Offering carrots to Iran carries a heavy price

Check out my Los Angeles Daily News column about carrots and sticks, Barack Obama's dunderheaded grasp of foreign policy, and the reality about a lil' regime called the Islamic Republic of Iran:

"Abbas Khorsandi has a dream of democracy.

In 2004, the economics professor in the Iranian town of Firouzkouh was arrested for helping form the Democratic Party of Iran, along with five other activists located in different cities around the country. Khorsandi was tortured and warned to stop his democracy activism, and was released on bail a few months later after suffering a heart attack.

On Sept. 17, the 50-year-old with two small children was arrested again, taken to the notorious Ward 209 of Evin Prison, where it is believed that those who go in stand a much slimmer chance of coming out alive. Charged with taking action against the security of the government and establishing an illegal organization (political party), Khorsandi has been allowed no legal representation and his wife, who has been told to stop coming to the courthouse to inquire about her husband, has only received information about him through another inmate, a human-rights activist who received a five-minute trial with no representation.

Khorsandi's situation, we're told, is 'grave,' and the only way to save the life of a man with no trial date and whose case is shrouded in morbid silence is to 'make noise.'

Iran has been on the lips of a bigger and richer Democratic Party, the one here in the U.S. Sen. Barack Obama last week expressed his eagerness to meet directly with Iranian leaders to 'engage in aggressive personal diplomacy.'

...'There are both carrots and there are sticks available to them for those changes in behavior,' he said. These bribes could include membership in the World Trade Organization and backing off any aims of 'regime change' - in other words, hanging the Khorsandis out to dry.

Would Obama, swiftly becoming the master of confounding foreign policy, have the campfire singalong with Iran before or after he attacks Pakistan?..."

Read the whole thing!

Also worth noting: On the "Today" show last week, Obama lifted up China as a model example of the value of diplomatic gestures in ensuring progress. There was no indication of the senator believing we should hang our heads in shame for extending a hand to a regime that still leads the world in executions, political prisoners, forced re-education through labor, heinous violations of reproductive rights and religious rights, and the incarceration of journalists and bloggers for exercising free speech.

Comments

[Therresa Kennedy]

It is true, I don't see much good coming from this. How can you alter, modify or uplift a culture that is based on the hatred of women and of the influential, and/or independent thinkers, wanting change? The governments have historically been so incredibly blood thirsty. How can you change that?

I don't see much good coming from Iran. I have never read about a more repressed, neurotic and disturbed bunch of people in my life. I have taken several classes on Iranian film, literature and such.

Its tragic. They make the English look sexy and uninhibited. The repression feeds a deep seated shame of all things in their lives.

I don't know if that country will ever be save-able.

Therresa Kennedy

[Senthil]

Theresa, a government that is 'incredibly blood thirsty'?
Like the kind of government that starts a second war before the first war is finished without any provable justification for the second war?
Sorry that was a cheap shot... and here's another - So if Iran makes my country look sexy and uninhibited, what would it take to make yours the look sexy and uninhibited, as opposed to obese, awkward and vulgar... sorry let me just put down every stereotype I can pull out of my ass.

Do me a favour, you want to talk about women hating, repressed, blood thirsty regimes, start a little closer to home, like our ally Saudi Arabia where women aren't allowed to even drive a car. At least in Iran women can get a university education. Iran has elections, Saudi Arabia has a dictator. Both countries carry out public executions, both countries harbour terrorists. One country has economic ties with the US, the other has economic sanctions from the US.

What you fail to understand about places like Iran and Afghanistan is how they became run by repulsive regimes.
Afghanistan never used to have women forced to wear burkas and the like, neither did Iran. So what happened? Well during the cold war the US backed the Taliban against the Soviets... they did the rational thing to choose what they thought was the lesser of two evils and the Taliban won out. And our Taliban buddies ushered in an era of repression and opium production.
Iran used to have proper democracy without a grand Ayatollah, and when in 1951 Mossadeq was elected Prime Minister, his plans for his country and the oil industry did not meet approval from the US or the UK. We funded the coup d'état that ousted him from power and reinstalled the Shah, a dictator that the Iranian people would later oust in the Islamic revolution.

It's strange, you say you don't see much good coming from Iran. An Iranian writer called Abdul Kareem Souresh was a supporter of the Islamic revolution, quite probably because anything seems better than a dictator. Ten years later he wrote, "The first thing that is abandoned in a revolution is rationality. The last thing that returns in a revolution, if it ever returns at all is rationality." He became heavily opposed to the Islamic revolution and put himself at risk to speak out.
I've read other Iranian writers who think, speak and feel as any other person I've met from any of the countries I've lived in or visited. I've seen Iranian films, such as Offside, which I thought was pretty effective. I've worked with Iranians who are intelligent and capable, two of whom were women who are as 'liberated' as any western woman (granted, it is while outside of Iran).
And here's the difference. You say, "I have never read about a more repressed, neurotic and disturbed bunch of people in my life."
Try meeting some instead of basing everything on whatever propaganda you've been fed... you might learn something more.

[Reaps]

That was a lot of typing for what could have been just as easily put across as

"All of this is our fault therefore we should do nothing about it."

The only thing I dislike about Americans is how often they're on a perpetual goddamn guilt-trip..

[Senthil]

No, it can't be put as easily as that. If you think that foreign policy can be summarised into one sentance then you have a lot to learn.
History, culture and about 70 million Iranians and their political leanings have to be factored in.
This is the problem with the one sentance foreign policy 'experts'.
The left says we should engage diplomatically.
The right says we should bomb them.
Both say we should have economic sanctions.
Both have simplified the situation too far.
Our goverments should take advantage of the rising dissent against Ahmedinejad to push him out in the next election which is 1 year away. If we champion democracy, that should be our solution. All the intelligence suggests that Iran is more that 3 years from developing a nuke. If he wins re-election, then you have to seriously consider a military solution. Until then, shut the hell up.

Reaps, if you want to critisize, address me on the points that I've written, not on the length of what I've written.

[Reaps]

Whatever happened to Ned, and Bill, and.. I can't remember the other names. Sad.

Oo! Oo!

LEWIS!

[Therresa Kennedy]

Senthil,

You make several good points. I should have worded that post differently. Its obvious and if I offended you, which is clear I apologize.

When I spoke insultingly of Iran, I was referring to the Government officials, the extremist Mullahs and not the people, not really, and not in general.

I have known some Persian people, who live in America and most of them were really incredibly intelligent, well educated and wonderful people. I did have the misfortune of knowning a Persian man who was nothing but a theif and a liar and he took me for many hundreds of dollars. He was the most deceptive kind of persona and he was also a total failure as a person and as any kind of representation of what a good Persian person is.

I certainly do apologize for offending you. What pains me are the stories, the stories of young girls being hung, homosexual boys being hung on the awful cranes. The government is the cause of so much unhappiness and misery in Iran, but I do know that the people of Iran are for the most part wonderful men and women.

Good luck to you and have patience with me, for I am only an American.

TK