The true face of Iran (Tehran Times)

By our staff writer
President Mahmud Ahmadinejad’s surprise announcement on Wednesday that the British military personnel detained for entering Iranian waters were to be freed was met by a round of applause by correspondents attending the press conference. The move was another example of the civilized attitude of the Iranian people, which is acknowledged by friends and foes alike and has its roots in ancient Iran. The president called the decision to free the sailors and marines “a gift from the Iranian people to the British people.”

Iranian armed forces arrested the 15 British marines and sailors on March 23 after they illegally entered Iran’s territorial waters in the northern Persian Gulf.

The release of the British sailors through quiet diplomacy provides a "compelling lesson on how to deal with the wider international standoff between the U.S. and Iran," according to Professor Abbas Edalat.

The professor at London's prestigious Imperial College said the unexpectedly early resolution following their arrest in the Persian Gulf was the "direct result of Iran's goodwill and a U-turn by the British government."

"After initially using language of threat and seeking to add an unnecessary international dimension to the dispute, it eventually opted for direct negotiations with Iran based on mutual respect," he said in an article for the Guardian newspaper on Friday.

Ahmadinejad’s brief conversation with the sailors and marines was a demonstration of his “doctrine of kindness toward all human beings” in action.

But after they got home, perhaps due to pressure, the British troops were ungrateful, despite the fact that they were treated well in Iran and eventually freed.

The president also asked the Tony Blair government to refrain from punishing the troops for admitting they illegally entered Iran’s waters in the Persian Gulf.

As a result of this move, which won international praise, the ill-intentioned efforts of certain biased Western officials and media outlets to demonize the Iranian president came to naught.

Yet, these Western officials and media outlets have refused to give Iran credit for the humanitarian act and even launched a totally absurd propaganda campaign against the Islamic Republic after four British soldiers were killed in southern Iraq, with some officials saying Iran put psychological pressure on the detained troops and Prime Minister Tony Blair, instead of thanking Iran, again repeating his claim that Iran is supporting elements that are attacking U.S.-UK coalition forces in Iraq.

Unfortunately, the true face of Iran is still being hidden from the world, with media outlets disseminating biased and unrealistic stories about Iran, distorting Tehran’s call for a lasting peace with justice to resolve the decades-long Middle East conflict and insisting that it is unyielding in its demand that its inalienable nuclear rights be recognized.

But one day the world will see the true image of Iran.

Iran sends a message

Pat Buchanan
Saturday, April 7, 2007

WASHINGTON

The Easter pardon by Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of the 15 British sailors and marines, seized by Iranian Revolutionary Guards in waters off the Iraqi coast two weeks ago, ends the crisis.

And as the beaming smile of President Ahmadinejad while he graciously accepted apologies from the sailors and marines testifies, there is no doubt as to who won the showdown. Among Iranians, for whom love of the Brits is an acquired taste, Ahmadinejad is the victor. His position inside Iran, a subject of speculation, is surely stronger today.

But his victory and that of the Revolutionary Guards comes at a cost to Iran, which showed itself to be a state willing to engage in hostage-taking and show trials as a negotiating tactic.

As for the British military, however, it has sustained a humiliation.

What kind of rules of engagement were these sailors operating under to permit themselves to be surrounded, captured and disarmed without firing a shot? What kind of training did they have? How was it that, in days, if not hours, some were parroting the story line fed them by their captors -- that they regretted having violated Iranian territory and wished to express remorse? As yet, there is no evidence any were abused or tortured.

The episode reveals the decline of once-Great Britain.

What could today's Britain have done? Unlike the Falklands War of 25 years ago, the Royal Navy is not what it was, and Tony Blair is not Margaret Thatcher. The Brits may have the nuclear weapons to destroy Iran. In conventional power, they are like the rest of the European Union -- bantamweights, at best.

Among the risks Iran took was that the British would fight, not surrender. Blood could have been shed, casualties taken, and Britain might have retaliated, forcing Iran to fight.

Why, then, did the Iranians seize and hold the Brits, then suddenly let them go? One explanation is that they are sending a message.

While they do not want war with us, they do not fear it to such an extent that they will permit themselves to be pushed around. You hit us, we hit back. But if you engage us diplomatically, rather than disrespect and threaten us, progress is possible in getting what your want. That, at least, is what the Iranian behavior seems to suggest.

