More Realism Needed in US Policy Toward Iran

US President Obama's video personal appeal to the leaders of Iran's theocracy fell flat with a loud thud. The young president's "new beginning" was at best another naive overture to a hardened ideological regime dedicated to defeating US interests in the Middle East and leading a worldwide jihad.

It is increasingly clear the new US administration has not studied recent diplomatic history with Iran. The so-called EU-3 (France, Germany, and United Kingdom) Initiative born in 2003 to assert (unsuccessfully) the European Union's stake in global security failed to convince Iran with again - words - to alter its negative behavior. It was difficult for Iran to take serious complaints by its European trading partners.

The IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) in its February 2009 report in a frank manner lays bare the big elephant in the room for the implications of Tehran's continued intransigence on the nuclear issue:

"Regrettably, as a result of the continued lack of cooperation by Iran in connection with the
remaining issues which give rise to concerns about possible military dimensions of Iran’s nuclear programme, the Agency has not made any substantive progress on these issues."

While recording the history of the Iranian nuclear program in its various filings, the IAEA is unable as an institution to put the brakes on Tehran's naked ambition to acquire actionable nuclear weapons and wed this destructive capability with its ballistic missile program. That task is incumbent upon states.

A "new beginning," holiday wishes or hopes for a better tomorrow with Tehran are not needed. Worse is the hint of moral equivalence between the US and Iran. From the US president, again, a glaring lack of knowledge about the current Iranian regime is appalling.

A fair reading of human history illuminates at least one point: olive branches and melodious rhetoric from democracies do not tame despotic regimes bent on implementing their negative policies. In the end, Nazi Germany and the former Soviet Union yielded only to confrontation to change their ways when there was a will to fight.

The rod, not the olive branch, compelled a change in course. Our dangerous world is governed by the aggressive use of force.

The continued lack of realism and sober views of the current Islamic-fascist regime in Tehran by Washington edges the global community ever closer to either acquiescing to a nuclear-tipped Iran or acting to stop it.


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