Talks with Iran or Ultimatums to be Delivered?

The MSM is abuzz with the fact that the Bush administration has consented for the State Department to hold talks with Iran's theocracy on the issue of Iraq. The Washington Post and much of the rest of the MSM has portrayed the U.S. as going to these talks with hat in hand and engaging from a position of weakness. Jules Crittenden thinks otherwise. He thinks that we are going into the talks with a stick, not a hat, and from a position of strength. He lays out a very convincing set of rationales in support of his conclusions:

. . . [W]hy would the Bush administration, always so obstinate, now seek to sit down with Iran, and why might those talks be useful? What has changed?

Short answer: Everything.

Here’s a quick review, in case you’ve been discouraged by the news media’s fascination with daily body counts and car bomb roundups as measurements of progress:

1) Since the ISG’s call for appeasement was issued five months ago, the Bush administration’s surge strategy has been brought to bear, and it has produced results. Sectarian violence in Iraq has been sharply curtailed, terrorists put on the run and killed and captured by the hundreds.

2) Anbar province, as recently as six months ago thought to be a lost cause, is turning to the government, and there are indications Diyala province, where many of the terrorists fled, may do the same.

3) Thousands of Sunni tribesmen in Anbar have turned on al-Qaeda, are actively attacking al-Qaeda, and want to join the Iraqi security forces.

4) Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, who met with Sunni tribal leaders in a gesture of reconciliation earlier this year, has been compelled to assure them a role in the security of their own areas.

5) The Iranian-founded and affiliated Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, despite its insistence that it has not repudiated Iran, has in fact publicly distanced itself from Iran, becoming the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council, overtly an Iraqi organization under the spiritual guidance of Iraqi Shiite Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, who has counseled against and largely avoided religious interference in government.

6) The Mahdi Army, having largely stood down during the surge, is in disarray, reportedly divided between those eager to avoid conflict and extremists being trained and armed by Iran. Moqtada al-Sadr, in hiding in Iran, has been unsuccessful in his efforts to control and undermine Nouri al-Maliki’s government.

7) Mounting evidence has emerged of Iranian support for both Shiite and Sunni terrorists targeting both American and British soldiers as well as Iraqis. The evidence includes both weapons and the seizure of Iranian agents engaged in supporting the insurgency.
Iran still faces a united international front against its nuclear ambitions, with sanctions added.

8) Despite the public perception of an Israeli disaster in Lebanon last summer, in fact Iran’s proxy, Hezbollah, was decimated and marginalized.

9) Iran has suffered an embarrassing defection of a high-level general.

10) While the taking of British hostages by hardline elements gave Iran an opportunity to crow publicly, Iranian moderates forced the hardliners to back down.

11) Meanwhile, hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s international antics have brought him under heavy domestic pressure over the price of tomatoes.

12) Domestically, President George Bush continues to prevail against the efforts of an increasingly divided and ineffective Congress to curtail the war.

None of this means conditions are ideal for talks. They could have been better.

The Democratic leadership of the United States Congress, agitating for talks, hasn’t helped. They could have significantly advanced their pro-dialogue agenda by remembering that partisanship stops at the water’s edge, and helping to present a united front in our national interest.

The Royal Navy could have resisted the humiliating seizure of its seamen, and the British could have avoided appeasing Iran’s act of war.

Aggressive cross-border U.S. raids could have been staged on Iranian terrorist training camps and supply routes, and Iran’s military and nuclear weapons infrastructure could have been reduced.

As a result, the United States is in a position it was not in five months ago. A position of strength.

Nevertheless, Iran’s ability to influence events in Iraq and throughout the region has been compromised. And Iran can be reminded that the reduction of its capacity for causing trouble remains on the table. Iran can be encouraged to quit while it is ahead.

Read the entire post here. Ultimately, Mr. Crittenden concludes that the purpose of the meeting will be to "deliver notice to Iran, face to face, that there will be a severe price to pay for continuing to meddle with murderous intent in its neighbors’ affairs, for failing to act in its own interest."

Update: Ahmedinejad is continuing with his usual bombast, threatening massive retaliation if the U.S. strikes Iran and at the same time telling us to pack our bags. He also stated that has agreed to talks with the U.S. "for the good of the Iraqi people." See here.

