It's time to engage Iran

5/30/2006
By DAVID IGNATIUS
nuclear iran-"Only connect." That was the trademark line of E.M. Forster's great novel "Howards End." And it's a useful injunction in thinking about U.S. strategy toward Iran and the wider conflicts between the West and the Muslim world.
We are in the early stages of what Gen. John Abizaid calls "the first war of globalization, between openness and closed societies." One key to winning that war, Abizaid told a small group of reporters at the Pentagon, is to expand openness and connection. He called al-Qaida "the military arm of the closed order." The same could be said of the extremist mullahs in Tehran who are pushing for nuclear weapons.
America's best strategy is to play to its strengths - which are open exchange of ideas, backed up by unmatched military power. The need for connection is especially clear in the case of Iran, which in isolation has remained frozen in revolutionary zealotry like an exotic fruit gelled in aspic. Yet some in the Bush administration cling to the idea that isolation is a good thing and that connectivity will somehow weaken the West's position. That ignores the obvious lesson of the past 40 years, which is that isolation has usually failed (as in the case of Cuba and North Korea), while connectivity has usually succeeded (as in the case of the Soviet Union and China).
A telling example was the decision to engage the Soviet Union in 1973 through the Conference for Security and Cooperation in Europe. At the time, some conservatives argued it was a dangerous concession that the Soviets might interpret as a symbol of weakness. But the CSCE provided a crucial forum for dissidents in Russia and Eastern Europe, and with astonishing speed, the mighty edifice of Soviet power began to crumble.
I cite this Cold War history because the moment has come for America to attempt to engage revolutionary Iran. The invitation for a dialogue came this month in a letter to President Bush from Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad - a man whose rabble-rousing, Israel-baiting career gave him the credentials, if that's the right word, to break a 27-year Iranian taboo on contacts with the Great Satan.
"Iran wants to start discussions the same way the Chinese wanted discussions" with President Nixon, an Iranian businessman named Ali Ettefagh told me in an e-mail last week. "Great Satan doesn't sell anymore. More than half the population was not born 27 years ago, and the broken record does not play well." The Iranian offer of dialogue, he says, "ought to be taken as an opportunity, if only to air out grievances and amplify differences."
I suspect Iran wants dialogue now partly because it perceives America's position in Iraq as weak and its own as strong. That may be true, but so what? Washington should still take "yes" for an answer. The United States and its European allies are crafting a package that hopefully will include everything the Iranian people could want - except nuclear weapons. The bundle of goodies should stress connectivity - more air travel to Iran, more scholarships for students, more exchanges, Iranian membership in the World Trade Organization.
Karim Sadjadpour, an Iranian analyst with the International Crisis Group, noted in recent Senate testimony that opinion polls show 75 percent of Iranians favor relations with the United States. "Embarking on a comprehensive dialogue with Iran would provide the U.S. with the opportunity to match its rhetorical commitment to Iranian democracy and human rights with action," Sadjadpour said. He's right.
There's no guarantee that a policy of engagement will work. The Iranian regime's desire to acquire nuclear weapons may be so unyielding that Tehran and Washington will remain on a collision course. But America and its allies will be in a stronger position for responding to Iranian calls for dialogue. Openness isn't a concession by America, it's a strategic weapon.

Washington Post Writers Group
(posted by ali ghanandi)