Negotiate with Iran?

That's all we've been doing for the 27 years since Iran began their war against us:

A great hoax is being perpetrated on the world, the hoax of negotiations as an untried method to “solve” the “Iranian problem.” In fact, we have been negotiating with the mullahs ever since—indeed even before—the 1979 revolution that deposed the shah and brought to power the Islamic Fascist regime of the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. In the intervening 28 years, we have participated in countless face-to-face encounters, myriad “demarches” sent through diplomatic channels, and meetings—some on the fringes of international conferences—involving “unofficial” representatives of one government or the other. The lack of any tangible result is obvious, yet the chatterers, led by James Baker and Lee Hamilton, and cheered on by intellectuals, editorialists, and instant experts on Iran, act as if none of this ever happened.

The best discussion of the long, sad history of these failed negotiations is in Ken Pollack’s The Persian Puzzle. Pollack was involved in many of these efforts, and firmly believed that, if only we found just the right formula, a deal could be struck. After all, the president of the Islamic Republic at the time, Mohammed Khatami, was a “reformer,” and appeared to be ready to resume better, and perhaps even normal, relations with the United States. To show our good will, we not only opened a channel of communications to the highest levels of the regime, but we made no less than nine significant concessions to the Iranians. We liberalized our visa policies, expanded cultural exchanges (including permitting our wrestlers to travel to Iran to participate in the world championships), we placed the Iranians’ bogeyman, the Mujahedin Khalq (MEK), on our official list of terrorist organizations, and we shamefully removed the Islamic Republic from the State Department’s list of state sponsors of terrorism. We similarly removed Iran from the list of narcotrafficking governments and permitted American companies to sell food and medicine to Iranian purchasers. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright went to international talks on the future of Afghanistan in the hope she would be able to talk directly to Iranian Foreign Minister Kharrazi, and President Clinton himself delivered a speech in which he regretted past American actions with regard to Iran.

All this produced nothing. And, as Pollack notes, Iraqi oil was being smuggled through Iranian waters in open defiance of the embargo on Iraq. But the Clinton folks, convinced that a deal had to be possible, went even further. On March 17, 2000, Secretary Albright openly apologized to Iran.

“The United States played a significant role in orchestrating the overthrow of Iran’s popular Prime Minister, Mohammed Mosaddeq...the coup was clearly a setback for Iran’s political development...the United States gave sustained backing to the shah’s regime...(which) brutally repressed political dissent...the United States must bear its fair share of responsibility for the problems that have arisen in U.S.-Iranian relations...aspects of U.S. policy towards Iraq during its conflict with Iran appear now to have been regrettably shortsighted...”

(Pollack says that the Iranians were particularly eager for an apology for the overthrow of Mossadeq, and I have myself from time to time been hectored by Iranians for this presumed malfeasance. Perhaps it shouldn’t have been done, but I cannot for a moment believe that the fanatical clerics in Tehran are enraged by the removal of a progressive liberal. But I digress.)

All those gestures and concessions and giveaways got Clinton a rude awakening. Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei delivered one of his patented diatribes: “What do you think the Iranian nation, faced with this situation and these admissions, feels?...what good will this admission (of supporting Saddam in the war with Iran)—that you acted in that way then—do us now?...An admission years after the crime was committed, while they might be committing similar crimes now, will not do the Iranian nation any good.”

We tolerated the seizing of our embassy and its personnel. We tolerated Iran's pulling the strings on terrorist organizations worldwide, including such actions resulting in the murder of Americans as the Achille Lauro hijacking and the bombing of the Khobar Towers and the World Trade Center. We tolerate Iran blowing up Americans in Iraq today.

Is there anything we are not willing to tolerate to avoid taking on Tehran?

We will soon find out whether nuclear terrorism is something we will be willing to live with.

When men prefer words to war, peace to honor, weakness to strength, such is their sorry lot.

John Stuart Mill, the famed libertarian, had it exactly right:

War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.