(H/T Steve Halter)

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Criticism From All Sides of Pelosi's Middle East Trip

As pointed out in today's Washington Times, Nancy Pelosi is taking significant criticism seemingly from all sides for taking her Middle East trip over the objections of the White House. For example, see this Wall Street Journal editorial. Justifying her trip as "fostering diplomacy and following the Iraq Study Group's recommendation" to engage in diplomacy with Syria and others in the Middle East, the fact that Ms. Pelosi has no constitutional right, neither as a member of Congress nor as the leading member of the Democratic Party, to be engaging in foreign policy seems to have passed her by.

The criticism is not merely coming from conservatives in the U.S. Indeed, the most scathing criticism seems to be coming from the Middle East. For example, today, this from the Lebanese newspaper The Daily Star (h/t Instapundit):

We can thank the US speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, for having informed Syrian President Bashar Assad, from Beirut, that "the road to solving Lebanon's problems passes through Damascus." Now, of course, all we need to do is remind Pelosi that the spirit and letter of successive United Nations Security Council resolutions, as well as Saudi and Egyptian efforts in recent weeks, have been destined to ensure precisely the opposite: that Syria end its meddling in Lebanese affairs.

Pelosi embarked on a fool's errand to Damascus this week, and among the issues she said she would raise with Assad - when she wasn't on the Lady Hester Stanhope tour in the capital of imprisoned dissidents Aref Dalila, Michel Kilo, and Anwar Bunni - is "the role of Syria in supporting Hamas and Hizbullah." What the speaker doesn't seem to have realized is that if Syria is made an obligatory passage in American efforts to address the Lebanese crisis, then Hizbullah will only gain. Once Assad is re-anointed gatekeeper in Lebanon, he will have no incentive to concede anything, least of all to dilettantes like Pelosi, on an organization that would be Syria's enforcer in Beirut if it could re-impose its hegemony over its smaller neighbor.

Then there is this that appeared in the "Arab Times," Saudi Arabia's English language newspaper. Presumably like all other newspapers in the Saudi kingdom, its factual content and editorials are subject to the royal family's watchful eye. Thus at least some of the Royal Family likely agree with this scathing piece by Amir Taheri excorciating Nancy Pelosi for her Middle East boondogle.

The other face of America! This is how Arab media and political circles describe Nancy Pelosi as she winds up her tour of the Middle East amid criticism from the Bush administration. And, there is little doubt that much of the Arab elite likes that face better than the one presented by US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in her trips to the region.

Pelosi, the speaker of the US House of Representatives, describes her tour as a fact-finding exercise. But, judging by the substantial negotiations she engaged in, hers was a full-fledged diplomatic mission. At least, this is how most Arabs see it.

“She is the friendly face of America,” says a senior Syrian official. “Where Condi frowns, Nancy smiles.”
Ms. Pelosi was specially feted in Damascus, capital of Syria, the oldest member of the club of “nations sponsoring international terrorism”, according to Washington.

“Her visit was a godsend to an isolated and beleaguered regime,” says a Lebanese minister. “The Syrian regime, which had been thinking of bowing to international pressure, is now reassured. All it has to do is to wait until Pelosi’s party takes over the White House in 2009.”

The Pelosi mission confirms the analysis made by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of the Islamic Republic that the United States is incapable of developing and implementing a long-term strategy. According to this analysis, the US is like a fickle monarch who might wake up one morning and decide to do the exact opposite of what he had been doing for years.

The most radical elements in the region liked Pelosi best if only because she endorsed their campaign of vilification against the Bush administration. Her motto was: Surrender before you have too, and claim credit for it! She represented a superpower that, because no one can take away anything from it, is prepared to give away everything.

The Pelosi Doctrine, as demonstrated during the tour, is the opposite of the Bush Doctrine spelled out in 2002.

The Bush Doctrine links the United States’ national security to democratization in the Middle East. It asserts that undemocratic states serve as breeding grounds for terrorism the way that marshes breed mosquitoes. The US should therefore, throw its weight behind those forces and governments that promote reform in the region.

In practical terms, the Bush Doctrine means a number of things.

