The Conservatives’ Favorite Bogeyman

Demonizing Iran is a thing of the past; Barack Obama doesn’t divide the world into good and evil. Hawks in Israel and the United States, however, are betting against America’s new direction.

Israel’s likely new Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, still doesn’t have a majority in Parliament but he does have a message. “Iran is seeking to obtain a nuclear weapon and constitutes the gravest threat to our existence since the war of independence.” With that declaration, the conservative leader of the Likud Party has presumably outlined his administration’s future foreign policy. At the same time, neo-conservative think tanks in Washington also issue loud warnings about Iran. Conservative newspapers like the “Jerusalem Post” and “New York Post” sharply criticize journalists and politicians they see as giving in to the Mullahs.

We quickly rub our eyes and ask ourselves what can be so new and threatening. The latest report of the International Atomic Energy Agency says Iran has fewer than 4000 centrifuges in operation capable of producing the enriched uranium necessary to make nuclear warheads. They also lack suitable missiles to deliver them. But Iran’s hide-and-seek game over its nuclear program raises strong suspicions. Seen in that light, everything becomes disturbing.

Still, is that really new? From the conservative’s point of view, the new danger emanates from the White House. The new president has offered to hold open, direct talks with Iran provided Iran “unclenches its fist.” Iran responded with positive signals. Barack Obama has already sent two high-level diplomats to Syria, Iran’s ally, to discuss possible openings to the West. The president is breaking with his predecessor’s disastrous tradition of dividing the world into good and evil and talking only to those he thinks are good. The evil, above all Iran, got nothing from George W. Bush’s Washington except threats and sanctions. And that’s exactly what Netanyahu and the conservatives of the Bush era recommend we continue doing.

Let’s recall for a moment what they recommended to the world after the attacks of September 11th, 2001. They assured everyone that Saddam Hussein was the principal sponsor of global terror, possessed weapons of mass destruction and was the world’s evil mastermind. Bush got rid of him, thereby ridding Iran of its worst enemy. The balance in the Middle East was dramatically altered. Then the U.S. government, egged on by Israel and neo-conservative Near East experts, decided to boycott Islamic political parties.

Iran immediately assumed the role of guardian of the radical Sunni movement. Iran was transformed into the Gulf’s dominant power, challenger of Israel and the West, protector of Hamas and friend to the man on the street in the Arab world – that’s what those conservative ideologues managed to accomplish. And now they presume to tell us that the regime in Tehran is a deadly threat to the civilized world.

Barack Obama’s new direction is convincing because it doesn’t seek to demonize Iran’s government and its theocratic system. It is testing Tehran’s common sense and is not attempting, as Bush did, to outdo President Ahmedinejad’s radicalism. Behind Obama’s direction stands a sober view of the nation and its dimensions.

Iran has fewer inhabitants then Turkey or Egypt. Its economy, therefore, compares to Turkey’s or Egypt’s as a prefab building compares to a skyscraper. Iran’s social problems grow by the day. It’s trump cards, the oil and gas industries, are useless during these days when oil sells for $35 a barrel. The currency reserves with which they might sponsor Hamas and Co. are rapidly melting away. The whole world eyes Iran’s nuclear program with suspicion while Israel’s nuclear program silently makes rapid advances. Iran can never hope to equal Israel’s nuclear deterrent capability. But even if Iran succeeds in getting nuclear weapons, that’s by no means an indication it would ever use them.

The former director of the German Institute for International and Security Affairs and now a journalist for “die Zeit,” Christoph Bertram, convincingly describes in his book “Partners, Not Enemies” a different Iran policy similar to the policy of deterrence during the Cold War. His points are still valid today. The argument that the Mullah regimes are radically religious and see an Armageddon scenario as glorious completely lacks substantiation. The ideologically blinded Soviet leaders and their underlings in Berlin also drew up blueprints for global destruction. But use of the weapons “threatened the existence of the user as well as the enemy,” Bertram writes. That certainty goes as well for the Iranians.

It’s therefore imperative that the West rejects the neo-conservative demonization of Iran. The German government has also gone too far down that path already. On the contrary, Berlin should encourage the USA and Israel to take Iran’s security concerns and it’s fear of encirclement seriously. Long lists of preconditions have to make way for new candor. Comprehensive discussions between the U.S. and Iran should include Iran’s role in Afghanistan and the Persian Gulf as well as bilateral issues and the Israeli-Palestinian problem. And, in coordination with the U.N, they must also include the Iranian nuclear program.

Iran must be given the impression that it will be taken seriously and not just condemned. Through these talks the world will quickly discover the source of Iran’s greatest strength over the past years: confrontation.