Yes, we in fact ask that you look past our history with Iran back to the Mossadegh coup and the good times with the Shah's secret police, which we national security experts cared ever so much about... Tell those gay teenagers they ain't seen nothing yet until America Abroad is through with them.

Time is up on the world dominance game. It doesn't work.

I have no fondness whatever for the regime in Iran, but the United States has invaded the nations on either side of it, has surrounded it with weapons including nuclear weapons, threatens it every other day of the week, and refuses its overtures. Why would Iran not assume that the only way it has any hope of defending itself is via the acquisition of nuclear weapons?

I do not see how Europe can undo what has been done or how it can dissuade Iran when Iran must assume that it will be attacked regardless of what it does or does not do. I do not know if that is true, but how could they think otherwise?

global citizen

If you think that stoning of adulterers and homosexuals is outrageous, wait untile the stoners will be able to do it with nukes!

If I understand Rachel correctly, we should ask Europeans to use less oil to (a) pressure the ME regimes to behave better, (b) let us get cheaper gas for our SUVs.

Perhaps the message to European liberals got garbled, but I think that we seriously need Plan B. Here it is:

make such a crapfantastic failure in Iraq that any Iranian need for nukes will be obviated. If needed, we can put it in writing: in return for carte blanche in Iraq, and guaranteed supplies from Russia and one other alternative supplier, Iran forgoes any uranium enrichment on its own.

Europe responds:

Dear Rachel,

Thanks. Our number one request is that you stop lecturing and start listening. So let's do a dry-run with this letter.

If we may, let's work through the questionable assertions in your letter.

You claim Iraq was Iran's "most formidable enemy on its Western flank". Technically, when you list the countries that border Iran to the West, you might be right. But surely we can agree that such overblown rhetoric regarding Saddam is a bit passe. And it re-opens old wounds, so for your own sake, let's not go there.

Secondly, we don't much like your President, we think his policies are wrong-headed, but we wouldn't label him a friend of the Ayatollahs. Apart from the fact it's a transparent and shameless suck-up to us, it's just more silly rhetoric, the kind that does more harm than good.

Thirdly, there was a power vacuum in Afghanistan before we (as in, NATO) invaded, and there will remain a power vacuum of sorts until the Karzai government gains control over the whole country. But the key issue here is that we are with you in this project. Thus when you point fingers about the shortcomings in Afghanistan, we actually feel like you are blaming us too. So, you know, another reason to be careful about throwing elbows.

Fourth, Iran's ratings boost has passed us by. You know, the Shi'a-Sunni bloodfest playing out in Iraq, is kind of emblematic of the Shi'a-Sunni rivalry across the region. We don't see the mad mullahs of Saudi or Egypt dry-humping the Ayatollahs, any more than we imagined Moqtadr sharing a cold one with Saddam before he got the noose.

Fifth, we know Iran's human rights record sucks. Seriously. We often write the reports that you wave around as evidence. So your moral blackmail is really as silly as it is misplaced in an area such as non-proliferation.

Sixth, economic sanctions alone won't stop Iran from acquiring a nuke. We know this from our experience with rogue regimes such as North Korea and (apartheid) South Africa. Our great worry is that you - still - don't understand this.

The problem is not just your messenger. It is your message also. It's all schtick, no carrot. Yes, you read that correctly.

Seventh, Russia is interested in containing radical Islam. Putin might take a mafia-like approach to the challenge, but it does matter to him. Chechnya ring a bell? Beslan? It's just one of the areas we have leverage with Russia, who despite your apocalyptic narrative, do recognize areas of common interest with us.

Eighth, you suggest now is the time "Europe can show its world player status" and that we demonstrate we are an "indispensable continent". Is this your idea of a diplomatic carrot? Firstly, it's as tangible as a Hollywood air-kiss, and secondly, we already think we are pretty important. So your offer to polish our badge is cute in a sycophantic way, but basically a bit lame. We're in the serious business of non-proliferation, not measuring who has the largest biceps.

Ninth, you talk about European steadfastness. That's correct, we are steadfastly committed to a diplomatic solution. So long as you are committed to diplomacy, you've got yourself a partner.

Tenth, we hear as well that your war-mongers have Iran in their cross-hairs. But we also understand that you have a Constitution that only permits Congress to declare war. As your side now controls Congress, we would suggest that the onus on preventing unilateral attacks by your side on Iran - an act of war - rests primarily with you. We hope that's not asking too much.

