I hope this becomes the central foreign policy question of the campaign: What are the differences between Bush’s and Kerry’s approaches to Iran? One of our recent failings (and I readily include myself) has been, I think, to conceive of the “war on terror” in too abstract a way. We need to unpack the notion that one guy is “weak” and the other “strong” in the war or that one is more “unilateralist” the other less so – and ask hard practical questions of the candidates. Here are a few that spring immediately to mind: Do you consider Iran an enemy of the United States? How integral is the Tehran regime to the Jihadist terror network? How plausible is democratic government in Iraq with continued obstruction from Iran? How would you grapple with the imminence of an Iranian nuclear bomb? The truth is that, for all its rhetorical bluster, the Bush administration’s Iran policy has been all over the map. Michael Ledeen summed up the way the Bushies have responded to serious evidence of Iranian malice over the years:
You find half of bin Laden’s family and top assistants in Tehran? Not to worry, maybe the mullahs didn’t know. You discover that that 9/11 band crossed Iran and were assisted by the border guards and customs officials? Not to worry, that wasn’t necessarily the actual policy – this from the lips of the acting director of Central Intelligence on Fox News yesterday. Scores of Iranian intelligence agents are found in Iraq, some in the act of preparing bombs? Some bright bulb in the intelligence community puts out the line that Iran is actually helpful to us, and has actually restrained Hezbollah. We find Iranian involvement in the bombing of Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia? The evidence is quashed by the Saudis, with the complicity of State and large sectors of the intelligence community.
The usual suspects – Council on Foreign Relations, Scowcroft, et al – want detente. Others – like Ledeen – want a far more pointed and aggressive interventionism. I lean strongly toward Michael’s view, not only because I loathe the theocratic dictatorship in Tehran, but because I cannot see how we can truly turn the tide on Jihadist terror without grappling with the mullahs at the ideological and military center of it all. Fitting this piece into the post-Afghanistan, post-Iraq puzzle is perhaps the most important foreign policy challenge of the next few years. Let’s see if Kerry or Bush even cite it in their convention speeches. Apart from a general sense (belied by the past three years) that Bush would be tougher, I really don’t know where they both specifically stand. Shouldn’t we find out soon?
MORE MURDER: Here’s something that I’d like to find out, especially after yesterday’s carnage in Baghdad: what is now the ratio of Muslims to infidels murdered by the Jihadists over the last year? It’s hard not to believe that the major victims of the Islamist terror wave are now Muslims and Arabs. Eventually, I have to believe that will help us turn the tide of popular Arab opinion against the mullah-murderers. It already has had something of that effect in Iraq.
The Dish 