“Don’t Worry, We’ll Fail”
Is he the Administration’s “honest man,” or is Defense Secretary Gates sabotaging the President’s overtures to Iran? If the first, it speaks volumes about his influence in policy-making that Mr. Gates went abroad to tell our Middle Eastern friends that he expects no dramatic changes in U.S.-Iranian relations. If the second, well, sigh.
Is he the Administration’s “honest man,” or is Defense Secretary Gates sabotaging the President’s overtures to Iran? If the first, it speaks volumes about his influence in policy-making that Mr. Gates went abroad to tell our Middle Eastern friends that he expects no dramatic changes in U.S.-Iranian relations. If the second, well, sigh.
Egypt – along with Saudi Arabia and several of the Gulf States – has been worried that the Administration’s overtures to Iran would encourage Tehran to believe it could engage the United States without halting or slowing its nuclear program or its support of Islamic (Shi’ite and Sunni) terrorism in the region. Mr. Gates clearly meant to be reassuring.
According to published reports, Mr. Gates said in Cairo, “I believe that kind of prospect is very remote. We’ll just have to see how the Iranians respond to the offer from the president. Frankly, some of the first things that have happened as a result of the extension of that open hand have not been encouraging… To tell you the truth, I have been around long enough to see these efforts attempted before with no result. The question is whether circumstances in Iran have changed in such a way that with the administration offering an opportunity for contact that the Iranians are willing to take advantage of that opportunity.”
Mr. Gates said progress with Iran would come slowly, if at all. He probably reassured the wrong people.
Iran needs nothing so much as time – coupled with financial, energy and dual-use technology assistance from Germany, North Korea, China and Turkey (and gasoline provided by European refineries) – to advance its plans both for nuclear capability and the destabilization of rival countries. (Rival countries include not only Israel, but also Saudi Arabia and Egypt for historical and religious reasons.) The U.S. rebuke of Israel for considering a military option, coupled with the President’s comments that only if his open hand policy failed would the United States consider additional sanctions against Tehran, plus Mr. Gates’s public acknowledgement that progress would be slow, should reassure the mullahs that everything is on track.
Mr. Gates’s long experience in Washington gives him good reason to be skeptical of Iran; we concur in his assessment. But he works for President Obama now, who probably believes that his encouragement of Tehran will, indeed, work. There is no reason to believe the President is being cynical when he says he wants to change the paradigm of U.S.-Iranian relations. We think the policy is wrong – but we don’t think the President is insincere. What does the President think the Iranians think when the President makes them an offer with one hand and his defense secretary dooms the initiative in the capital of a chief rival?
The Iranians aren’t cynical either. They are most straightforward in their belief that the Revolution is succeeding and that their twin goals – nuclear capability and Persian Shi’ite domination of the region – are the reason they are on this earth. The apparent split within the Administration, plus the split between the United States and its Middle Eastern allies including Israel, leaves the West in a weakened position.