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Considering how well some of our other efforts at "regime change" have gone, does anyone else think it's not such a great idea for two GOP senators to be openly advocating for it on national television?
GREGORY: Well, Senator Kyl, is there any doubt in your mind that they're building weapons?
KYL: No. I, I--well, they're trying to build a nuclear weapon. They first of all have to get he fuel to do it. And that's--it's very clear that they are trying to make that fuel. And it's also clear that they are getting closer to the delivery capability, putting that nuclear weapon on top of a missile that could either reach Europe or eventually a place like the United States.
It's clear what their intention is. And the question is, how do you get in there to see fully what they're doing and find a way to stop it? Without international support, it's very hard. But we haven't even exhausted the possibilities for unilateral U.S. sanctions that could also squeeze that leadership to the point that they might--I mean, what we're trying to do here eventually is to get a regime change with a group of people in there that are more representative of the Iranian people, who we really can talk with in a way that might end up with a good result. I think it's very difficult to do that with the current leadership and especially the elected president.
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The oh so serious Bill Kristol has some advice for the Obama administration and how to handle any sort of diplomacy with Iran. Regime change is the only "serious" and "realistic" policy the United States now needs with Iran in Kristol's view. I'm so glad listening to his similar advice for the Bush administration on Iraq has worked out so well for all of us.
Dutch journalist Thomas Erdbrink, who is based in Tehran, has a must-read piece today in the Washington Post which details how, now that Obama is the President-Elect and offering no-precondition talks, non-trivial but junior members of the Iranian government are making noises about walking back their own offers to hold unconditional talks.
“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.
... In recent interviews, advisers to Ahmadinejad said the new U.S. administration would have to pull U.S. troops out of Iraq, show respect for Iran's system of rule by a supreme religious leader, and withdraw its objections to Iran's nuclear program before it can enter into negotiations with the Iranian government.
Ahmadinejad's media adviser, Mehdi Kalhor, said that "in fair circumstances" Iran would be open to talks. "But that is not when you have a bayonet pressed at your artery," he added, referring to the U.S. forces deployed in Iraq, Afghanistan and the Persian Gulf.
All this provides neocon hawks with the perfect opportunity to bang the "prefidious Iranians" drum, and Ed Morrissey doesn't miss that chance:
This is the point that Obama and his allies never seem to understand. Some people just hate us, and not because of our policies on trade and security. Iran is a nation run by radical Islamist mullahs who see secular democracy as the enemy of their religion, and Western values as a temporary heresy which they plan to correct with a global caliphate under Iranian control.
Irans’ mullahs see America as the bastion of these values, and Israel as our outpost for them in the region. Europe is mostly irrelevant to them; they can deal with Europe after eliminating the arsenal of democracy, or hobbling it so badly that we no longer make a difference.
All of a sudden, you’re deprived of a method of demagoguery that’s aided your regime for a generation. And if you refuse to negotiate, you’ve just undermined everything you told the international community you wanted, and now appear unreasonable, erratic, and unattractive to foreign capitols. Amazing how the prospects for peace are more destabilizing to the Iranian establishment than any inevitably-counterproductive-and-destructive bombing campaign or war of internal subterfuge.
That's an analysis born out by Erdbrink's past work too. Back in 2004, he co-wrote a Time piece which pointed out that "dominant hard-line clerics are worried that friendly American behavior might aid reformers, who are less anti-Western than the conservatives."
There's a presidential election in Iran next year and a moderate now heads the committee which would choose the replacement for the ailing Ayatollah. In other words, it's not about nukes or about international opinion - its about the shakier thrones Irans hardline government now find themselves sitting upon; with the best weapon in their arsenal, Bush's neocon ways, consigned to history.
On the streets of Tehran, Reuters recorded some video "postcards to Obama" from ordinary Iranians back on Nov. 5th. The message - carry through on negotiations, forget the hawks.
