So the New York Times editorial board seems to have reached a position on engagement with Iran that is every bit as stupid and internally incoherent as the one proposed the other day by the paper’s own Roger Cohen. While Cohen moved seamlessly from proclaiming in one breath that Obama should “refrain indefinitely from talk of engagement with the regime” to admitting that such a response would be “dangerous and unnecessary”, “bad for both countries and the world”, so the paper’s editors today, while rightly maintaining that the Obama administration should continue to move toward negotiations, nevertheless propose that the U.S. withdraw its ambassadors from Tehran, sign on to a condemnation issued by the G-8, withhold visas from “selected Iranian officials”, and so on. Which is it? If negotiations with Iran really are, as Cohen says they are, in the service of “every U.S. objective from Gaza to Afghanistan”, then why should we care whether following through with them would “allow Khamenei to gloat that, in the end, what the United States respects is force”? And if the editors really wish such negotiations to actually, you know, do something, then why in the world should they be coupled with a series of symbolic but obviously hostile gestures that will almost certainly cause the Iranian regime to adopt an even more hardline stance?

Similarly, here’s a bit of Reihan’s response (from about seven blog years ago) to some of the critics (see the roundup here) of a column he’d written on Iran:

… I do think that the president, by virtue of his political prowess and Iran’s vulnerability and the relative goodwill he enjoys in Europe, has an opportunity to put a a great deal pressure on Iran. Because I haven’t fully resigned myself to a nuclear-armed Iran, I think now is the time to apply this pressure.

This is surely right, though some might disagree on the issue of nuclear armament. But the debate is not over whether to apply pressure, but how, and so over what sort of pressure is most likely to yield the best results. It was Vice President Biden, of all people, who had the good sense to promise before last month’s election that the administration’s offer to talk with Iran was “not a reward for good behavior”, and in saying that he was conveying precisely the sort of attitude will make the – yes, very vulnerable – regime in Tehran feel that it is being taken seriously as an international equal, rather than being led around like a donkey with a carrot and a stick. (I repeat: Biden, of all people! Insert stopped clock joke here.) It seems overwhelmingly likely that it will be in response to such an attitude that the mullahs might be willing to bring their behavior in line with U.S. interests. By contrast, having our nation’s leaders treat the Iranians like misbehaving schoolchildren is certain to accomplish exactly the opposite.

Update: Here is some good news.

Filed under: foreign affairs, politics