by Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n
Tribune Media Services<\/p>\n
T<\/span>he Iraq Study Group, prominent U.S. Senators and realist diplomats all want America to hold formal talks with the government of Iran. They think Tehran might help the United States disengage from Iraq and the general Middle East mess with dignity. That would be a grave error for a variety of reasons \u2014 the most important being that Iran is far shakier than we are.<\/p>\n The world of publicity-hungry Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is not expanding, but shrinking. Despite his supposedly populist credentials, his support at home and abroad will only further weaken as long as the United States continues its steady, calm and quiet pressure on him.<\/p>\n In Iran’s city council elections last week, moderate conservative and reformist candidates defeated Ahmadinejad’s vehemently anti-American slate of allies. At a recent public meeting, angry Iranian students \u2014 tired of theocratic lunacy and repression \u2014 shouted down their president.<\/p>\n By supporting terrorists in Iraq and Lebanon, enriching uranium and insanely threatening to destroy a nuclear Israel, Ahmadinejad is only alienating Iranians, who wonder where their once vast oil revenues went and how they can possibly pay for all these wild adventures.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, Ahmadinejad has invested little in the source of\u00a0his wealth \u2014 the oil infrastructure of Iran. Soon, even the country’s once-sure oil revenues will start to decline. And\u00a0that could be sooner than he thinks if the United Nations were to expand its recent economic sanctions in response to Ahmadinejad’s flagrant violation of nuclear non-proliferation accords.<\/p>\n So, as Iranians worry that their nation is becoming an international pariah and perhaps heading down the path of bankruptcy in the process, now is not the time for America to give in by offering direct talks with Ahmadinejad. That propaganda victory would only help him reclaim the legitimacy and stature that he is losing with his own people at home.<\/p>\n B<\/span>etter models to follow instead are our past long-term policies toward Muammar el-Qaddafi’s Libya and the Soviet Union of the 1980s. As long as Libya sponsored terrorism and attacked Westerners, we kept clear, and boycotted the regime. Only in 2003, when the Libyans unilaterally gave up a substantial program of weapons of mass destruction, agreed not to violate nuclear proliferation accords and renounced terrorism did we agree to normalize relations.<\/p>\n In other words, “talking with” or “engaging” Libya did not bring about this remarkable change in attitude within the Libyan government. In contrast, tough American principles, economic coercion, ostracism and patience finally did.<\/p>\n The United States always maintained open channels with the Soviet Union. After all \u2014 unlike with Iran or Libya \u2014 we had little choice when thousands of nukes were pointed at us and Red Army troops were massed on the West German border.<\/p>\n But Ronald Reagan nevertheless embraced a radical shift in U.S. policy by actively appealing to Russian dissidents. He used the bully pulpit to expose the barbarity of the “evil empire” in the world court of ideas. All the while, Reagan further enhanced America’s military advantage over the Soviets to speed the regime’s collapse.<\/p>\n After the fall, courageous Russian dissidents from Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn to Natan Sharansky did not applaud Jimmy Carter, who had smugly pronounced the end of his own “inordinate fear” of such a murderous ideology. Instead, they preferred Reagan, who had challenged Soviet Premier Michael Gorbachev “to tear down” the Berlin Wall. America came out ahead when we were on the side of people yearning for change rather than coddling the regime trying to stop it.<\/p>\n The larger Middle East that surrounds Iran is in the throes of a messy, violent three-stage transition: from dictatorship to radicalism and chaos to constitutional government. Thugs and terrorists like Ahmadinejad (“We did not have a revolution in order to have democracy”) want it to stop and return to the old world before Sept. 11.<\/p>\n In similar fashion, there are also terrible aftershocks in Afghanistan and Iraq, but the old authoritarian rules of Saddam and the Taliban are over. So perhaps is the Syrian colonization of Lebanon. Yasser Arafat is gone in the Middle East, and his successors are fighting each other more than they are Israel.<\/p>\n In all this chaos \u2014 which will take years to settle \u2014 the United States needs to stick to its principles. Neither immediate military intervention nor dialogue with Iran is the answer. Instead, we must just\u00a0keep up the pressure\u00a0on the trash-talking Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who is far weaker than he lets on.<\/p>\n \u00a92007 Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services The Iraq Study Group, prominent U.S. Senators and realist diplomats all want America to hold formal talks with the government of Iran. They think Tehran might help the United States disengage from Iraq and the general Middle East mess with dignity. That would be a grave error for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[762],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-Y1","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":10417,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/10417-2\/","url_meta":{"origin":3721,"position":0},"title":"\u201cPushing Back\u201d Iran by Reuel\u2026","author":"victorhanson","date":"July 26, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"\u201cPushing Back\u201d Iran by Reuel Marc Gerecht Image credit:Poster Collection, US3436, Hoover Institution Archives. On both the left and the right, there is a consensus in Washington that the United States needs to \u201cpush back\u201d against the Islamic Republic\u2019s nefarious actions in the Levant, Iraq, and Yemen. The clerical regime\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Strategika"","block_context":{"text":"Strategika","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/strategika\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4001,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/give-iran-some-rope\/","url_meta":{"origin":3721,"position":1},"title":"Give Iran Some Rope","author":"victorhanson","date":"May 8, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"What is to be done about a nuclear Iran? by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services The debate in the U.S. over how to contend with Iran as it pursues nuclear weapons goes like this: Many conservatives worry that the Bush administration \u2014 stung by the backlash over Iraq and\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "May 2006"","block_context":{"text":"May 2006","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2006\/may-2006\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3546,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/dont-bomb-bomb-iran\/","url_meta":{"origin":3721,"position":2},"title":"Don’t Bomb, Bomb Iran","author":"victorhanson","date":"August 31, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"For now, we should avoid smoking Tehran. by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online There\u2019s been ever more talk on Iran. President Bush \u2014 worried about both Americans being killed by Iranian mines in Iraq, and Tehran\u2019s progress toward uranium enrichment \u2014 is ratcheting up the rhetoric. But so\u00a0mirabile dictu\u00a0is\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "August 2007"","block_context":{"text":"August 2007","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2007\/august-2007\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3468,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/all-mixed-up-over-iran\/","url_meta":{"origin":3721,"position":3},"title":"All Mixed-up Over Iran","author":"victorhanson","date":"December 17, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services Last week's U.S. National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) states, with \"high confidence,\" that Iran quit trying to get a nuclear bomb in late 2003. That's exactly the opposite of what the NIE reported just two years ago, when it claimed Iran's ruling mullahs were\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "December 2007"","block_context":{"text":"December 2007","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2007\/december-2007\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3729,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/talking-to-iran-moral-and-strategic-mistake\/","url_meta":{"origin":3721,"position":4},"title":"Talking to Iran: Moral and Strategic Mistake","author":"victorhanson","date":"December 18, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services One of the many bizarre recommendations in the recently released report from the bipartisan Iraq Study Group is the call to talk with Iran. A formal dialogue with the present Iranian leadership is, for a number of reasons, as misguided as it is\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "December 2006"","block_context":{"text":"December 2006","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2006\/december-2006\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3501,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/so-whos-afraid-of-an-iranian-bomb\/","url_meta":{"origin":3721,"position":5},"title":"So Who’s Afraid of an Iranian Bomb?","author":"victorhanson","date":"October 29, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services At first glance, it would seem a straightforward thing to stop a relatively weak but volatile Iran from obtaining a nuclear bomb. It would also seem to be something a concerned world community would be actively working to do. 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