How To Avoid Another Defeat in Iran
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Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad at the UN.
Photo Credit: Screenshot
If you read the opening of this Bloomberg News wire story; you’ll see what I mean:
“The first international talks with Iran on its nuclear program in 15 months produced a promise to reconvene in May amid calls for urgent diplomacy to avert military strikes.”
See anything there about getting the Islamic Republic to stop uranium enrichment? Neither do I. Forget about any calls on the regime to lift its stranglehold on the Iranian people.
During the 2008 presidential campaign, then-Senator Barack Obama, backed by top Congressional Democrats such as Maryland Rep. Chris Van Hollen, were calling for “negotiations without preconditions” with the Iranian regime.
To their mind, it was U.S. “intransigence” that was causing the bad behavior of the Iranian regime. If only we would relent, they would behave.
Almost immediately after taking office, Obama sent emmissaries to open a channel to Teheran. Six months later, the Iranian regime got its first payback: When three million Iranians took to the streets after a fraudulent presidential election and publicly begged for U.S. help (with signs in English for the benefit of international TV cameras), President Obama remained silent.
When he finally spoke, it was to declare haughtily that the United States had a bad history of intervening in Iran’s domestic affairs, and so we would abstain from playing any active role in aiding the Iranian people in their quest for freedom.
This, too, was appeasement.
Remember what Winston Churchill said after Neville Chamberlain returned from negotiating with Adolf Hitler in Munich, “You were given the choice between war and dishonor. You chose dishonor, and you will have war.”
And that is precisely where we are headed now because of the appeasement policies of Obama, J Street, and the Obama Democrats.
I believe we have a real alternative, but one that has never been tried before: we must urgently launch a massive program to help the pro-freedom movement in Iran.
We need a comprehensive strategy that uses all the tools of power diplomacy to help them achieve their freedom from tyranny. Why? Because it is in our national security interest to do so.
We should, for example, provide money for a strike fund to support the families of Iranian workers who leave their jobs to protest the regime.
We should provide secure communications equipment and training on how to use it.
My own favorite is to airlift in WIMAX point of site Internet wifi transmitters at a cost of $500,000 each, a relatively small investment in terms of defense, that can provide free, secure Internet service to all regions of Iran that are currently under a regime-ordered communications black-out.
We should provide the pro-freedom movement with the best political consultants money can buy, who know how to wage high visibility grass roots campaigns. During the Cold War, such operations were carried out covertly by the CIA. These days, ironically, they mostly are done by George Soros and the Democrat party.
We owe it to our men and women in uniform to try this approach before they get called on once again to pick up the pieces from the mistakes of our politicians.
When the war from the dishonorable decisions hits, who can predict the ultimate consequences in terms of regional stability, oil prices, and, worse, the number of Americans who will lose their lives?
tell a friendAbout the Author: Kenneth R. Timmerman is the author of Countdown to Crisis: the Coming Nuclear Showdown with Iran (Crown Forum 2005), and was nominated jointly with Amb. John Bolton for the Nobel Peace prize in 2006 for his work on Iran. He is the president of the Foundation for Democracy in Iran, and is the Republican nominee for Congress in Maryland's 8th District.
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