Anyone wanting to take the moral temperature of the post-American world President Obama wants to create only had to drop by the United Nations last Thursday afternoon.
There he would have seen British prime minister David Cameron sitting down with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani to ask — no, beg him to join the misbegotten coalition Obama has assembled against the Islamic State. Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry had already extended the invitation to Iran to join, and Iran had already refused. Now it was Cameron's turn.
He may think this will burnish his image as a master diplomat after convincing the Scots not to demand independence. Instead, he’s only opened one more sordid chapter in the most remarkable story of how Iran, a vicious rogue nation and state sponsor of terrorism — not to mention beacon of anti-Semitism — has become the rising dominant power in the region, and is now being blatantly courted as an ally by the West.
Remarkable is one word for it; obscene might be another. Whatever word you choose, the long-term implications of embracing Iran are nearly all bad for the region and for the United States.
Even more strikingly, this change in Iran’s international status comes only two years after the regime in Tehran was reeling from sanctions that had largely cut off its access to Western banks and capital, and above all, Western customers of its oil. Iran’s oil output plummeted by nearly half; gasoline prices in the country soared into the stratosphere while the economy teetered on bankruptcy. The country’s natural gas industry (Iran’s gas reserves are among the biggest in the world) was in an extended state of collapse as Western companies and technicians packed up and left. Even China had agreed to abide by some modified sanctions against Iran, all in order to force the mullahs to halt their illegal nuclear weapons program.
Now today China is importing record amounts of oil from Iran while Western companies are rushing back to its oil and gas fields. Iran is the chief protector and patron of Syria, and also Iraq. Moreover, Iran’s bomb is more on track than ever. Indeed, its uranium enrichment program is close to 70 percent of what’s required — and no one now seriously believes they can be stopped from making a bomb, or putting it on the long-range ballistic missiles they continue to develop.
So what happened? John Kerry’s disastrous deal struck in Geneva last year lifting key sanctions against Iran in exchange for promises to cut back on the enrichment process — a promise premier Hassan Rouhani never intended to keep—is only symptomatic of a much larger delusion. This is that Iran can be persuaded to become a constructive actor in the Middle East if only the United States will offer enough carrots including lifting sanctions, and forswear the sticks, including military strikes against the regime’s nuclear sites.
Many Russian experts had a similar delusion about the Soviet Union during the Cold War; it’s also the one that convinced Neville Chamberlain to sit down with Hitler at Munich. It holds that self-interest will trump ideology; that bad regimes are bad because they’ve been badly treated (Hitler had Versailles to complain about, after all; Tehran has the CIA plot against Prime Minister Mossadegh some sixty years ago) — and that evil ultimately isn’t evil.
Now we know better about Hitler, and about the former Soviet Union. Whether we learn the same about Iran before it’s too late, is going to be the major issue in the Middle East in the next decade — far more than the Islamic State.
In fact, even as the world’s attention has been distracted by the Islamic State, Iranian-backed Shia rebels scored a major victory in Yemen, and now control 17 of the country’s 21 provinces. Soon Tehran’s proxies will be poised on the border of Saudi Arabia, its arch rival for regional dominance. If anything gives Saudi Arabia a signal that it’s time to get its own atomic bomb, it won’t just be whether Iran finishes its enrichment process; it will also be a Yemen firmly in Tehran’s camp, and ready to foment revolt in the kingdom’s Shia provinces.
In short, win or lose against the Islamic State, the West’s outreach to Iran only sets the stage for more chaos in the Middle East — and more opportunities for Tehran to extend its power. The irony is that the West has a potential democratic ally in the region, one that really does have a stake in a peaceful, stable Middle East and in defeating terrorism — Israel.
Nevertheless, this administration and its NATO allies still insist on treating the Jewish state as the pariah, even as they know it will be Iran’s principal target once it gets its nuclear bomb.
The sight of Western leaders kissing the hem of Rouhani’s robe may be sickening, but it’s also understandable. When you lose your moral compass, your self-respect follows. Sadly, it’ll be a long time before the United States will get either one back.