How Iran Can Help Bush

The sweet taste of victory in Iraq appears to be rapidly vanishing behind looming problems like huge deficits, deflation, enormous military outlays, and then, farther out there, more trouble in Afghanistan and Iraq coupled with terrorist threats.

But there is a thin ray of light. Iran, still labeled an "evil" state, wants to come to terms with America. For all the differences between our Democratic society and their theological one we share a common fear of chaos.

Former Iranian president Hashemi Rafsanjani, a few weeks ago, made a public announcement in this direction, when he proposed a referendum in Iran on relations with the United States. Bush has been silent on this subject, but tellingly the "evil" state rhetoric has not been heard for a while in the White House.

Lessons from history could help get our leaders moving on the come-to-terms path. On July 15, 1971, President Nixon announced that Henry Kissinger, then director of the National Security Council (NSC), had flown to Beijing and returned with an invitation from Chairman Mao to visit China. That speech marked the beginning of the end of the Vietnam War. Exactly a month later, Nixon made another speech that revived an ailing American economy by cutting the dollar loose from gold. The two speeches turned around the two crises and resulted in a landslide re-election for Nixon.

Almost 32 years later, President Bush faces growing chaos in Iraq and Afghanistan, and terrorist threats in many parts of the world. At the same time, the global economy is not recovering, and the one exception, China, is shattered by the SARS pandemic. Is there a contemporary "China" that can do for the Middle East what China once did for East Asia? A case can be made that such a power is Iran.

Revolutions arise through ideology and organization and the two, taken together, create power. In November 1978, revolutionaries, both Islamists and Marxists, toppled the Shah. Then the two factions turned on each other with the Islamists winning and Iran was proclaimed an Islamic Republic.

Then NSC director Zbigniew Brzezinski called the event a "coup d'etat," resulting in several attempts to overthrow it. But like the Russian and Chinese revolutions, the Iranian one not only lasted, but got stronger. In the middle 1950s, America came to terms with Russia; in the early 1970s it did so with China; and in the mid-'90s it started to do so with Iran. But within a year of coming to power, Bush labeled Iraq, Iran and North Korea an "axis of evil."

Yet despite Pentagon hardliners' call for action against Syria and Iran, Bush, like Nixon before July 15, 1971, knows he faces forces, both external (wars) and internal (recession), that could cost him re-election. He knows that, though America won the Iraq war, it could rapidly lose the post-war. Under the thin layer of the American occupiers looms another revolution.

The authoritative Arabic daily, the Aharq al-Awsat, has been publishing excerpts from notes taken by U.N. weapons inspector Ralf Ekeus in 1995. At that time, two sons-in-law of Saddam Hussein showed up in the Jordanian capital Amman and spent a month spilling the beans about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. Then when they returned they were quickly shot. Nobody seemed to know why they came and why they were killed.

But the main informer, Hussein Kamil, made it quite clear what they were afraid of. He said again and again that "religion" was spreading everywhere. Even in the Baath Party he saw members going to do their prayers. He said, "today their despicable chattering dominates Iran, but it won't be long before it dominates Iraq as well."

One possible reason why they were executed by their father-in-law, Saddam, was that they came home empty-handed. Kamil kept on saying how close the Baath felt to the West and how much they despised the Iranian theocrats. But the Clinton administration was in no mood to help, preoccupied as it was with the Oslo Accord.