Engaging Iran, Promoting Peace: APN Talking Points
President Obama should engage Iran diplomatically.
President George W. Bush adopted a strategy toward Iran based on trying to threaten, browbeat and sanction Iran into submission. This strategy failed to stop Iran's nuclear program or end its reckless meddling in the region.
Serious,
sustained, direct U.S. engagement with Iran is now needed to address the full
range of issues on the U.S.-Iran agenda.
This issue is too important to wait.
Iran's nuclear program threatens U.S. national interests, including Israel's security.
America
has other key interests related to Iran, including human rights, Iraq, and
Afghanistan.
The domestic upheaval in Iran poses challenges and opportunities.
U.S.
policy must be nimble enough to take advantage of any new opportunities that
may arise. Likewise, there may be
moments when the best strategy will be to pause and reassess our efforts.
Arbitrary deadlines are a mistake.
The
effort to impose a deadline on engagement efforts is not helpful to American
diplomacy, especially now when the president needs flexibility to respond to
developments inside Iran.
The President should be the one to decide if and when diplomacy has run its course.
Efforts
to compel the President to set out a deadline tied to some arbitrary date would
seem to disclose less a fear of Iranian delay tactics and more a desire to tie
the President's hands with respect to Iran engagement efforts and limit his
foreign policy options going forward.
The proposed new "crippling" sanctions should be rejected.
A strategy of deliberately inflicting suffering
on civilians in order to compel them to put pressure on their government is
morally and ethically dubious.
The efficacy of "crippling" sanction is also dubious. Examples of cases where such sanctions have caused tremendous human suffering but failed to force a change in governmental policy include Iraq, Cuba, Gaza, and, in fact, Iran itself, where decades of U.S. and international sanctions did little to weaken the Iranian regime in the eyes of its people.
The proposed new sanctions could feed the Iranian government's narrative that the current popular protest is foreign-inspired, giving the Iranian authorities a pretext to further persecute its domestic critics. Moreover, new sanctions that make the lives of the Iranian people more difficult could provide the government a populist point around which to try to mobilize sympathy.
Sanctions can be a powerful tool for putting
pressure on Iran. These sanctions, like those already enacted, need to be targeted
against Iran's government and its leaders.
Now is the time to send positive signals to the Iranian people.
For
years the US has spoken to Iran and the Iranian people almost exclusively in
the language of sanctions and threats. Today, the US should be looking for ways
to demonstrate solidarity with the Iranian people.
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Please engage in diplomacy with Iran. Please abandon the road of harsh and crippling sanctions. Diplomacy that is respectful and firm will best set us and the rest of the world on a forward track to resolution of differences and cooperation. Increasing mutual fear, anger and suffering won't. Several generations of that US policy is proof enough!
Respectfully,
Carl Symons
Agreed, this is not the time for punishing sanctions; but the president must keep steady pressure on Iran. If not, that country will continue its current nuclear program,and Israel may feel impelled to repeat what it did with Iraq's and Syria's programs.
no more sanction, yes we need to talk with iran
Carrot and stick, if they want to be a member of the world community this is the way to go. Also the regime is weaker than last year so there may be an appetite for openess. We are not blind as to what kind of regime it is but you talk with your enemies not try to pound them to submission
In dealing with a regime that has repeatedly ignored UN resolutions to stop their nuclear research program and has called for Israel's destruction, it seems ironic to have a Jewish organization take issue with our governments insistance that Iran NOT be a nuclear power. If Peace NOW is successful in having the military option off the table and no crippling sanctions why should Iran stop its nuclear program?
It's interesting to watch the disarray within the Iranian leadership. Pressure from the United States will only drive these currently competing factions together. There's an old dictum that, when your enemy is busy defeating himself, DON'T GET IN HIS WAY!
Peace Now continues to offer intelligent humanistic thinking in difficult political arenas in which the problem of Iran is but one example. Extreme dogmatic positions gain no ground.
Remember, Iran is a signatory to the Arab League Peace Initiative of 2002. As soon as Israel vacates the settlements, Iran will recognize Israel, trade with Israel, and all hostilities will cease.
It's clear that Israel wants land more than security.
Israel is its own worst enemy. Cruelty to Palestinians is the reason for Iran's anger at Israel.
When the Palestinians have a state, Iran will open up its nuclear facilities to inspection. Therefore, it's in both Israel's and America's interest to have a Palestinian state and the Occupation ended.
Benjamin - Iran is within its rights to enrich uranium. Israel acted as a rogue state in destroying Osirak; that act set off a concatenation of events that resulted in the loss of tens of thousands of innocent lives (see Joseph Cirincione on this thesis). Israel must conform its behaviour to international norms.
Israel has hyperbolized and demonized Iran over the past two decades; what is worse, Israelis believe their own propaganda, and Americans are both ill-informed and afraid to challenge the propaganda for fear of offending Israelis. Neither situation promotes honest and rational analysis and dialog.
Nick-
Carrots and sticks is the childish formulation embraced by WINEP, calculated to provide cover for brutality. Is the entire US diplomatic apparatus so devoid of creativity that it needs to resort to nursery school tactics?
Respect and honesty trump Cheney-esque tricks and traps.
You say, "we are not blind to what kind of regime it is..." Really? What do you really know about Iran, its leadership and its people, its agonies, its suffering, its motives? Think very hard, please; the lives of 70 million Iranians, 300 million Americans, 15 million Jews are involved.
Alan-
Somehow, people of good will and extraordinary kindness must find a way to gently disabuse you of the misperceptions you repeat about Iran.
The UN sanctions imposed on Iran were a cheap trick; a trap laid by the Bush administration; they are not legitimate.
Iran is within its rights to conduct and continue its nuclear program; indeed, it does so under greater international scrutiny than any other nuclear state, whether within or without the NPT system.
Iran has never called for the destruction of Israel. If Iran desired Israel's destruction, don't you think the lives of Iran's 25,000 Jews would have been imperiled, and don't you think Iran could have used conventional weapons to greatly harm Israel? Of course Iran could have done those things to Jews and to Jews and to Israel, but THEY HAVE NOT.
Please think very carefully about that: Iran has NOT attacked Israel with conventional weapons, even though they are quite capable of doing so.
If Iran is as intent on the destruction of Israel as you seem to believe, why has Iran not acted on that intent?