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| Syria-Lebanon-Iran |
| Broken engagements |
| 2008-06-02 |
| Engagement doesn't always produce marriage. In the US-Iran case, for example, diplomatic engagements have been repeatedly disastrous. Yet many think the idea of engagement was just invented and never tried. President John Kennedy pressed Iran for democratic reforms in the early 1960s. The shah responded with his White Revolution, which horrified traditionalists, provoking them to active opposition. One of them was named Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. President Richard Nixon urged Iran in the early 1970s, under the Nixon Doctrine, to become a regional power, since America was overextended in Vietnam. The shah embarked on a huge arms-buying campaign and close alliance, stirring yet more opposition and fiscal strain, further contributing to unrest. In the late 1970s president Jimmy Carter pushed Iran to ease restrictions. The result was the Islamist revolution. Next, Carter urged the shah not to repress the uprising, which helped bring about his downfall. After the 1979 revolution, Carter engaged the new regime to show Khomeini that America was his friend. National security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, who today advises Barack Obama, met Iranian leaders. Teheran interpreted this engagement as an effort to subvert or coopt the revolution, so Iranians seized the US embassy and took everyone there hostage. The Reagan administration secretly engaged Iran in the mid-1980s to help free those hostages. Result: a policy debacle and free military equipment for Iran. In recent years there has been a long engagement in which European states negotiated for themselves and America to get Teheran to stop its nuclear weapons drive. Iran gained four years to develop nukes; the West got nothing. THE HISTORY of US engagement with the PLO and Syria is similar. The Oslo era (1992-2000) was engagement as disaster, establishing a PLO regime indifferent to its people's welfare. It increased radicalism and violence, with no gain for peace. Aside from its worsened security situation, Israel's international image was badly damaged by concessions made and risks taken. America's making the PLO a client brought it no gratitude or strategic gain. Similarly, Syria used the 1991-2000 engagement era to survive its USSR superpower sponsor's collapse while doing everything it wanted: dominating Lebanon, sponsoring terrorism and sabotaging peace. US secretaries of state visited Damascus numerous times and achieved nothing, a process that continued up to 2004. Syria first helped Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, then sponsored terrorists who disrupted Iraq and killed Americans. |
| Posted by:g(r)omgoru |
| #4 I have a vague recollection that members of the soon-to-be Reagan administration were involved in some negotiations over the embassy hostages. Corrections are welcome. |
| Posted by: SteveS 2008-06-02 16:03 |
| #3 I think the writer conflated the two, hopefully an accident by his subconscious. |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2008-06-02 13:16 |
| #2 I think he's referring to the hostages in Lebanon, the whole Iran-Contra debacle. |
| Posted by: Procopius2k 2008-06-02 10:09 |
| #1 The Reagan administration secretly engaged Iran in the mid-1980s to help free those hostages. Uh, no. "Those hostages" were freed the day Reagan took office. |
| Posted by: Spot 2008-06-02 08:12 |