Hey America, Negotiate with Iran

Since the American election campaign began, the two candidates, McCain and Obama, have been eager to promise unprecedented action against Iran, delivering a coup de grace poised to wreak havoc and ruin everything. But what has escaped the two of them, while in this election mania that stands in contrast to political rationality, is that Iran is a major regional player with a sophisticated military, and as we know it will not hold back in taking advantage of the American and Israeli Achilles’ heel. The naïveté of the American and Israeli leadership lies in its belief that it is reasonably safe from an Iranian response, which the available data indicate will not stop at the edge of the greater Middle East but will stretch beyond and envelop the world through the “Shia Comintern”, which is the most organized and most committed to its global authority.

On the other hand, we see that some Western European countries and Russia continue their diplomatic activity with Iran, and offer incentives and enticements to refrain from its nuclear ambitions, taking into consideration all the geographic and economic factors. Washington and Tel Aviv, by contrast, cling to an arrogant and politically defiant dictatorial policy. The single, careless American-Israeli position of using force to subdue others as a global strategy focused for the most part on narrow, short-sighted interests is always doomed, as we read in the pages of history, to drown in the swamps of defeat, which continues to mar the image of America in the world.

Nobody can disagree that striking Iran will cost the region and the world dearly, and will create a great tragedy lasting decades. The harsh Iranian reaction will cause harm to the oil wells in the Gulf and Azerbaijan, as well as American interests and its forces, and vital Israeli nuclear sites and sections of the state. Well-organized Shia factions will rise up all over the world and in Iraq, and Hezbollah will be galvanized in Southern Lebanon to preoccupy Israel. We might witness retaliatory attacks against Euro-American and Israeli interests spanning the points of the compass. Even if we suppose that Israeli American threats create a sort of political pressure on Tehran, they will nonetheless come back to haunt them, as we currently see in the steep rise in oil prices. They will also create security, economic, political, and military problems for America and widen the scope to throw back unlimited crises beyond imagination, with no possibility of being handled diplomatically. Thus it is wisest for the alliance opposing Iran to take the route of diplomacy, politics, and dialogue to resolve the developing crisis and to spare bloodshed, preserve human respect, and avoid losses.

On the domestic front, we see Jordan’s commitment to a policy of cooling the crises of the area and working to solve them peacefully, and His Majesty King Abdullah II recognizes in his wisdom that a war with Iran would be destructive and would open the door to every evil, and that the peoples of the East and West would never recover. We in Jordan are located in the middle of this circle of fire, yet we enjoy security and stability thanks to the quick efforts of the nation’s leader, the cohesion of Jordanian policy, and the awareness of the people. Preserving this divine blessing is incumbent upon all Jordanians, such that the basic role of the individual is to recognize and curb the imminent dangers in the region and beyond, and to support official policy to transcend difficulties and overcome challenges.