NEW YORK — It has come to this: The toughest line against
Iran’s thuggish mullahcracy is Canadian.
Following Sunday’s sham trial of an Iranian intelligence agent
accused of murdering a Canadian journalist — a charge of which he
was, in suspicious symmetry with the pre-trial verdict of the
presiding judicial hardliners, found wholly innocent — the lonely
task of challenging the Islamic republic fell to Canadian Foreign
Minister Pierre Pettigrew.
“Canada continues to insist that justice be done,” Pettigrew
announced, before calling for a new trial that would be
“transparent” and “credible.” Then, with the community of nations
locked in unanimous silence, he strongly suggested Canada may
consider more serious action. Stepped-up sanctions, perhaps.
Possibly, Canadian relations with Tehran would be downgraded.
Pettigrew’s tactful tut-tutting is, depressingly, the nearest
thing to a threat the Iranian regime hears these days. And with
Iraq hijacking headlines, the mullahs have taken advantage of their
newfound anonymity: They’ve resumed assembling centrifuges for
uranium enrichment, forging ahead with an illegal nuclear program
that may be completed any day now; they’ve notched up the
anti-American rhetoric and threatened to lay nuclear waste to U.S.
allies like Israel; and they’re challenging Saudi Arabia for the
title of leading sponsor of global terrorism, subsidizing the
Lebanese terror outfit Hezbollah to the tune of $80 million a year
and actively ushering mujahedeen into Iraq to battle U.S.
troops.
Why is Tehran enjoying such free rein? Simple: the Bush doctrine
is not working. More accurately, it is not being allowed to work.
Rather than taking up its instinctively hard-nosed approach to
rogue states, the Bush administration has resigned itself to the
soi-disant “multilateral” course favored by the European
powers, most notably France and Germany, but also Britain. Working
through the constraints of the IAEA, and the agency’s chief
enforcement tool of wrist-slapping resolutions, this multilateral
coalition has been willing to believe that concerted diplomacy will
stunt Iran’s nuclear ambitions.
But if their effort has had any appreciable effect on Tehran’s
nuclear program, it has been to hasten its completion: At the end
of June, for instance, Iranian officials had news for the agency’s
monitors: They had broken IAEA seals on their nuclear equipment and
restarted the process of assembling and installing centrifuges. The
subtext had a distinctively Teresa Heinz Kerry flavor: the
international community could take its “multilateralism” and shove
it.
The Bush doctrine is increasingly looking like the best answer
to Iran’s ongoing deception. And just what would the Bush doctrine
do about Iran? The president has been clear: “When it comes our
fight against terror will uphold the doctrine, either you’re with
us or against us; and any nation that thwarts our ability to rout
terror out where it exists will be held to account, one way or the
other.”
Those words are particularly worth recalling today. Recent
reports suggest that the al Qaeda splinter group, Ansar al-Islam,
is reconvening in Iran, where its surviving 800 or so operatives
found refuge after U.S. air strikes demolished their bases in
northern Iraq. Then there are the troubling findings of 9-11
Commission. According to the commission’s report, between October
2000 and February 2001, Iran’s clerics helped eight to 10 of the
hijackers of September 11 cross from Afghanistan into Iran without
stamping their Saudi passports — thereby allowing the future
terrorists to pass without suspicion through U.S. Customs. And
while it’s still unclear that Tehran had prior knowledge of their
intentions, it is almost certain that several al Qaeda suspects —
including Osama bin Laden’s son Saad and al-Qaeda’s security chief
Saif Al-Adel, as well as eight others — are currently residing in
Iran under the aegis of the regime.
Thwarting our ability to rout terror? Check. Held to account?
Not remotely.
AMAZINGLY, ALL THIS IS lost on the State Department’s fellow
travelers at New York’s Council on Foreign Relations. Witnessing
the abject failure of diplomacy to moderate Iran, the Council last
week produced a policy report in which it called for…more
diplomacy. Oddly titled “Iran: Time For A New Approach,” the report
insists that friction between the U.S. and Tehran is misguided. No
sense confronting the mullahs, reckon authors Zbigniew Brzezinski
and Suzanne Maloney. Instead, Iran ought to be appealed to as a
“critical actor in the post-war evolution” of Afghanistan and
Iraq.
Leave it to the Council on Foreign relations to turn out this
sort of harebrained assessment. When sticks are sorely needed, they
opt for an endless supply of carrots. Or, as Brzezinski prefers,
“cautious, selected, probing, national interest-oriented
engagement.”
Infinitely more sensible would be a thorough reconsideration of
the “engagement” approach to the growing Iranian threat. One
alternative, recently pushed by Pentagon officials, is dragging
Iran before the U.N. Security Council. Given that our French,
German, and British counterparts seem to be growing exasperated
with IAEA fecklessness (one can never be too sure on this point),
this seems the most likely outcome. But even Security Council
sanctions may be no deterrent against a regime determined to go
nuclear. In that case, the U.S. should consider more forcible
measures. Rumors abound that Israel is waiting for a green light to
bomb Iranian nuclear facilities. If true, it is worth encouraging
their efforts. Still another option is military pressure.
Notwithstanding the circulating vapors that Iran is positively
delighted by our troop presence in Iraq, the regime is clearly
uneasy about a possible collision with American forces — a match
up that, however strained our forces, does not favor the mullahs.
It’s not unreasonable to demonstrate to the clerics that their
nervousness is well-founded.
By now, it should be apparent that we need urgently to
reconsider our strategy toward Iran. Bringing back the Bush
doctrine’s assertive approach to rogue states is a good place to
start. Let’s face it: With all credit to our neighbors to the
north, relying on Canada to stand guard against the Iranian threat
is no kind of policy.
Nonetheless, if Canada today represents the force of opposition
to Iran’s theocrats, we should ask ourselves this question: Are we
with Canada, or against it?
