, Watch What The President Does
A new U.S. foreign policy toward Iran and Iraq, rooted in a showing of fierce acquiescence, has been quietly adopted by the Clinton administration. Because the previous policy of “Dual Containment” was beginning to demand tough decisions on sanctions and sacrifice, it was replaced by the policy of the Dual Doormat.
We have already seen fierce acquiescence on display toward Saddam’s refusal to permit U.N.
inspections of his bio-war palaces. President Clinton sternly “rules nothing out,” fortifies himself with non-condemnatory U.N. resolutions, but - as an unwanted CIA report reveals - Clinton’s loosening of sanctions only encourages Saddam.
Next comes the second doormat: the erosion of our attempt to stop the ayatollahs of Iran from buying and building a nuclear missile threat.
As soon as Iran’s new president, Mohammad Khatami, cut the great-Satan rhetoric and spoke kindly of Abraham Lincoln, the Clinton dovecote began undermining our laws putting economic pressure on nations like Russia and France that are eager to sell Tehran nuclear-weapons know-how.
Spinmeisters put out word of a “debate” going on within the administration. Clinton, supposedly wary of the Iranian overture, was described as weighing the need to deny superweapons to a terrorist state vs. (1) hoping to encourage what some see as a wave of reform in Iran, (2) avoiding further irritating our allies so hungry for arms sales and (3) doing our bit for U.S. oil companies.
But Clinton cautionary statements, and Foggy Bottom backgrounders about a requirement for open diplomatic discussions conditioned on an end to terror, are part of a charade.
Face it: the dual containment policy is a zombie, officially walking but undeniably dead. State Department Russophiles Strobe Talbott and Thomas Pickering won the debate that never was. The Clinton decision to “open a dialogue” - overt and covert contact, and largely on Iran’s terms - has already been made.
The unannounced shift follows the desire of the Saudi monarchy, worried about fundamentalists. Riyadh appeases its enemies not only by opposing U.N. sanctions on Iraq, but also by refusing to cooperate with the FBI in finding the Iranian truck bombers who murdered 19 Americans in their Riyadh barracks.
The softening up of American opinion is under way:
1. Undersecretary of State Stuart Eizenstat last week announced a new “sanctions team” to “set our house in order” after 61 sanctions were imposed in the Clinton years under congressional pressure. We’ll be told that sanctions do not advance human rights, hurt us more than others and always fail (never mind their soothing effects on Libya and Serbia).
2. Dovish commentators in hawkish feathers have begun to argue that our embrace of Iran would give us a card to play against Saddam in Iraq. Caving in on sanctions is not going soft, goes this creative formulation, but is being tough - because nuclear weapons in Iran’s hands would imperil Baghdad. (Never mind that Iran’s reformatollah agrees with Saddam that Israel is the “racist terrorist state.”)
3. Khatami will be portrayed in much of the media as a reformer who needs our help to defeat the anti-intellectual baddies in Tehran. When he called for cultural exchanges with the West, his CNN interviewer pointedly refrained from asking about the death sentence still hanging over novelist Salman Rushdie.
As Iran crooks its finger, accommodationists will come running. Clinton will go on Iranian TV. He will ignore an event, reported by Barton Gellman of The Washington Post, that took place just as the Iranian charm offensive began.
On Dec. 15, one of our satellites picked up the heat signature of a missile engine being tested at the Shahid Hemat facility south of Tehran. This new generation of Iranian missiles - built with extensive, secret, unpunished Russian help and likely to be test-fired this year - is capable of carrying a 2,200-pound warhead more than 800 miles. That projects Iranian power far beyond Iraq, taking hostage the populations of Ankara and Tel Aviv, not to mention 25,000 U.S. troops.
Don’t be taken in by the pretense of a genuine policy debate within the administration. The Dual Doormat is already in place. “Deeds, not words” says Clinton - as he quietly changes our gulf policy to rely on words, not deeds.
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