Disarm Iran - without force - New York Daily News
- Amen to this article. This is what I've been saying the whole time. If I were Bush, I would want to think up the most humiliating punishment for Aghmagh-nejaad. The best punishment for that bozo would be fermenting a people's revolution. This so-called president of Iran will be taken from power and then forced to live out the rest of his days doing the most humiliating kinds of work. As I said below, because Aghmagh-nejaad can't take a joke I strongly believe that his best punishment should be putting him in a cage, preferably in a public park, and having men and women of all ages walk by and poke fun.
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My 444 days of captivity under Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini taught me plenty about the terrorist ambitions of a theocracy flailing away at international law.
So, when Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad announced Tuesday that Iran had successfully enriched uranium for the first time, I was among those who feared the nation could supply Al Qaeda or Hezbollah with a bomb.
But let's get real about what happened, how it happened, and how, using smart diplomacy rather than force, we can prevent still worse from happening now.
Make no mistake. The news out of Iran is a setback for the longstanding attempt to dissuade the country's officials from expanding the scale of its uranium enrichment program. But Ahmadinejad's bluster was more a political statement than a big step toward an atomic bomb.
And we arrived at this point because Secretary of State Rice failed to get the UN Security Council to step up and impose heavy sanctions on Iran.
The council criticized the Iranian nuclear program - but the statement was a watered-down compromise because Russia and China said they had no interest in imposing sanctions on Iran.
Now, the Iranian president's nationally televised stage show needs to be challenged - but not by bunker-busting bombs from the American military. This demands a reinvigorated and unrelenting UN Security Council program of aggressive diplomatic intervention that steadfastly supports the human rights movement in Iran.
This is the key to isolating the regime, weakening its totalitarian hold over the Iranian people and creating a united front of Iranians calling for a more open society.
Far more than military threats from a hated superpower, that would be Ahmadinejad's worst nightmare.
Ahmadinejad ran for the presidency of Iran on a platform of rejuvenating the revolutionary period of the Khomeini era. His nuclear sideshow is a convenient ploy to distract the unemployed poor from their own serious needs. Rattling sabers about using force - or actually using it before absolutely necessary - would only strengthen that ploy.
Alternatively, imagine the progress we could make by supporting human rights in Iran and exerting consistent diplomatic pressure. Think of Ahmadinejad in Tehran watching the U.S. surround Iran with a satellite Afghanistan on its east side, a destabilizing force (Iraq) on its west side and an American Navy constantly breathing down his throat in the Persian Gulf. While he is probably pleased to see the "world-eating" Americans are getting "their due," thanks to Iran's support of the Iraqi insurgency and its meddling in Shiite politics of Iraq, he can't help but feel growing unease in his own political living room.
Iran is not the first country to defy America by joining the nuclear club; the best recent example is North Korea. We don't like it, but we are living with it, as are its closest neighbors - the South Koreans, the Japanese and the Chinese. What we have to realize is that we are unable to control the world with our weaponry. Unless we use diplomacy and other forms of social, economic and diplomatic pressure more effectively, the best we can expect is the status quo.
Original Article
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My 444 days of captivity under Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini taught me plenty about the terrorist ambitions of a theocracy flailing away at international law.
So, when Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad announced Tuesday that Iran had successfully enriched uranium for the first time, I was among those who feared the nation could supply Al Qaeda or Hezbollah with a bomb.
But let's get real about what happened, how it happened, and how, using smart diplomacy rather than force, we can prevent still worse from happening now.
Make no mistake. The news out of Iran is a setback for the longstanding attempt to dissuade the country's officials from expanding the scale of its uranium enrichment program. But Ahmadinejad's bluster was more a political statement than a big step toward an atomic bomb.
And we arrived at this point because Secretary of State Rice failed to get the UN Security Council to step up and impose heavy sanctions on Iran.
The council criticized the Iranian nuclear program - but the statement was a watered-down compromise because Russia and China said they had no interest in imposing sanctions on Iran.
Now, the Iranian president's nationally televised stage show needs to be challenged - but not by bunker-busting bombs from the American military. This demands a reinvigorated and unrelenting UN Security Council program of aggressive diplomatic intervention that steadfastly supports the human rights movement in Iran.
This is the key to isolating the regime, weakening its totalitarian hold over the Iranian people and creating a united front of Iranians calling for a more open society.
Far more than military threats from a hated superpower, that would be Ahmadinejad's worst nightmare.
Ahmadinejad ran for the presidency of Iran on a platform of rejuvenating the revolutionary period of the Khomeini era. His nuclear sideshow is a convenient ploy to distract the unemployed poor from their own serious needs. Rattling sabers about using force - or actually using it before absolutely necessary - would only strengthen that ploy.
Alternatively, imagine the progress we could make by supporting human rights in Iran and exerting consistent diplomatic pressure. Think of Ahmadinejad in Tehran watching the U.S. surround Iran with a satellite Afghanistan on its east side, a destabilizing force (Iraq) on its west side and an American Navy constantly breathing down his throat in the Persian Gulf. While he is probably pleased to see the "world-eating" Americans are getting "their due," thanks to Iran's support of the Iraqi insurgency and its meddling in Shiite politics of Iraq, he can't help but feel growing unease in his own political living room.
Iran is not the first country to defy America by joining the nuclear club; the best recent example is North Korea. We don't like it, but we are living with it, as are its closest neighbors - the South Koreans, the Japanese and the Chinese. What we have to realize is that we are unable to control the world with our weaponry. Unless we use diplomacy and other forms of social, economic and diplomatic pressure more effectively, the best we can expect is the status quo.
Original Article
posted by Ruzbeh Hosseini at 6:08 AM
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