Pushing the Mullahs Out of the Roost

Fire of Liberty
As the mullahs of Iran rattle their sabers and continue their quest for the bomb the international community seems to be at an impasse over what to do with the regime after it resumed enrichment of uranium. While the US, UK and France are up for imposing sanctions on Tehran, you have the Chinese and Russians backing away from the table and pushing for more negotiations. In fact if you read or listen to various foreign policy experts on what to do with Iran they seem to dismiss the threat as being five to ten years down the road and point out that 164 centrifuges is far from what's needed to make a nuclear bomb. With this at hand these experts continue to argue that the West should continue to talk to the regime and seek a diplomatic solution because the folks in Tehran are pragmatic and just want nuclear power. Now these old "diplomatic hands" can play down the threat of the regime and push for more talks with the regime over the future of the nuke program but in the long run this strategy just falls into the hands of Iran. The more we talk with the regime, their scientists will continue to push forward and enrich greater quantities of uranium which can eventually be placed atop a Shehab-3 or Shehab-4 ballistic missile that could be launched in the near future against Israel, Europe or our troops stationed in the region.

I'd say that its fine to wish for a diplomatic solution for ending Iran's nuke program but its hard to see the regime acting rationally, what with the talk and actions that have been coming out of Tehran. If you've read my previous posts on Iran, you know that I'm a hawk who believes that the best solution for the mullahs is to unravel the regime from the inside by supporting the freedom movement outside of Iran as well the students, intellectuals and labor unions who battle with the regime everyday. If we provide the moral,political, and economic support we'll have a better solution to the problem than what the talking heads have to say. Along with my call for the toppling of the regime from the inside the editorial board over at National Review Online has also called for the US to take such steps. Here's a sample of what they had to say:

Or, to be more precise, the Bush administration must recognize that it never had an Iran policy. It chose instead to second the policy devised by France, Germany, and Britain, which rested on the premise that Iran's rulers could be bribed and browbeaten into submission. This was never a reasonable assumption. Since its birth in 1979, the Iranian theocracy has shown pure contempt for the norms that govern relations among sovereign states: by permitting the seizure of the U.S. embassy in Tehran; by declaring a fatwa on a British subject; by orchestrating a 1994 massacre at a Jewish center in Buenos Aires; by murdering 19 U.S. airmen in the Khobar Towers bombing of 1996; by subsidizing terror attacks and armed militias in Lebanon, Israel, Iraq. Is there now — was there ever — any reason to think the mullahs will play by the rules?

The problem with Iran is precisely not its nuclear program. The problem is the regime. We have every reason to think this regime would use its arsenal to threaten the U.S. and its allies, and to extract concessions inimical to our interests. Nor can we exclude the possibility that the mullahs would actually launch their nukes. Consider Hashemi Rafsanjani, that celebrated "moderate," exulting that the Muslim world will "vomit [Israel] out from its midst," since "a single atomic bomb has the power to completely destroy [it]." Nuclear deterrence operates on the assumption that your foe is rational. Things start to break down when a significant part of its ruling establishment fancies itself on divine mission to evaporate the Zionist Entity in a mushroom cloud, roll back the Great Satan, and usher in a paradisiacal rule by sharia. That's not a regime to bargain with. The goal must be to remove it from power.

This does not mean invasion and occupation. But it does mean getting serious about supporting the Iranian democracy movement. The contradiction of Iran is that its people, the most educated, moderate, and pro-Western of the Muslim Middle East, are ruled by the most aggressive Islamists in the world. It wouldn't take a large expenditure to catalyze that tension. President Bush routinely declares his support for the cause of Iranian democracy — something that, according to a dissident inside Iran who recently spoke to National Review Online, has made a deep impression on his countrymen. Why, then, has Bush's administration failed to give material aid to the Iranian democrats?

Now an internal toppling is the best option in dealing with the regime in Tehran but if the regime goes hot with nukes in the near future then I'd expect the US to take them program out. Let's save us all of the trouble and just support the true democrats in Iran who are itching to push their terror masters out of the roost once and for all.