January 4, 2006
Time to Talk to Tehran
By Pat Buchanan
Does President
Bush intend a preventive war, early this year, to effect the nuclear
castration of Iran? Or are we rattling sabers?
What makes
the question urgent are German reports that CIA Director Porter
Goss has been in Ankara, Turkey, negotiating for U.S. use of bases
for air strikes on Iran's nuclear sites. Over the weekend, Senate
Majority Leader Bill Frist said time is running out on diplomacy
to deal with the Iranian nuclear threat.
The Israelis
are warning that if diplomacy fails, and we do not haul Tehran
before the Security Council for sanctions, Israel will denuclearize
Iran herself. The end of March is said to be the deadline for
when Israel decides whether the West is serious.
Turning up the heat, the Israeli lobby AIPAC has begun to rap
President Bush -- for wimpishness on Iran. Prediction: If Bush
does not confront or attack Tehran, Israel and its Amen Corner
will begin to give him the same treatment they gave his father.
As for the
Iranians, they seem to believe U.S. maneuvers and Israeli threats
are a bluff. On New Year's Day, Ali Larijani, Iran's top nuclear
negotiator, dismissed them as "psychological warfare."
"Iran
has prepared itself," he said. "They will get a crushing
response if they make such a mistake." About Israel he was
direct: "If there is any truth in such talks, Israel will
suffer greatly. It's a very small country within our range."
Iran's President
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who says Israel should be "wiped off
the map" and the Holocaust is a myth, is still on message.
On New Year's Day, he charged Europeans with setting up a "Jewish
camp" in the Middle East, with the most sinister of motives.
"Don't
you think that continuation of genocide by expelling Jews from
Europe was one of their aims in creating a regime of occupiers
of Al Quds (Jerusalem)?" Ahmadinejad was quoted by Iran's
official Islamic Republic News. "Isn't that an important
question?"
Ahmadinejad
is, as they say, "playing to the base." As the Islamic
world believes it has been made to do penance for the sins of
Europeans by having had a Jewish state planted in its midst, armed
by America, Ahmadinejad is trying to make himself a folk hero
to the Arab street, as did Saddam back in 1990, when he talked
about "burning half of Israel."
But the
Iranian president is playing with fire. For he appears to be slamming
the door on diplomacy. His rhetoric may be causing the British,
French and German negotiators to conclude there is no dealing
with an Iranian president who talks like this, yet will be in
office for four years.
That puts
the ball squarely in Bush's court. The problem for the president
is this: What Iran is demanding it be allowed to do -- enrich
uranium for peaceful uses -- it has every right to do under the
Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which Iran signed, but which
Israel, India and Pakistan, all of which clandestinely produced
nukes, did not.
Tehran is
telling Bush: We are not going to be the only country on earth
to have signed the NPT and then be told by you we cannot exercise
our rights under the treaty.
While Iran
did briefly suspend the conversion of "yellowcake" into
uranium hexaflouride, the gaseous substance out of which enriched
uranium is made, it has now restarted the process.
But there
is still no hard evidence Iran has created a cascade of centrifuges
to enrich uranium for peaceful power, let alone for an explosive
device. Nor is there hard evidence Iran has the technology, components
or competence to weaponize a nuclear device, even if it had the
highly enriched uranium to create one.
As of today,
Iran is not a nuclear threat.
While the
Israelis say the last chance to stop her from going nuclear is
only weeks always, others say Iran is years from having the capacity
to produce a bomb. Even then, it would confront foes with hundreds
or thousands of such weapons.
Thus, it
is hard to see how U.S. vital interests would be served by a war
on Iran for asserting its rights under the NPT. Nor has Bush been
authorized by Congress to launch a preventive war on Iran. The
Bush "axis-of-evil" doctrine notwithstanding, we still
have a Constitution.
The neocons
assure us the regime would crack under an attack and Iranians
would welcome us, but this is the same "cakewalk" crowd
that told us the Iraqis would welcome us killing their soldier
sons, occupying their country and putting Ahmad Chalabi in Saddam's
palace.
If we attack
Iran, Tehran would incite the Shia to rise up and kill Americans
in Iraq, and send volunteers join them, which would mean escalation
and could mean a strategic disaster for the United States.
As Bush's
hero Churchill said, "To jaw-jaw is always better than to
war-war." Truman talked to Stalin, Ike to Khrushchev, Nixon
to Mao. After 25 years, it's time for Bush to talk to Tehran.
For neither of us would benefit from a war.
Copyright
2005 Creators Syndicate
