Los Angeles Times
July 23, 2004
The Bush administration is now under fire daily for the debacles in Iraq and
Afghanistan. It also faces criticism for its failings in preparing for and
reacting to the tragedy of Sept. 11. Consequently it has adopted a
tried-and-true ploy of muddying the waters to deflect negative press: Blame
Iran for everything.
On Saturday, President Bush stated that although
the CIA had found "no direct connection between Iran and the attacks of Sept.
11," nevertheless "we will continue to look and see if the Iranians were
involved."
But why? Although the 9/11 commission found some
connections between Iran and Al Qaeda and determined that some of the Sept. 11
hijackers may have been allowed to travel through Iran, it did not find any
evidence that Iranian officials collaborated on the Sept. 11 plot. The
accusations against Iran are a diversion, and they do not stop with Sept. 11.
Resident analysts at the neoconservative, right-wing American Enterprise
Institute and other similar bodies have tried to blame Iran for the faulty
intelligence presented by the Bush administration to justify the Iraq war. The
scenario is this: Iran wanted the United States to remove its old enemy,
Saddam Hussein. Iranian intelligence therefore worked through the Defense
Department's now-discredited leader-in-waiting, Ahmad Chalabi, to provide false
information to U.S. officials about weapons of mass destruction.
Iran
has also been accused of supporting Iraqi cleric Muqtada Sadr and his Al Mahdi
militia in their opposition to the U.S. occupation. The accusation came from
neoconservative pundit Michael Rubin, who until recently was an advisor to the
U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority. Rubin has laid out to the Department
of Defense and to the public in the National Review Online a baroque set of
connections between Iran and Sadr tenuously based on family and personal
relations. Predictably, the headlines that followed were versions of "Iran
supports Sadr rebellion!"
Such "guilt by accusation" constitutes a
long-s tanding practice of administration officials and their think-tank
surrogates. Because Iran already has been demonized in the public mind, the
administration hopes that any accusation against it will be treated as fact.
And the notion is likely to be cemented by repetition. The president's
announcement that Iran should be investigated will no doubt be followed by
administration spokespeople casually mentioning in interviews and news
conferences that Iran seems to have been involved in killing Americans on Sept.
11.
At one time it seemed that the administration was trumping up
charges against Iran in advance of a military action against it. Now it is
clear that any idea of military action has been put aside as impractical, as
indeed it is. This new round of Iran-bashing is not a prelude to another
invasion of a Persian Gulf country but rather a political ploy in an election
year. The accusations, it seems clear, could help rouse the American
electorate and provide another demonstration of Bush's resolve to resist evil
in the world. They certainly have no effect on Iran, except to increase that
country's hostility toward the United States.
The administration may
not be able to keep this game up indefinitely. The Council on Foreign
Relations issued a sober, thorough report on Tuesday, titled "Iran: Time for a
New Approach," that calls the tension between the United States and Iran into
question. The report recognizes Iran as a "critical actor in the postwar
evolution" of Afghanistan and Iraq, and as an "indispensable player in the
world economy." It asserts that the U.S. and Iran have significant mutual
interests that must be dealt with on a regular basis. And it advocates
abandonment of the policy of estrangement and recommends "limited or selective
engagement with the current Iranian government."
The co-chairmen of
the report are Zbigniew Brzezinski, former national security advisor to
President Carter, and Robert M. Gates, former director of the CIA. Neither of
these men could be construed as doves or pro-Iranian sympathizers.
It
would be irresponsible of Bush to ignore this report, but it will be difficult
for him to implement its recommendation of engagement while he and his
supporters keep attacking the Islamic Republic of Iran with little
justification. Let us hope that the Council on Foreign Relations report will
be the occasion for the White House to work toward developing a helpful and
productive relationship with Iran. The world will be better for it.
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