In summary then, you know where we stand. You're either with diplomacy or against it. And if you are with diplomacy, you listen to us, and you listen to James Baker.

We wish you well.

I worry about a nuclear Iran but I worry about Bush's messianic fantasties a lot more.

Sorry about the double post. Need more coffee.

It would weaken Iran, but it would increase demand, accelerate global warming and all but guarantee catastrophic global economic failure in twenty or thirty years bercause we will have failed to accelerate a transition away from fossil fuels before dsupplies are curtailed. Your observation might be valid if driving down prices at the pump were accompanied by massive taxes on end use.

global citizen

Re: Tenth, we hear as well that your war-mongers have Iran in their cross-hairs

I wouldn't worry about this too much. Contrary to neo-con wet dreams America is not infinitely powerful and in fcat isp retty much at the limit of its military might now. The Bush administration is capabel of nothing more than symbolic gestures. This is why they have been such a pussycat on both Iran and North Korea, rediscivering the virtues of multilateralism. Yes, they occasionally talk big, but the stick they now carry is the size of a toothpick.

But it failed to suggest a way to curb Iran's nuclear ambitions--which really should worry Democrats as much as Republicans if not more--since we actually CARE about the women, homosexuals, and minorities whose repression will continue under a strengthened Iranian religious dictatorship. (Not to mention the end of the nonproliferation regime we fought so hard to create).

Can someone explain to me why any nation that is not already a member of the nuclear club would support nonproliferation, especially if that nation had already been singled out as a target by the United States? How do non-nuclear countries benefit from a regime where their enemies can have nuclear weapons, but they can't?

To give a country like this even more power to oppress its own people with impunity is repugnant.

Nuclear weapons are neither necessary nor sufficient for a nation to run mechanisms of oppression against its own people. Ask the former Soviet Union. The only way this comment makes sense is if you are planning to "liberate" Iran at gunpoint.

By the way, most moderates and liberals within Iran are still Iranian patriots, and still support the Iranian nuclear program, as you would if you were in their position. In fact, the unreasonable U.S. position has led to a strengthening of the hardliners' position within Iran.

Understanding the Golden Rule seems to be a real problem with many American foreign policy commentators. There's a congenital inability to put oneself in the other side's shoes.

But with Russia uninterested in protecting Iranians from further abuse at the hands of religious radicals, and equally uninspired to shield Europe from nuclear fallout, it lands on the laps of Europe to do the right thing and recall the values they are known for worldwide.

How, exactly, do you expect Europe to be subject to "nuclear fallout"? This is just paranoid.

"Islam Inc. runs the place with true medieval zeal."
Apparently you know nothing about the place.
Google Shirin Abadi, Abbas Kiarostami, Moshen Makhmalbaf and his daughter
Samira Google: "Iranian Cinema Cannes." Research the literary debates on Iranian blogs [more interesting then ours]. See "Taste of Cherry" or "The Apple.

Tehran is not the West Bank. and Shirin Ebadi does not want your condescension:

It's the people of Iran that have to gain their own freedom and human rights improvements. Military action or other punishments against Iran will make the situation for political reformists and human rights advocates in Iran a lot more difficult. I don't think that Iranian human rights advocates need help of that sort from the governments of the West. But I expect people in the West to support freedom-seekers in Iran.

Opinions are not like assholes. You don't earn an asshole, you get it for free.

Dan K my view is quite a bit more negative than yours. The neocons do not have an audience any more with the American people; after Iraq their credibility among thinking people (exclude here the mainstream media, the national security experts at America Abroad with their "concerts" and symphonies to cover the cacophony of their interventionist warhawk policies) is zero or lower. What will be used to justify war with Iran is naked fear, stampeding the public with sensational false lies and a propaganda thrust that will have to be sustained by the Washington Post and the broadcast and cable news and the illiterati that populate our pathetic commentary. What is my point? If so, then the "measured" responses of Kleinfeld which oh so sagaciously recognize the dire and extreme threat of Iran are enablers of the despicable and destructive politics of the authoritarian right. They are already playing the same role that Daalder, with his symbiotic relationship with PNAC, and the rest of the gang over at America Abroad played before Iraq to help along this abomination. If we play Kleinfeld's game, they will have their third war shortly. The way to stop the Iran war is to expose and oppose all the lies and false premises, the foundation on which this war is now being based. This is done admirably by many posters here, by Wes Clark, by many in the Democratic Party which is not known for outspokenness. Measure that against what Kleinfeld proposes. Her proposal is part and parcel of suckering us into eventual support for the military action. Demonize Iran sufficiently and you can justify almost anything. She doesn't support talking directly to the Iranians because that gets in the way of the demonization and propaganda process. That is why instead we have the suffering of women and homosexuals and minorities brought before the liberal audience; the babies in incubators are saved for the pro-life crowd.

