Asking those on a "mission from God" to compromise

Amir Taheri:

'TALK to Iran!" The phrase has become a mantra for all who fear the Kho meinist regime but are equally scared of challenging it.

The idea of talks is based on the assumption that every problem must have a solution - all we need to do is look for it.

Most people find unbearable the idea that a problem might defy solution in a given timeframe. Yet life, including international life, is full of problems that lack ready-made solutions at the time of our choosing. Thus, by recommending talks, we cling to the hope that the process might somehow produce a miracle.

The "Talk to Iran" party pretends that it has struck gold with an original thought. Yet this banal idea has been in circulation for a quarter of a century. President Jimmy Carter thought of it in January 1979, a month before the mullahs seized power in Tehran, when he established contact with the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, then operating from a Paris suburb.

Once the mullahs were in control, the administration intensified the talks via the embassy in Tehran. Bruce Laingen, the charge d'affaire and a sincere supporter of the revolution, was a daily visitor to the foreign ministry. Six months after the establishment of the Islamic Republic, National Security Adviser Zbigniew Bzrezinski held a "summit" with Mehdi Bazargan, Khomeini's prime minister, to discuss a "strategic partnership."

The process ended when Khomeinist "students" raided the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and took its diplomats hostage, Laingen among them.

Since then, all U.S. administrations, except the present one, have maintained some level of talks, often behind the scenes, with Tehran's leadership. Yet none managed to influence the Khomeinist strategy in any way.

Others who talked to the Islamic Republic fared no better. Hans-Dietrich Genscher, longtime West German foreign minister, built his career around the hope of bringing the Islamic Republic into the mainstream. He invented the phrase "critical dialogue" - which, in practice, ended up meaning a joint Iranian-European criticism of the United States. Most recently, Jack Straw, during his tenure as British foreign secretary, visited Tehran more frequently than Washington.

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The only reason we are still talking to this stone wall is to prove to the Euro weenies that the Iranians are the problem and not the US. There is really no other reason to waste time with these true believers of Islamo facsisism. These guys have convinced themselves that it is their destiny to spread their sick religious beliefs to the world through nuclear intimidation. They want to do to the world what the kidnappers did to the Fox News team. Every time we have attempted to discuss anything with them we come away dirtier than before we talked. It is time to face the fact that this odious regime must be destroyed.