We Don't Speak to Evil"

"We Don't Speak To Evil"

By Ted Rall

Created Oct 4 2007 - 9:39am

The nation is Iran. And the reaction is ridiculous.

"The Evil Has Landed," shrieked the headline of the New York Daily News on

the occasion of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's speeches at the United Nations and

Columbia University. A "madman," Rupert Murdoch's New York Post spat,

setting the tone for a week of Bizarro News. On "60 Minutes," the Iranian

president said there was no reason his country and ours couldn't be

friends--even the best of friends.

"La la la la--we can't hear you" was the response.

"Is it the goal of your government, the goal of this nation to build a

nuclear weapon?" CBS News' Scott Pelley asked Ahmadinejad.

He replied: "You have to appreciate we don't need a nuclear bomb. We don't

need that. What need do we have for a bomb?"

Pelley followed up: "May I take that as a 'no,' sir?"

Ahmadinejad: "It is a firm 'no.'"

Some Americans would pay good money to hear an answer as honest and

straightforward as that from their leaders. Yet, minutes later, Pelley kept

badgering: "When I ask you a question as direct as 'Will you pledge not to

test a nuclear weapon?' you dance all around the question. You never say

'yes.' You never say 'no.'"

Weird. Is Pelley hard of hearing? But what I really can't figure out is how

Iran qualifies as our--Very Big Word coming--"enemy." We're not at war with

Iran. Neither are our allies. What gives?

Capitalizing on the reliable ignorance of the American public and the

indolent gullibility of its journalists, the Bush Administration regularly

conflates its numerous targets of regime change, pretending they love each

other to death and are united only in their desire to slaughter innocent

American children. There are gaping chasms in this narrative, but they

vanish into our national memory hole.

After the 9/11 attacks turned the U.S. against the Taliban, U.S. media

outlets put footage of a handful of jeering Palestinians on heavy rotation.

Meanwhile, "In Iran, vast crowds turned out on the streets and held

candlelit vigils for the victims. Sixty-thousand spectators respected a

minute's silence at Tehran's football stadium."

Wondering why you never heard that? The above quote comes from the BBC. Fox

News didn't report. American news consumers didn't know, much less decide.

Finding an opportunity for rapprochement and a mutual foe in the Taliban,

Iran became a silent America ally after 9/11. The Iranian military offered

to conduct search and rescue operations for downed U.S. pilots during the

fall 2001 war against the Taliban. It used its influence with the

Afghanistan's Dari population to broker the loya jirga that installed Hamid

Karzai as president of Afghanistan.

Everyone expected U.S.-Iranian relations to thaw. There was even talk about

ending sanctions and exchanging ambassadors. A few weeks later, however,

White House neocons had Iran named as a member of an "Axis of Evil" in

Bush's 2002 State of the Union address. "We were all shocked by the fact

that the U.S. had such a short memory and was so ungrateful about what had

happened just a month ago," remembers Javad Zarif, now the Iranian

ambassador to the U.N.

Bush accused Shiite-majority Iran, a mortal enemy of Sunni-dominated Al

Qaeda, of offering sanctuary to Al Qaeda fighters fleeing Afghanistan. "Iran

must be a contributor in the war against terror," Bush railed. "Either

you're with us or against us." The allegation was BS. No one--not the CIA,

not one of our allies, no one--believed that Iran would harbor, or had

harbored, members of Al Qaeda. "I wasn't aware of any intelligence

supporting that charge," says James Dobbins, Bush's special envoy to

Afghanistan. But we never took it back.

In May 2003, Iran shook off its annoyance and again tried to make nice. The

Iranian overture came in the form of a letter delivered to the State

Department after the fall of Baghdad. "Iran appeared willing to put

everything on the table--including being completely open about its nuclear

program, helping to stabilize Iraq, ending its support for Palestinian

militant groups and help in disarming Hezbollah," reported the BBC.

U.S. officials confirm this overture.

"That letter went to the Americans to say that we are ready to talk, we are

ready to address our issues," says Seyed Adeli, an Iranian foreign minister

at the time. Larry Wilkerson, chief of staff to then-Secretary of State

Colin Powell, says the Bushies made a conscious decision to ignore it. "We

don't speak to evil," he recalls that Administration hardliners led by

Donald Rumsfeld said.

In the minds of the hard right, the case for Iran's evilness rests on three

issues: the 1979 hostage crisis, its opposition to Israel, and its pursuit

of nuclear weapons.

Readers of Mark Bowden's "Guests of the Ayatollah" can't help but sympathize

with the American embassy staffers who spent 444 days in captivity from late

1979 to early 1981. But the right-wingers' real beef over this episode

concerns our wounded national pride.

What they fail to mention is that President Carter brought the mess upon

himself, first by continuing to prop up the corrupt and brutal regime of

Reza Shah Pahlavi long after it was obviously doomed, and then by admitting

him to the U.S. for cancer treatment. Carter knew that his decision to

coddle a toppled tyrant could stir up trouble.

"He went around the room," said then-Vice President Walter Mondale," and

most of us said, 'Let him [the Shah] in. And he said, 'And if [the Iranians]

take our employees in our embassy hostage, then what would be your advice?'

And the room just fell dead. No one had an answer to that. Turns out, we

never did."

Iran finances and arms Hezbollah, the paramilitary group-cum-nascent state

based in Lebanon that wages sporadic attacks against Israel. If proxy

warfare and funding Islamist terror organizations that despise Israel were a

consideration, however, the U.S. would cut off relations with and impose

sanctions against Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. (Can we stop talking to

ourselves? We supported the Afghan mujahedeen.) It is possible to maintain

friendly relations with nations that hate one another, and we do.

There are two points missing from most discussions of Iran's nuclear energy

program and whether it's a cover for a weapons program. First, Iran ratified

the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in 1970. Leaders of the Islamic

Republic inherited the NPT from the Shah. The revolutionaries voluntarily

chose to honor the agreement after they threw him out.

Second, the U.S. practices a double standard by threatening war against Iran

while ignoring Israel's refusal to obey a U.N. resolution calling for a

nuclear-free Middle East passed in 1996. As of the late 1990s, U.S.

intelligence agencies believed Israel to possess between 75 and 130 nukes.

Iran has zero. According to the International Atomic Energy Agency, there's

even less evidence against Iran than there was against Saddam's Iraq.

There are many legitimate reasons to criticize the government of Iran.

They're just a regional rival in the Middle East--another frenemy.

_______

About author Ted Rall is the author of the new book "Silk Road to Ruin: Is

Central Asia the New Middle East?," an in-depth prose and graphic novel

analysis of America's next big foreign policy challenge.

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"A little patience and we shall see the reign of witches pass over, their

spells dissolve, and the people recovering their true sight, restore their

government to its true principles. It is true that in the meantime we are

suffering deeply in spirit,

and incurring the horrors of a war and long oppressions of enormous public

debt. But if the game runs sometimes against us at home we must have

patience till luck turns, and then we shall have an opportunity of winning

back the principles we have lost, for this is a game where principles are at

stake."

-Thomas Jefferson