We had a wide-ranging call with Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Zarif at the Council on Foreign Relations last night. Zarif is an impressive, eloquent figure. Of course, that makes him dangerously effective in representing the horrid regime running Iran.
Dr. Zarif makes an interesting point when he says that
Iranians reportedly "stood in line for 10 hours" to vote in their
most recent presidential election and claims that Iranian-Americans waited "four
hours" in Los Angeles to vote, as well. Sure, the angry, right-wing clerics
running Iran certainly do manipulate their elections. Nonetheless, Zarif is
correct in asking which major Arab countries hold any head-of-government
elections of any kind. Precious few.
As always, however, Zarif's reasonable points are overwhelmed
by his hypocrisy. While abhorring the use of chemical weapons, for example,
which Iran experienced firsthand during its eight-year war with Iraq, he would
not condemn Syria's murderous use of chemical munitions on its own people. Of
course, Iran joins Russia in its nefarious alliance with the butcher
Assad and his terrorist enablers, Hezbollah. And yes, Iran supports terrorists
elsewhere, too. But keep in mind that our ally and sword-dancing friend Saudi
Arabia is ground zero – literally – for anti-American terrorism.
It's complicated, isn't it? None of this lends itself to
the empty rhetorical calories and sophomoric right-left, troll-fed nonsense
that consumes so much public discourse these days.
Now here's an additional complication. The U.S. is again
talking about regime change in Iran, which is what weak-minded, tub-thumping
armchair warriors do for a living. Of course, the last time we enacted regime
change in Tehran in 1953 – a profoundly foolish and deadly act on our part that
changed the course of world events for the worse – we helped set in motion the
forces that produced the Ayatollah Khomeini and created today's Iran. Zarif would
certainly support this claim, snidely adding last night, "and look what it
got them (the U.S.)."
Ironically, when we effected regime change in Iraq
decades later in equally disastrous fashion, we essentially made it a vassal
state of Iran. Some of us predicted during the run-up to the U.S. invasion of
Iraq that handing that Shia-majority nation to the Shia-run Iran would be one
of many terrible outcomes of that war. Zarif would undoubtedly disagree with
this assertion.
It's too easy to blame Iran for everything. That kind of
thinking is dangerously simplistic. As Zarif said, "We are the enemy of
choice ... and it works for you." In reality, Russia and Saudi Arabia are
every bit as serious threats to long-term U.S. interests, though you wouldn't know it these days.
The Persians are a great people. One can only hope that,
someday, they will shed themselves of their despicable regime and re-establish an alignment with the United States. Until then, the U.S.
should understand the infinite complexities here and not clumsily create
another mess that will only serve to keep the right-wing clerics in power. We’ve
been following their playbook far too long now, which must delight Dr. Zarif.
