By Trita Parsi
"....Yet the mere retirement of George W. Bush's neocons or Ahmadinejad's radicals may not be sufficient to avoid the disaster of war.....
A successful policy on Iran must begin by reassessing some basic assumptions:
1. Iran is ripe for regime change.
Not true.......
2. Iran is irrational and cannot be deterred.
Not true......
3. Iran is inherently anti-American.
Not quite.......
4. Enrichment equals a nuclear bomb.
Not necessarily......
5. Iran seeks Israel's destruction.
False......The major shifts in Israeli-Iranian relations, from pragmatic entente in the 1960s and '70s to strategic rivalry in the 1990s, have occurred because of changing strategic--not ideological--realities. Whenever Iran's ideological and strategic imperatives have clashed--as was the case in the 1980s, when the common threat from the Soviet Union and Iraq prompted Iran and Israel to pursue clandestine cooperation--realpolitik has prevailed. Today, Iran's ideological and strategic imperatives largely coincide. Israel is seen as a strategic and an ideological threat, and as a result Tehran has actively confronted Israe......
6. The pressure on Iran is working.
Questionable......
7. Stability in the Middle East can be achieved only through Iran's isolation.
Quite the contrary......"
No comments:
Post a Comment