The US has tried engaging Iran over and over and over for the last 28 years - and yes, that includes this administration too! The mullahs won't have it. There is never a positive repsonse to build on. Nicholas Burns of the US State Dept was on Charlie Rose yesterday talking about it. It is fallacious to conclude that if you don't see positive diplomatic results, nobody ever tried diplomacy.
I don't buy that. I'd engage Iran today, as is, without your pre-condition for this mysterious "positive response" that has been missing. We should have full diplomatic relations with them, student exchanges, US companies in their country doing business, and all the other trappings of inter-country sweetness that we have with partners such as Israel and Canada today, and the US should constantly treat Iranians as "our allies" in the way that we do Saudi Arabia today. That hasn't been tried - obviously.
BTW it is foolish to dismiss Ahmedinijad's ravings on the grounds that his position doesn't have much power. In a dictatorship where power is concentrated in a few hands, things can change fast. Ayatollah Khamenei is ailing. If he dies, and he is replaced by mullahs favoring Ahmedinijad's Mahdist outlook, then the power dynamic could shift rapidly.
If we allied ourselves with Iran, rather than take today's antagonistic approach, why would Ahmedinejabble attack us at all? We'd be on the same team. And from within this framework, we could push them for the goals (greater freedom for Iranian citizens, stability in the region, improved oil production and commerce) that are in US interests.
South Korea was our ally and a military dictatorship for ~35 years. It took until about 1990 before they successfully made the transition to representative democracy. Thailand has been our ally forever, and they have military coups every two weeks. If we can successfully ally ourselves with a regime as anti-American and resistant to change as the Saudis, we can certainly do the same and probably accomplish more with the multi-ethnic semi-democratic Iranians. THAT diplomacy has not been tried, obviously, because it does not exist. |
