E.U.-U.S.
TRAIN WRECK OVER IRAN?
Por su interés y relevancia, he
seleccionado el artículo que sigue para incluirlo en este sitio web. (L. B.-B.)
Con un breve comentario
al final:
IMPRESIONES (L. B.-B.,
16-2-05, 19:00)
In an otherwise flawless
diplomatic performance, Secretary
of State Condoleezza Rice threw
a spark-plug wrench in the fragile machinery
of trans-Atlantic rapprochement.
Miss Rice, the second woman to hold America's top diplomatic job, told a
breakfast meeting in Paris, Iran is a "totalitarian regime" the
United States would not talk to. But the EU3
" the U.K., France and Germany
" were to continue negotiations with Iran, with
a blend of sticks and carrots, until the country's dominant
clerics abandon their nuclear ambitions.
Ranking officials rankled in all three European
countries. Miss Rice's
position was deemed absurd. The United
States holds the only sticks
and carrots that might conceivably make a difference. Sticks, short of military action, would be
a U.N. Security Council censure of Iran and economic sanctions. Iran can circumvent any sanction regime
by buying whatever it needs
across the Gulf, in Dubai or Oman, an
emirate and a country with close relations with Iran. EU3 countries would continue trading " via Dubai.
The carrots " ranging
from $6 billion in frozen Iranian assets in the United States to the
nonaggression pact Iran might buy in return for relinquishing its uranium
enrichment to weapons-grade quality " can be negotiated only in direct
talks with the United States. Several U.S. administrations, beginning in 1953 with a CIA-engineered coup to oust Prime Minister
Mohammed Mossadegh and bring
back Shah Reza Pahlavi from
a brief exile in Rome, to the U.S. betrayal of the shah in 1978, interfered directly in the country's internal
affairs.
The United States is willing
to talk to North Korea in six-power talks, but not in four-power talks or
face-to-face with Iran, where mullahs are models of mental health compared to
the Stalinist monarch who tyrannizes his slave subjects in North Korea. Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, Iran's president from 1989 to 1997, told USA TODAY's Barbara Slavin last week that
"al Qaeda terrorists are our
enemies, too."
The EU3 are beginning to
couple Miss Rice's intransigent rhetoric on Iran with Vice President Dick
Cheney's offhand remark that the Israelis might pre-empt before the United
States with air strikes against Iran's 12 to 15 nuclear facilities, most of
them underground. EU3 have asked their
Washington ambassadors if his isn't Iraq deja vu all over
again.
Unmanned aerial
recon planes have been flying over
Iran for months with live
video feeds back to the Pentagon on
suspected nuclear facilities.
Iranian exiles, like Iraqi exiles before the Iraqi war,
are reporting Iran is close to
achieving WMD capability. Operational plans for lightning raids
on suspected Syrian sites, where
jihadi volunteers for Iraq are processed, are ready for immediate
execution following a presidential order. All the ingredients
are in place for a much wider regional conflict.
President Bush's hopefully allegorical reference to a
"fire of freedom ... that will burn those who oppose it" and
"reach the darkest corners of the world" prompted a number of foreign
ministries to ask their Washington ambassadors to reassess the influence of the
Born Again Christian Right and the Likud lobby on the Bush Doctrine. The wild card is what the
Economist called President Bush's "intellectual love affair" with former Soviet dissident and Israeli Cabinet minister Natan Sharansky.
"There are few things that irritate
foreign-policy types more about Mr. Bush than his Manichean view of the
world," the Economist wrote. "His infatuation
with Mr. Sharansky suggests he is not likely to
be any more "sophisticated' in his second term. Mr. Sharansky sees the world in black
and white terms " good vs. evil
and free societies vs. "fear
societies,' with a bunch of "realists' dithering in the middle."
Mr. Sharansky's "The
Case For Democracy: The Power of Freedom to Overcome Tyranny and Terror"
has been praised and used by Mr. Bush and is must reading on Embassy Row, as
well as a synopsis of Christian fundamentalist Timothy LaHaye's
12 "Left Behind" books that have sold tens of millions of copies.
For the Left Behind-ers who
believe in the Apocalypse Now (in their own lifetime) scenario, another war in
Iran and/or Syria and/or Korea won't amount to a hill of baked beans in the
final scheme of things. They will be seated at the right
hand of the Almighty and watch those who didn't
repent in time suffer the tortures of the eternally damned. But for Europe's
temporal leaders, the possibility of another war in the Middle
East is of vital concern. Next time round this track, Europe's Muslim slums could
suddenly erupt against their host governments.
If Iran is a totalitarian
state, ask the EU3, what does that make Saudi Arabia? What is worse than totalitarian?
There is even less freedom
in Saudi Arabia than in Iran. Iranian women
are allowed to drive.
Anti-U.S., Saudi-funded pamphlets
and booklets have been distributed in mosques all over the
United States, advising Muslim travelers they are "in enemy territory." But we still
talk directly to the Saudi
royals.