The United States should test again, via back channels, whether Iran is willing to suspend enrichment of uranium in return for a U.S. suspension of sanctions. For time is not on our side. Iran's ability to enrich uranium to weapons grade, however limited today, improves every month. It does not diminish.

In recent months, U.S. forces have, on two occasions, seized Iranians inside Iraq. Iraqis close to the U.S. military bagged another. He was released the day before the Brits were let go. Now, the U.S. military has permitted Red Cross visits to five Iranians seized in Irbil.

There have been reports of insurgent attacks on Iranians inside Iran, in the Kurdish region in the northwest, the Arab region of the southwest and in Baluchistan, near the Afghan-Pakistan border.

So far, neither the Iranians nor Americans have crossed a red line that would make inevitable the war some in both countries may want, but the great majority in both countries do not want.

Nancy Pelosi might thus hurry home from Saudi Arabia, where she has been instructing the Wahhabis on women's rights, and reintroduce that House resolution declaring that, before President Bush can take his country to war against Iran, Congress must first authorize it

The history at the end of history

by FRANCIS FUKUYAMA*

Fifteen years ago in my book The End of History and the Last Man I argued that, if a society wanted to be modern, there was no alternative to a market economy and a democratic political system.

Not everyone wanted to be modern, of course, and not everyone could put in place the institutions and policies necessary to make democracy and capitalism work, but no alternative system would yield better results. While the “End of History” thus was essentially an argument about modernization, some people have linked my thesis about the end of history to the foreign policy of President George W. Bush and American strategic hegemony. But anyone who thinks that my ideas constitute the intellectual foundation for the Bush administration’s policies has not been paying attention to what I have been saying since 1992 about democracy and development. President Bush initially justified intervention in Iraq on the grounds of Saddam’s programs to develop weapons of mass destruction, the regime’s alleged links to al-Qaida, as well as Iraq’s violation of human rights and lack of democracy. As the first two justifications crumbled in the wake of the 2003 invasion, the administration increasingly emphasized the importance of democracy, both in Iraq and in the broader Middle East, as a rationale for what it was doing. Bush argued that the desire for freedom and democracy were universal and not culture-bound, and that America would be dedicated to the support of democratic movements “with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world.” Supporters of the war saw their views confirmed in the ink-stained fingers of Iraqi voters who queued up to vote in the various elections held between January and December 2005, in the Cedar Revolution in Lebanon, and in the Afghan presidential and parliamentary elections. Inspiring and hopeful as these events were, the road to liberal democracy in the Middle East is likely to be extremely disappointing in the near to medium term, and the Bush administration’s efforts to build a regional policy around it are heading toward abject failure. To be sure, the desire to live in a modern society and to be free of tyranny is universal, or nearly so. This is demonstrated by the efforts of millions of people each year to move from the developing to the developed world, where they hope to find the political stability, job opportunities, health care, and education that they lack at home. But this is different from saying that there is a universal desire to live in a liberal society - that is, a political order characterized by a sphere of individual rights and the rule of law. The desire to live in a liberal democracy is, indeed, something acquired over time, often as a byproduct of successful modernization. Moreover, the desire to live in a modern liberal democracy does not translate necessarily into an ability to actually do so. The Bush administration seems to have assumed in its approach to post-Saddam Iraq that both democracy and a market economy were default conditions to which societies would revert once oppressive tyranny was removed, rather than a series of complex, interdependent institutions that had to be painstakingly built over time. Long before you have a liberal democracy, you have to have a functioning state (something that never disappeared in Germany or Japan after they were defeated in World War II). This is something that cannot be taken for granted in countries like Iraq. The End of History was never linked to a specifically American model of social or political organization. Following Alexandre Kojève, the Russian-French philosopher who inspired my original argument, I believe that the European Union more accurately reflects what the world will look like at the end of history than the contemporary United States. The EU’s attempt to transcend sovereignty and traditional power politics by establishing a transnational rule of law is much more in line with a “post-historical” world than the Americans’ continuing belief in God, national sovereignty, and their military. Finally, I never linked the global emergence of democracy to American agency, and particularly not to the exercise of American military power. Democratic transitions need to be driven by societies that want democracy, and since the latter requires institutions, it is usually a fairly long and drawn out process. Outside powers like the US can often help in this process by the example they set as politically and economically successful societies. They can also provide funding, advice, technical assistance, and yes, occasionally military force to help the process along. But coercive regime change was never the key to democratic transition.