And now for some facts that Rachael prefers not to mention in her rush raise hysteria:

From Washington Blade:

But the circumstances that triggered the executions are now being questioned by several human rights groups, which claim the teenagers, Mahmoud Asgari and Ayaz Marhoni, may not have been killed for being gay....

It appears that reports claiming the boys were executed for being gay originated with the National Council of Resistance of Iran, an opposition group that is classified as a terrorist organization by the U.S. State Department....

"It was not a gay case," said Paula Ettelbrick, executive director of the International Gay & Lesbian Human Rights Commission, taking issue with the Human Rights Campaign's statement that was quick to condemn the execution as anti-gay.

"We would welcome HRC's involvement in demanding that our government speak out on human rights violations. It was just the wrong case," she said.

http://www.washblade.com/thelatest/thelatest.cfm?blog_id=1786

And

From Gay City News:

As the beginning of the week, 365gay.com posted an article claiming
that a gay man had been executed in Arak on August 16, and cited as its
source the British newspaper The Observer. But, when this reporter
reached the author of The Observer's article, the newspaper's
social affairs editor Jamie Doward, he said that the newspaper had no
independent source for his article's one sentence reference to this
new execution, and that he obtained the information from a private
e-mail he received from the British gay rights group OutRage...

When this reporter tried to confirm from Iranian sources the reports
that had appeared in The Observer and the French bulletin, an
underground Tehran 'zine for gays published in Farsi-whose editors
requested, out of fear, that neither their names nor that of their
publication be cited-replied that a man had been hanged in Arak's
public square on August 16, but that they had no information as to his
sexuality.

More: http://www.ukgaynews.org.uk/Archive/2005aug/0102.htm

But of course since Rachael is so concerned about human rights, she'll insist that the Europeans support a US attack on Israel, a country where ethnic cleansing, apartheid and racism is official policy and shelling families as they picnic on beaches is routine - right? Right?? Rachael, I'm talking to you!

"I was afraid to go to school, because of the little anti-Semites who used to lay in ambush on the way and beat us up. How is that different from a Palestinian child in Hebron?...It is inconceivable for the memory of Auschwitz to warrant ignoring the fact that there are Jews among us who behave today towards Palestinians just like German, Hungarian, Polish and other anti-Semites behaved towards Jews," he said. "

I hadn't realized that Ms. Kleinfeld was raising a human rights agenda; probably I was giving the part where she was urging united action against Iran more weight. I do not like the human rights abuses in Iran. There are very very grave human rights abuses also at Guantanamo. These are truly grave and distressing. Abu Ghraib is an abomination. Torture and rendition are abominations. Saudi Arabia is one of the most disgusting regimes (in terms of human rights) on the planet. Forgive me, but where in Ms.Kleinfeld's are the human rights issues addressed?

The concern for human rights is warranted but the reality is the US sacrificed the Iranian gays and women in a calculated decision when it invaded Iraq. Actions have consequences.There are no "take backs".When Mrs.Kleinfeld talks about Israeli nuclear disarmament (and US) she will present a reasonable position from which to engage the Iranians. Joschka Fischer made the same pitch in August, speaking to the Iranian Center for Strategic research, and also failed to address Israeli nukes or US hegemonic ambitions, including space.

Incidentally, the Saudi Arabia that Rachel is asking to Europe to ally with against Iran is hardly a place for any gay teenagers to live. But yet again we see the double standard of "human rights" at work...

Let's see: religious minorities persecuted, apostates from Islam put to death, homosexuals, even minors, put to death, women forced into religious garb, corrupt clergy getting rich off the people, and of course the Jews blamed for everything and anything that goes amiss. Yep, sounds just the medieval "Good old days" to me.

"I find it a bit odd too that people who (presukably) fret mightily about the influence of Mssrs Robertson, Dobson et al on US politics are just hunk-dory with foreign theocrats whose politics is straight out of the 8th century."

