The magazine FP [Foreign Affairs] in a piece "How Bush saved Iran's Neocons" assesses how Bush policies in relation to Iran have most likely spurred, rather than curbed, a war with the country:
"When it comes to foreign policy, the Bush administration has often made the perfect the enemy of the good. It wasted years seeking the removal of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat before it got serious about trying to broker an Arab-Israeli peace deal. Now, with barely a year left in office, it finds itself trying to reconcile a weakened Israel and a fractured Palestine. It ignored Iraqi history by dismantling powerful, centralized institutions and trying to re-create Iraq as a democratic, free-market state. More than four years later, U.S. officials are still struggling to salvage a stable nation from the wreckage.
The administration has followed a similar pattern—but with potentially even more disastrous consequences—in its policy toward Iran. In applying new unilateral sanctions against the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, the Bush administration hopes to intensify divisions within the Iranian government so that more “reasonable” figures will benefit. So far, however, U.S. policy has had the opposite effect, boosting Iranian hardliners who argue that the Bush administration has no interest in reconciling with Iran and that Tehran’s best course is to reach bomb capacity as soon as possible.
The recent resignation of Ali Larijani, Iran’s top nuclear negotiator, is a case in point. Caught between American neocons and Iranian hardliners, Larijani stepped down last month and was replaced by Saeed Jalili, an obscure foreign ministry official and crony of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
Larijani could have achieved more with timely U.S. backing. In the winter of 2005-2006, he began making overtures to the Bush administration, going so far as to praise U.S. National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley as a “logical thinker” in an interview with me in Tehran. Larijani also authorized a deputy, Mohammad Javad Jaffari, to set up back-channel talks with Hadley or a designated emissary. The White House never replied."
"When it comes to foreign policy, the Bush administration has often made the perfect the enemy of the good. It wasted years seeking the removal of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat before it got serious about trying to broker an Arab-Israeli peace deal. Now, with barely a year left in office, it finds itself trying to reconcile a weakened Israel and a fractured Palestine. It ignored Iraqi history by dismantling powerful, centralized institutions and trying to re-create Iraq as a democratic, free-market state. More than four years later, U.S. officials are still struggling to salvage a stable nation from the wreckage.
The administration has followed a similar pattern—but with potentially even more disastrous consequences—in its policy toward Iran. In applying new unilateral sanctions against the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, the Bush administration hopes to intensify divisions within the Iranian government so that more “reasonable” figures will benefit. So far, however, U.S. policy has had the opposite effect, boosting Iranian hardliners who argue that the Bush administration has no interest in reconciling with Iran and that Tehran’s best course is to reach bomb capacity as soon as possible.
The recent resignation of Ali Larijani, Iran’s top nuclear negotiator, is a case in point. Caught between American neocons and Iranian hardliners, Larijani stepped down last month and was replaced by Saeed Jalili, an obscure foreign ministry official and crony of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
Larijani could have achieved more with timely U.S. backing. In the winter of 2005-2006, he began making overtures to the Bush administration, going so far as to praise U.S. National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley as a “logical thinker” in an interview with me in Tehran. Larijani also authorized a deputy, Mohammad Javad Jaffari, to set up back-channel talks with Hadley or a designated emissary. The White House never replied."
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