Iran has nationwide elections, a parliament and a
free-market economy. Also an underground media
and almost 100,000 bloggers.
It is also
an ancient civilization and once a powerful empire where Darius
the Great ruled 500 years before Jesus
Christ. But the Bush administration won't talk with
Iran. That's a job for the
three EU stooges who are now fed
up with their U.S.-assigned roles in the pantomime on Lake Geneva.
During the Cold War, the
United States talked with Josef Stalin, Nikita Khrushchev, Leonid Brezhnev, Red
China's brutal dictator Mao Tse-tung and North
Vietnam's Pham Van Dong.
The United States also created and propped up corrupt
dictators like the Congo's anti-communist Mobutu Sese
Seko. Today's litmus test for
talks with the U.S. is democratic
purity.
Iran, say the EU3, also has legitimate security
concerns, which only the United States can address in direct talks. Seen from Tehran, there is
a military vise of U.S. troops
on Iran's eastern and western frontiers,
U.S. aircraft carriers and
scores of preprogrammed sea-based
Tomahawk cruise missiles in the Persian Gulf and the Arabian Sea on its southern
border.
But Iran
is not without
retaliatory capabilities. It could give
the United States a hard time in Iraq by activating Shi'ite
militia against U.S. and
British troops. Friendly Arab intelligence agencies have also warned
Washington that "two or three" Iranian divisions have received orders
to be ready
to move across
the border into Iraq on short notice.
Seventy-five percent of Iran's population is younger than
25. It is the world's only
country whose youth is pro-American. But a military attack by Israel or the
U.S. would quickly drive them into the
hard-line camp " and jeopardize
Iraqi democratization.
Arnaud de Borchgrave
is editor at large of The Washington Times and of United
Press International.
breve comentario al final:
IMPRESIONES (L. B.-B.,
16-2-05, 19:00)
Al carecer de información de inteligencia, uno no puede emitir
sobre las cuestiones que voy a tratar más que impresiones intuitivas que pueden
resultar totalmente erróneas. No obstante, voy a formular algunas opiniones
relacionadas con el contenido del artículo que comento.
En primer lugar, me llaman la atención las actitudes que se
mantienen acerca de Irán y Siria en la comunidad internacional, o quizá, con
más precisión, en los EEUU. Existe un recelo y distanciamiento muy intenso con
respecto a Irán y, en cambio, una cierta tolerancia hacia Siria, de la cual
siempre se espera que avance, sin que nunca lo haga. Claro está que los
regímenes de ambos países tienen distinta fuerza como modelos de legitimación:
el Baazismo parece obsoleto, mientras que el
fundamentalismo islámico es una fuerza presente en el mundo árabe a la que hay
que contener. Pero quizá también convendría observar las cosas desde otra
perspectiva, que es la que quiero apuntar aquí. Y disculpen si me equivoco.
La impresión que tengo es que el régimen sirio es una estructura
mucho más cerrada que el iraní, con una potencialidad evolutiva menor. El
régimen sirio me parece un aparato baasista muy cohesionado y hostil hacia la
libertad, con las inercias seculares típicas del autoritarismo árabe, mientras
que el régimen iraní, pese a su doble estructura de legitimidad, la teocrática
y la democrática, y debido a las tendencias profundas de su sociedad, podría
continuar su evolución ya iniciada si encontrara influencias y actitudes
receptivas en la comunidad internacional, y principalmente en EEUU.
Al estar cambiando el "Greater Middle East" y si
Iraq, como parece, emerge como un sistema islámico pluralista, la influencia
chií hacia la apertura y la democracia puede ser mayor. En cambio, más bien
parece que el régimen sirio se encierra en sí mismo y en la actuación
antioccidental y pro-radicalismo árabe, incluso con políticas terroristas que
podrían estar apoyadas por sus aparatos de seguridad.
Por otra parte, la evolución de Oriente
Próximo y Medio necesita tranquilidad, a fin de consolidar el cambio en Iraq y
Palestina, sin estallidos en otras zonas. Por eso, tengo la impresión de que a
Siria se le podría enseñar el palo si continúa con malas artes, frenándola con
eso. Pero con Irán, si EEUU iniciara una política de reconciliación, basada en
el compromiso de restablecer unas buenas relaciones, acompañada de estímulos
económicos, a cambio de continuar la evolución bloqueada últimamente hacia la
democracia, frenar el terrorismo y paralizar la carrera hacia al armanento nuclear, creo que la situación podría evolucionar
positivamente.
Si esto se lograra, el impulso hacia la libertad en el "Greater Middle East" sería
mucho mayor y más rápido.
Repito, son impresiones, disculpen si me
equivoco, pero creo que Irán está a punto de caramelo hacia la libertad. Se
trata de encontrar el camino y evitar el peligro nuclear y la desestabilización
mayor del "Greater Middle
East" con costes más reducidos que con estrategias más rudas.