Talk with Iran’s Ayatollahs?

by Ambassador (ret.) Yoram Ettinger

“Talk-with-Iran was tried by successive US presidents, starting with Jimmy Carter. In 1980, [Iran’s] Mullahs signed an accord with Carter not to seize anymore American hostages in exchange for de-freezing Iranian assets…. Yet, to this day, Iran has always held American hostages – 14 today…. The Saudis tried to improve ties with the Khomeini regime. They helped organize the Islamic Summit in Teheran…, coordinated oil policies and granted Iran an unprecedented Haj [pilgrimage] quota. The reward was the [Ayatollahs/Hezbollah] June 1996 truck-bomb attack on the Dhahran Khobar Towers [19 US air force men and one Saudi murdered and 490 multi-nationals injured] and the ransacking of the Saudi Embassy and Consulates in Iran…. Turkey had a similar experience. It created a security commission with Iran and closed its borders to Iranians fleeing to exile… Iranian opposition figures were expelled…. The Mullahs repaid Turkey by granting the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK terrorists) bases in the Qandyl Mountain region just inside Iran. They also created a Turkish branch of Hezbollah…. (Amir Taheri, a leading expert on Iran and the Middle East, A Sharq al Awsat Saudi daily, February 22, 2019).

Since the 1978-1979 Iranian “Islamic Revolution,” most of European and USA foreign policy, media and academic establishments, and especially the architects of the 2015 nuclear agreement (JCPOA), have promoted accommodation with – not sanctions against – Iran’s Ayatollahs, irrespective of the Ayatollahs’ well-documented systematic track record:

*Exporting the “Islamic Revolution” throughout the Persian Gulf, the Arabian Peninsula, the Middle East and beyond, posing a clear, present and lethal threat to all pro-US Arab regimes;

*Perpetrating subversion and terrorism - directly and indirectly via proxies - in Saudi Arabia (e.g., Hasa and Qatif Shite-majority oil rich regions), Bahrain, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Yemen, Libya, Morocco, Nigeria, West and Central Africa, Europe, Latin America and beyond;

*Harnessing conventional and non-conventional (ballistic and nuclear) capabilities to advance the “Islamic Revolution,” with the 2015 JCPOA delaying (not abolishing) Iran’s nuclear capabilities by ten years; thus, providing a tailwind to Iran’s domination of the region without the need for a nuclear arsenal;

*Fighting the (Muslim) apostate and the (non-Muslim) infidel;

*Repressing the majority (e.g., 51% of global executions), while oppressing Iran’s ethnic minorities, which account for half of the population (Ahwazis, Kurds, Turks, Balochis, Turkmen, Qashqais, Caspeans and the Lor tribes);

*Conducting K-12 hate-education and hate-sermons in mosques, which reflect the Ayatollahs’ most authentic worldview;

*Leveraging Iran’s military involvement in Yemen’s civil war, in order to assume control of the Two oil-supply critical Straits of Bab al-Mandab (from the Indian Ocean to the Red Sea) and the Straits of Hormuz (Persian Gulf – Gulf of Oman - Indian Ocean; 20% of global oil exports).

Thus, Qasem Soleimani, the Commander of the Ayatollahs’ Quds Force, which oversees extraterritorial military and anti-Sunni subversive operations, threatening the US to close the Straits of Hormuz if Washington enforces new sanctions against Iran. “The Red Sea is no longer safe for US vessels…. We are the nation of martyrdom….”

How are Western democracies confronting Iran’s Ayatollahs?

The late British Prof. Eli Kedourie, who was a game-changing Middle East scientist, exposed fundamental fumbles in Western Middle East policy, in general, and Western policy toward Iran’s Ayatollahs, in particular:

“The Carter Administration was willing to see [the Shah] go…. [US] Ambassador Sullivan argued that Khomeini and the armed forces were anti-Communist….; that Khomeini would play a ‘Gandhi-like’ role; and that elections would be likely to produce a pro-Western Islamic republic. In Washington, there was a chorus of academic and official voices singing the praises of Khomeini…. Princeton University’s Richard Falk…[claimed that] Khomeini’s entourage were committed to a struggle against all forms of oppression…and strong belief in minority rights…. Khomeini’s Islamic Republic could be expected to have a doctrine of social justice at its core…flexible at interpreting the Koran…. The Islamic republic will be a stabilizing element geopolitically…. The State Department believed that Khomeini intended to set up a government drawn from moderate secular politicians, with Ayatollah Khomeini remaining in the background as a guiding political and spiritual force…. Assistant Secretary of State Harold Saunders declared that he did not sense a strong anti-American feeling among the [new] leaders of Iran…. [National Security Advisor] Brzezinski told [the new regime] that the US government is prepared to expand security, economic, political and intelligence relationships…. A profound and systematic misunderstanding of Khomeini and what he stood for….”

Does the US recognize the well-documented 1979-2019 ruthless Ayatollahs-reality, which has exposed the futility and the self-destructive practice of “talk-with-Iran”?! Or, is the US still trapped in a delusion, which has added fuel to the “Islamic Revolution,” posing a critical threat to global, regional and US national security, homeland security and economy?!