DANGEROUSLY MISINFORMED

"Everything you think you know about Iran is
wrong," says Fareed Zakaria in the 6/1/09 issue
of Newsweek. His cover story is a must-read
for anyone concerned about our dealings with
that pivotal country. Diplomatic improvement
there could get their cooperation helping with
Hezbollah and Hamas and Palestinian issues. No-
thing of importance will be done with those issues
without dealing with Hamas and Hezbollah. Well,
probably nothing good is going to happen anyway,
as long as Israel makes and controls our foreign
policy.

But just maybe, with accurate knowledge of Iran and
its fears and factions and legitimate needs, we can
avoid going to war there, in spite of Israel's and our
neo-cons demanding otherwise. Fareed shoots down,
one by one, many of the prevailing myths popular in
our media and among the pundits about Iran. And
ignorance, remember, is not bliss: it's deadly. It got us
into Iraq, where seven years later we still have 140,00
troops and 150,000 contract employees at still a horri-
fic cost in lives and dollars.

The killing goes on there. Nothing has been settled after
all this time and blood. The Surge was tactically a success
because the Sunnis went along with it. But it failed in its
purpose strategically. The main underlying issues remain
unsolved, and the fighting to settle them will surely resume
when we leave. No one who is at all knowledgeable of the
history and the people there, whether Iraqi or outsider,
doubts that hostilities will again escalate upon our exit.
And this time the Kurds will be drawn into it in a way
that they have avoided heretofore. So its all for nought:
we destroyed that country, its infrastructure, its social
fabric, its culture and cohesion. Humpty dumpty won't
and can't put it back together again. Only another Sad-
dam can do that!

The question now is whether we'll repeat the same kind
of ignorant mistake with Iran. Israel, who urged us to
attack Saddam on the mistaken notion the he had nukes,
now wants us to do the same with Iran for the same reason.
Fareed skillfully marshals facts to show why that isn't
necessary. He points out that there is a big debate going
on in Iran about whether to make nuclear weapons or not.
We are helping the hard-liners by threatening Iran and
trying to force them, by sanctions, to stop their efforts.
That not only won't work, but its both ignorant and stupid.
(Yes, you can be both, as we were in Iraq.) They may not
even want the bomb, says Fareed. We need an all-out
diplomatic effort to find out from them what they do want,
and whether we can make real progress in that direction.

Iranians are not suicidal, says Fareed. And they are not
fanatics, says Mohamed Elbaradei, who has spent a lot of
time there with Irani officials. He is head of the Inter-
national Atomic Energy Agency. He also says that there
is no military solution to the nuke issue. You can't bomb
the knowledge of Iranian scientists. Elbaradei says of
Iran's leadership: ". . . you do see a lot of infighting
among them. And part of it is about who is going to get
credit for finally breaking out of this 30 years of fighting
and confrontation with the United States. Everybody is
positioning himself to be the national hero who would
finally put Iran back on the world map as part of the
mainstream. They are not like the stereotyped fanatics
bent on destroying everybody around them. They are
not!"

There are a number of misunderstanding in this country
about Ahmadinejad and his role in Iranian policy. He
doesn't make policy. The country is run by the Mullahs.
Ahmadinejad doesn't control the military, or make mili-
tary decisions. He doesn't make foreign policy or control
it either. He has some influence on domestic policy. He
is a spokesperson for his government, but an uncontrolled
one. He's a loose canon, often at odds and disliked by the
Mullahs. He's a rabble rouser, and popular with the poor
and the working class. They make up the majority, na-
turally. Most Iranians don't agree with his holocaust de-
nial, or his vicious hatred of Israel. It's absolutely false
though, to say (as many Americans do on TV) that he
has threatened to destroy Israel. He hasn't. And he
couldn't if he wanted to. (As I have already explained,
he doesn't have the power.) What he has said is that he
wants God to destroy Israel! And he prays to that end.
And being a devoutly religious person, believing God is
just, he believes God will do as he asks.

I'll plan to return later to this discussion of Iran. Let me
know what you think about it.

jgoodwin004@centurytel.net