WASHINGTON, Dec. 8 (UPI) -- "We cannot allow Iran to get a nuclear weapon. It would be a game-changer in the region. Not only would it threaten Israel, our strongest ally in the region and one of our strongest allies in the world, but it would also create a possibility of nuclear weapons falling into the hands of terrorists. And so it's unacceptable. And I will do everything that's required to prevent it. And we will never take military options off the table."
-- Barack Obama, second presidential debate
President-elect Obama, you are right that the United States cannot allow Iran to attain a nuclear weapon. Your statement during the second presidential debate indicates that you appreciate the unacceptable dangers posed by a nuclear-capable Iran. But statements like the following indicate a lack of understanding about the past record of failed attempts to negotiate with Iran:
Question: Would you be willing to meet separately, without precondition, during the first year of your administration, in Washington or anywhere else, with the leaders of Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Cuba and North Korea, in order to bridge the gap that divides our countries?
Obama: I would.
Your administration must learn from the experience of previous administrations and European governments that have sought negotiations with Iran. The diplomatic path is not promising. Iran has strongly resisted international efforts to pressure it to abide by its legal commitments under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and halt its suspect nuclear activities. Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, defiantly proclaimed last year that "Iran has obtained the technology to produce nuclear fuel, and Iran's move is like a train ... which has no brake and no reverse gear."
The diplomatic route would be more promising if the regime in Tehran were motivated primarily by a desire to advance Iran's national interests and promote the welfare of its people, but Iran's revolutionary Islamist regime is more interested in maintaining a brutal grip on power and spreading Islamist revolution.
Ahmadinejad rose through the ranks of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, which was created after Iran's 1979 revolution to defend and promote Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's radical vision of revolutionary Shiite Islam, and is committed to returning to the ideological purity of the revolution's early years.
But we must be careful not to personalize the problem. Iran's nuclear program began under President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and flourished under President Mohammad Khatami. Both were considered "moderates," extolled by some observers as leaders with whom the West could do business, but both also practiced diplomacy by taqiyyah, which is a religiously sanctioned form of dissimulation or duplicity.
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(Part 2: The dangers of meeting Ahmadinejad without preconditions)
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(James Phillips is senior research fellow for Middle Eastern affairs in the Douglas and Sarah Allison Center for Foreign Policy Studies, a division of the Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Institute for International Studies, and Peter Brookes is senior fellow for national security affairs in the Davis Institute at the Heritage Foundation.)
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(United Press International's "Outside View" commentaries are written by outside contributors who specialize in a variety of important issues. The views expressed do not necessarily reflect those of United Press International. In the interests of creating an open forum, original submissions are invited.)