It means using force to remove regimes that lack internal mechanisms for change, as was the case with the Taleban in Afghanistan and the Saddamites in Iraq. It also means persuading friendly regimes to broaden their popular base, liberalize their economies, and open up the social and political space, as is the case in Egypt and Jordan among others. Elsewhere, the Bush Doctrine envisages robust opposition to the ambitions of such opportunist powers as Syria, in its quest to dominate Lebanon, and the Islamic Republic of Iran in its pursuit of regional hegemony.

In the Bush Doctrine the Israel-Palestine conflict is regarded as an almost peripheral problem that could be tackled best when the region is democratized, liberalized, and woven into the global system.

The Bush Doctrine is based on the implicit assumptions that the US represents a political system that is morally superior to that of its adversaries in the Middle East and elsewhere.

The Bush Doctrine is idea-driven, not to say idealistic.

The Pelosi Doctrine, however, is based on realpolitik of the kind that Henry Kissinger or James Baker III, among countless other cynics, would approve.

It rejects the idea that the US political system, or the culture in which it is rooted, is in any way better, let alone superior, to systems developed by other peoples across the globe, including the Middle East. Pelosi applies the tenets of multiculturalism to international affairs: All systems are comparable; all systems are of equal value. She believes that other cultures might not be as good as hers, but hers sure can be as bad as theirs.

The Pelosi Doctrine opposes the use of force, even against obnoxious anti-American regimes. Throughout her tour, Madame Speaker made it clear that she was determined to hasten the withdrawal of American troops from Iraq, with hints that the US military presence in Afghanistan would also be wound down. Pelosi’s America would fight back only in self-defense, and rejects pre-emptive war based on perceived threats.

According to the Pelosi Doctrine, the US must work with the regimes in place, including those perceived as enemies. A great power, Pelosi believes, cannot afford to be judgmental. It must work with the realities on the ground rather than seek to change them in accordance with its vision of the world.

Pelosi also restores the status of the Israel-Palestine conflict as the most important issue of the region, if not of international life as a whole, and seeks to resume Washington’s role as mediator in a revived peace process. She rejects what some Arabs see as President George W. Bush’s partiality toward Israel, and urges a return to the even-handedness that the US demonstrated in the last years of the Clinton presidency.

Throughout her visit, Pelosi sought to project a modest image of the United States as opposed to the “arrogant” one presented by Bush.

What would the Middle East look like if the Pelosi Doctrine replaces the Bush Doctrine as the matrix of US foreign policy?

The US will withdraw from Iraq before the new Iraqi regime is capable of defending itself against its internal and external foes. It will then be up to rival regional powers, notably the Islamic republic, to determine the fate of Iraq, together with their local clients.

The new democratic regime in Afghanistan would also come under possibly fatal pressure. The country’s fate would then be in the hands of rival powers, notably Iran, Pakistan and Russia in conjunction with their respective clients within the country.

In the absence of political and diplomatic pressure from Washington, the current trend toward reform and liberalization would come to a halt in most parts of the region. Concerned about the rise of radical forces and greater hostility from revolutionary actors, such as the Islamic republic and the revived Al— Qaeda, Arab regimes would postpone democratization and revert to repressive methods.

Lebanon’s “Cedar Revolution” would fade into memory, as Syrian troops return to Beirut to resume occupation.

The Pelosization of US foreign policy would also encourage the “one-state” camp with regard to the Israel-Palestine conflict. At present, a majority of regional powers support a two-state solution in the context of the Saudi peace proposals. But the two-state option is based on the assumption that the US remains an active element in its support, rather than a mediator hedging its bets.

The Pelosization of US foreign policy could plunge the Middle East into endless civil and regional wars, facilitate the return of terrorist organizations now facing defeat and ultimate destruction, and, in time, threaten US national security on a grander scale. And that, in turn, could force the US into wars bigger and costlier than the ones in Afghanistan and Iraq that Pelosi regards as mistakes.

You can find the entire article here. Thus does Nancy Pelosi seem to make strange bedfellows, as I find myself in apparent agreement with the Saudis on this point.

Update: Not surprisingly, at least one group inside the U.S. explicitly applauds Pelosi for her attempt at an alternative foreign policy.

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