I find it strange that you seem not to comprehend that one has somewhat different reactions when one's own country has the problem than when the offense is in another country. I do not like theocrats of any stripe, but I am more upset with them here than in Tehran; I do not like torture done by any country but I am more upset when it is Americans doing it and it is sanctioned by the President and the courts. There are several reasons but mostly I hopefully can do more about it here than in Tehran and secondly I do not fully know how the people who live under these theocrats feel. I will be happiest when they are gone and the local theocrats with them. But I sure do not view them as any reason for conflict with Iran.

Where was this concern for human rights when the Shah was in power?

Nor is it obvious that the satisfaction of its "nuclear ambitions" would strengthen Iran's "religious dictatorship."

I don't know how oil can be reduced. Oil supply could be. I thought the sentence was incomplete and was supposed to have read 'can apply presure by reducing oil [price] on the world market'.

The tragedy with America is not that the Bush administration ascended to power, nor that it was re-elected.

The tragedy is that Rachel's ilk is the alternative.

/Tuomas

Just because you have a tribalistic mindset doesn't mean others do.
In fact Iranian Jews PREFER Tehran to Tel-Aviv:

A campaign to convince Iran’s 25,000 Jews to flee the country has stalled, with most opting to stay in their native homeland despite President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s Holocaust denial and anti-Israeli speeches...

"After he immigrated to Israel two years ago, said the short man with dark circles under his eyes, his life became increasingly miserable...Ishak is not the only recent immigrant who prefers his Islamic birthplace to his Jewish homeland. Jerusalem's Jaffa Road and Rehov Ben-Yehuda are lined with shopkeepers originally from Iran who say they are desperate to go back - some to visit, some to live."

And . . .

It comes as a surprise to many visitors to discover that Iran, a country so hostile to Israel and with a reputation for intolerance, is home to a small but vibrant Jewish community that is an officially recognized religious minority under Iran's 1979 Islamic Constitution.

Tehran has 11 functioning synagogues, many of them with Hebrew schools. It has two kosher restaurants, and a Jewish hospital, an old-age home and a cemetery. There is a Jewish representative in the Iranian parliament. There is a Jewish library with 20,000 titles, its reading room decorated with a photograph of the Ayatollah Khomeini.

In fact historically Jews have come to Iran as refugees. During WWII, Iranian diplomats offered hundreds of Iranian passports to European Jews and thus saved their lives. And when the Nazi killing machines began their slaughter of innocent Polish Jews, 1388 Jews, including 871 children were moved to Tehran where they lived in relative safety till they moved to Israel. They are called “Tehran Children.”

"The friendly Persian people crowded round the buses shouting what must have been words of welcome and pushed gifts of dates, nuts, roasted peas with raisins and juicy pomegranates through the open windows"

BBC News

Twenty postgraduate students are sitting in a plush modern classroom listening to a lecture on environmental management at the Islamic Azad University - a private institution with 1.6 million students across Iran. The room is darkened so the students can watch the lecturer's slide show comparing energy consumption around the world.
Three quarters of the students in this class are women - the five men in the class are huddled together in a corner.
As Professor Majid Abbaspour explains, this is a far cry from the past:
"When I was doing my bachelor's degree in Iran we had a class of 60 in mechanical engineering with only four women.
"Now the number has changed a lot - I think this may be because the attitudes of families have changed."
Well over half of university students in Iran are now women. In the applied physics department of Azad University 70% of the graduates are women - a statistic which would make many universities in the West proud.

Re: Since this was published, literacy rates and rates of women attending university have significantly improved

Yes, and Mussolini made the trains run on time, and Stalin's regime sponsored a vast increase in Russian literacy rates, and Hitler oversaw the creation of the Volkswagon.
Good grief what are you people smoking?
It's one thing to oppose the feckless, foolish, asinine foreign policy of the Bush administration. But something else again to sing the praises of a gang of thuggish, reactionary tyrants. I thought this was a liberal blog site, not a place where sympathy would run deep for theocracy.

If part of the reason for confronting Iran, and for refusing to engage in direct diplomacy with Iran, is the human rights situation in that country, then it is important to have as accurate and undistorted a picture of that human rights situation as possible.

Rachel seems perfectly willing to work with Saudi Arabia in order to confront Iran - allegedly because of concerns about human rights in Iran. Yet there are several reasons to think that the human rights situation in Iran is actually significantly better than the human rights situation in Saudi Arabia, especially the human rights situation regarding women. One doesn't have to "sing the praises" of Iran to grasp this.

