29 July 2015
Thinking Again on
Iran
The outrageous essay by Melanie Sturm in the July 26, 2015 Steamboat
Pilot & Today tries to discredit the recent sanctions-ending accord the
U.S. and Western powers have negotiated with Iran by falsely accusing its
leaders (the Ayatollahs) of genocide and comparing the agreement to famously exaggerated
failures to win impossible concessions from the mad national leaders of Nazi
Germany and isolated North Korea.
Fighting a war with a neighboring country like Iraq or
supporting a proxy battle by a politically sympathetic organization like
Hezbollah in Lebanon do not constitute genocide. All wars end up killing people.
It is not true that the Munich or Pyongyang Agreements led
to war. WWII was inevitable and the Kim
Il Sung regime and its successors are only dangerous to their own people. No harm was done by the agreements negotiated
by Chamberlain and Clinton. In fact, to
the extent that their enemies believed that the British and Americans actually
felt more at ease, those adversaries might have been lulled into rash actions
that only contribute to ultimate defeat.
This may be the case with regard to the nuclear deal with
Iran. The terms of that agreement buy up
to 10, 15 years or more before particular mass destruction weapons are added to
Iran’s arsenal. That’s better than the
possibility of immediate proliferation.
Of course, it will require vigilant monitoring—but the words of one of
Ms. Sturm’s heroes, Ronald Reagan, “Trust but Verify” apply to the nuclear deal
with Iran as much as to any other diplomatic agreement.
Moreover, the accord recognizes the fact that in today’s
world it is futile to seek a commitment from a totally foreign culture, like
the Shia Muslim regime that currently governs Iran, to accept the same goals
that the West (even including Russia) has set for itself. The West can no longer ignore other
civilizations in calculating the common welfare. Technology has made all ideologies
compelling. Until the people of Iran
change the rule of their country to a system that is more consistent with the
values of the West, we will have to accept that Iran does not want to “rejoin
the civilized world.” Its value system
defines the world in which it wishes to exist very differently.
