With the Obama administration came a new approach to dealing with Iran, a state that had been classified as one of the ‘Axis of Evil’ under the Bush administration, president Obama sought to work with Iran to establish diplomatic relations between the United States and Iran. These efforts however, have not been fruitful for the United States; Iran’s president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has consistently scoffed at any efforts by the United States and has insisted that Iran will become a nuclear state. Now, after President Obama has made it clear that the U.S. will not use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear states (with the exclusion of Iran and North Korea) president Ahmadinejad is beyond approach. So with the possibility of a nuclear Iran looming over our heads, how do we keep our country safe? Establishing a working relationship with Ahmadinejad is infeasible; our only hope is the people of Iran. The best course of action to keep the US safe is to wait out Ahmadinejad until a new president is elected in Iran, and to work with this new president.
In some of his latest public announcements Ahmadinejad has stated that an increase in pressure on Iran’s nuclear program would be met with an increase in Iran’s support of ‘resistance’ – Ahmadinejad’s code for the Islamic militant groups in Palestine as well as Iraq and Afghanistan. This statement serves twofold: first it is a testament that Iran will not stop its nuclear program, second it is a threat to the United States. If the U.S. does not ease its pressure and sanctions against Iran’s nuclear program then Iran will retaliate by fueling Hamas, Hezbollah, and Al Qaeda. This threat coupled with Ahmadinejad’s mocking of President Obama’s ‘cowboy’ nuclear plan leave no doubt that we are beyond any point of working out a solution with Iran that will lead to both a safer world as well as a safer United States. But there is still hope; we in the United States are not the only ones fed up with Ahmadinejad, the people of Iran have had enough of him too.
In the election of 2009 Ahmadinejad ran against a reformer, Mir Hossein Mousavi, a former prime minister of Iran. Although it was announced that the election was a landslide victory in favor of Ahmadinejad, Mousavi supporters believed that the election had been rigged because the official polls are unreliable and every unofficial sampling indicated a head to head race. After the ballots were counted hundreds of thousands of Mousavi supporters dressed in green rushed out into the streets in protest. A protest of this magnitude had not been seen in Iran since the Islamic Revolution in 1979. The Iranian police were quick to the scene, however, and began beating protestors and shooting into the crowds, the protest demonstrations quickly turned into riots. The international community as well as many people within Iran was appalled by the violent retaliation against what was started as a peaceful protest. This reaction may have been beneficial in reducing favor of Ahmadinejad’s regime in Iran itself. With a majority of the population in favor of Mousavi coupled with the approach of the end of Ahmadinejad’s second term, it is highly likely that in the next election Mousavi will come to power.
So does this mean that once Mousavi is elected Iran will cease its nuclear program? Unfortunately it does not; Mousavi has made his support of Iran becoming a nuclear power quite clear, but at the same time has publicly announced that he would be more than willing to work with the United States. This declaration alone is a drastic turn from Ahmadinejad’s claims that the United States must now in essence bend to Iran’s will.
Last year the UN proposed an offer that would take Iran’s uranium and enrich it to a level that could be used to produce electricity. This proposal would have both reduced the quantity of uranium in Iran as well as ensure that the uranium was only usable for electricity and could not be brought to weapons grade. Ahmadinejad however defected on this proposal stating that Iran would decide the terms of how much uranium would be enriched and to what levels. It seems that Mousavi, unlike his opponent, would have made that deal, and today we would be working with Iran instead of reading the papers every day to see what outrageous claims Ahmadinejad has made now.
The more I read about the US-Iranian relations regarding (but not limited to) nuclear programs, the more frustrated I get at how so many American citizens believe the United States should disband its nuclear program. It is obvious in this post that Iran is seeking nuclear power to develop warheads to either use them as leverage or to actually use them on other countries to gain more power. The worst part about it is how blatantly obvious Ahmadinejad has been about what Iran will do if it obtains nuclear power.
ReplyDeleteGiven all that Ahmadinejad has stated, I do not understand why the UN can't just go into Iran and remove Ahmadinejad from power. The UN doesn't want Iran to have nuclear power just as much as the United States, Israel, or rest of the non-terrorist world.
The main worry I have with "waiting out" Ahmadinejad is that Iran is so corrupt that elections may not yield a true, fairly, newly-elected president. Candidates could be loaded with people who share the same ideals and feelings about the United States and US-Iran relations that waiting him out may not yield any results at all. On top of that, the possibility of the ballots being messed with or the vote unfairly and illegally skewed in the direction of Ahmadinejad's preferred successor should not be ruled out. I like the idea, but I can't put too much faith in it, and I must believe there is a better way to solve these problems with Iran.
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