A ground troop assault will be no easy ride into Teheran, making the military option a very poor and impractical choice for the situation that we presently face with Iran.

Given that the Iranian resistance movement has engaged and actively fought despotism and tyranny in Iran for over forty years, first that of the shah, and for the last twenty-seven years that of the Khomeini-Khameneí regime at a great price, (over 120,000 members and supporters executed) it seems incredibly shortsighted that the State Department does not recognize the legitimacy of the MeK and its immense popularity with the majority of the Iranian people, making gestures instead to the remnants of the monarchy who want to restore the Pahlavis to the throne, or those minor democratic movements that broadcast from Los Angeles but have not registered enough impact on the regime to have even raised its ire. The current L.A. Persian broadcasters haven't a snowballs chance in hell given Iran's capability to block broadcasts that it finds objectionable. Currently the mullahs aren't bothering to jam the signals, since-as one humorous Iranian observer put it-all that is being broadcast is song, dance, and fitness programs.

The State Department has seen enough intelligence reports to know that the MeK is neither Marxist, nor Islamic fundamentalist, but rather that it is made up of Iranian patriots that believe in gender equality as well as of racial and religious equality. Although they are observant Shiites as individuals, they do not desire a religious state for Iran, but rather a secular democracy. The question is this: when will the State Department realize that the threat from the Islamofascist regime in Teheran is so great that delaying fighting it with the aid of anti-fundamentalists if seriously hobbling our efforts to win the war on Islamic terror? This is a war of ideologies; one fights it with the aid of those who understand their enemy's mindset. The Mojahedin-e Khalq understand the mindset of Khameneí and Ahmadinejad; they oppose it with all that they have. We should take off our blinders and realize that the MeK is a natural ally of the United States and the entire free world.

And one more thing, when the regime is replaced-which it will be - Iran will still have oil and natural gas to sell, if we are so short-sighted, environmentally speaking, so as to continue to want to buy and use carbon emitting fossil fuels.

Professor Rabbi Daniel M. Zucker is Chairman of Americans for Democracy in the Middle-East, a grassroots organization dedicated to teaching the American public and especially our elected officials at the federal level of the dangers posed by Islamic fundamentalism, and the need to promote genuine democratic institutions in the nations of the Middle-East.