Several of our current allies in the region seem very eager to prevent the US from opening up diplomatic relations with Iran, and are pushing a confrontational hard line. Why is that? My view is that these current allies are not worried that US diplomacy will fail. Rather they are worried that it will succeed. They are worried that the US diplomacy with Iran will successfully satisfy US security concerns, and also achieve some success in developing a coordinated policy toward Iraq. And they are worried that as a result their own position and influence as the US's special friends in the Middle East will be diminished.

Several of our current allies in the region seem very eager to prevent the US from opening up diplomatic relations with Iran... they are worried that it will succeed. ..And they are worried that as a result their own position and influence as the US's special friends in the Middle East will be diminished.

BINGO!

Read this:

But it wasn’t Iran that turned the Israeli-Iranian cold war warm – it was Israel...The Israeli reversal on Iran was partially motivated by the fear that its strategic importance would diminish significantly in the post-cold war middle east if the then president (1989-97) Hashemi Rafsanjani’s outreach to the Bush Sr administration was successful.

You're going to have to get over your coldwar analogies. The simple fact is that the gov't in Iran is not simply a "gang of thuggish tyrants" and neither is the population chafing to overthrow the regime, as much as the neocons love to portray things that way.

Do you have any idea how many people voted for Ahmadinejad and not for his liberal opponent in the presidential elections? People who could have simply stayed home and not voted at all?

However, if you are concerned about gangs of thuggish tyrants, why not pay attention to some of the US allies in the region. Azerbaijan comes to mind, as do many of the US's allies among the so-called "moderate" Arab states not to mention Israel when it comes to Palestinians. When it comes to the developing world we seem to get along with thuggish tyranical leaders better than elected ones.

Perhaps the EU and the US could make a deal with each other:

The EU implements economic sanctions against Iran, which would cost us a lot.
And in return: the US engages in serious, direct and unconditional negotiations with Iran.

I am German and in favor of sanctions against Iran, although this will cost us a lot due to the huge government security guarantees for a lot of investment in Iran.

I think Washington should pay closer attention to these stories: "India Helps Iran Build the Bomb, While the White House Looks the Other Way" and "Military Surplus Parts Illegally Find Their Way to Iran, U.S. Officials Say"

I have blogged about your letter to Europeans and about the European refusal to cut trade and the US refusal to to negotiate with Iran directly.

My blog: Atlantic Review - A press digest on transatlantic affairs edited by three German Fulbright Alumni

Credibility of the U.S. abroad is at an all time low.
What would you think of a nation which acts unilaterally and mocks the U.N. while purporting to support it - and chastises nations for violations of human tights while keeping a higher percentage of its population in jail than anyone else.
All this while running an obscene war budget ( called defense, uh-huh ), engaging in forays into other peoples' territories for target practice with lovely things like phosphorous grenades, running 'black ops' execution details with mercs ( in the style of El Salvador ), kidnapping people worldwide, running torture establishments, and stockpiling WMD like there's no tomorrow.
I could go on but that's part of my take on Amerika.-*-The Orwell thing is reducible to simple terms : Liar.

Your clip about the recognition of the difficulty of being a Palestinian child in Hebron brought to memory the news story about the two young boys -- 8 or 9 -- as I recall who wandered down a gully away from a Jewish settlement and were stoned to death a couple of decades back. Things are a matter of degree.

Your remarks on Israel are repeatedly over the top and hence non-persuasive:

ethnic cleansing: when, where and how?

Apartheid: preference for a two state versus a one state solution? Failure to enable the Palestinians from creating a state capable of being a launching pad for the eradication of Israel? (Air rights, for example?)

racism as official policy: in what way -- accepting Jewish refugees and not Muslim ones ? -- what precisely are you referring to?
Or does the argument that the Arab viewpoint is not anti-Semitic because we are all Semites here only apply to the Arab side? Religious favoritism would be closer to the mark, yes?

This said, you are right in many of your other posts here to draw attention to the realities concerning Iranian life. While I do not believe that any woman should be constrained to wear a Chador if the choice is a Chador plus a university degree or no degree and no Chador, any sane calculation opts for the university degree.

Since the clerics have a veto power both over who can run for the Legislature and what it can do, Iran has at best a limited democracy.

Some of Iran's bigots, especially any and all Holocaust deniers, are even scarier than ours.

You know Isarel doesn't have the death penalty and doesn't "judicially" execute children.....it just engages in targeted killings, i.e., non-judicial murder, and sends missiles into civilian neighborhoods, routinely killing children. Does anyone know how many Palestinian children the IDF has murdered in just the last three months?