Iran

Israel cannot afford to sit around while the west lollygags on Iran. If the west had spent the last several years confronting instead of engaging Iran, which bought it time to acquire nukes, they would not now have to be worried about a unilateral Israeli strike.

WASHINGTON - With the United States Senate set to take up major sanctions legislation against Iran by mid-February, neo-conservative and other hawks are calling on the administration of President Barack Obama to pursue a more aggressive course of “regime change” in Tehran.

In recent days, their call was unexpectedly bolstered by a Newsweek column authored by the president of the influential Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), Richard Haass.

Haass is a long-time protege of realists, such as former national security adviser Brent Scowcroft and secretary of state Colin Powell, who advocate a policy of broad engagement with Iran over its nuclear program and other issues.

Citing the unprecedented and persistent unrest generated by the disputed June elections in Iran, Haass argued, “Iran may be closer to profound political change than at any time since the revolution that ousted the shah 30 years ago.” He added that “the United States, European governments and others should shift their Iran policy towards increasing the prospects for [that] change”.

“Even a realist should recognize that it’s an opportunity not to be missed,” he concluded.

Haass’ change of heart was quickly seized on by leading neo-conservatives who have long favored a regime-change policy toward Tehran as the most effective way to deal with Tehran’s controversial nuclear program, which some suspect is aimed at developing nuclear weapons but which Iran says is solely for peaceful purposes.

Writing in the Washington Post Wednesday, Robert Kagan of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace cited the Haass conversion with enthusiasm, arguing, “President Obama has a once-in-a-generation opportunity over the next few months to help make the world a dramatically safer place.”

“Given the role that the Islamic theocracy in Tehran has played in leading and sponsoring anti-democratic, anti-liberal and anti-Western fanaticism for the past three decades, the toppling or even substantial reform of that regime would be second only to the collapse of the Soviet Union in its ideological and geopolitical ramifications,” he wrote.

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