Price of help from Iran is too high

Dick Morris and Eileen McGann:

CAN Iran help us bail out of Iraq? Maybe - but we'd better take a hard look at the price.

The idea has reportedly been floated via a draft report to the Iraq Study Group (headed by former Secretary of State James Baker), which calls for a "dialogue" with Iran as well as Syria. Along the same lines, British Prime Minister Tony Blair recently said Iran could be a "partner" with the West if it did not develop a bomb.

Presumably, we'd ask Iran to help stabilize the situation in Iraq, curb the Shiite militias and encourage the Iraqi government to make sufficient concessions to the Sunnis to end or at least reduce the violence.

Would it work? It could. Iran certainly has sought to arm and enflame the Shiites in Iraq. Maybe the mullahs can rein in their proxies, and let us withdraw in dignity - not holding onto the skids of the helicopter as it lifts off our embassy this time.

But why would they play ball with Washington at the same time that Bush is threatening sanctions explicitly and a military strike implicitly if Iran proceeds to develop nuclear weapons? No chance.

...

In short, we can only get Iran's help on Iraq if we let Tehran get the bomb.

Yet, with nukes, Iran gains the leverage to force Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and all the region's oil producers to move in its orbit. The Middle East will become an Iranian sphere of influence.

Such an under-the-table deal would amount to a total sellout of Israel and Saudi Arabia and America's other Arab allies.

...
One of the problems with the Iraq Study Group's leaked list of options is that they invite this type of speculation. Bake is too smart to go for the deal Iran wants. I suspect that the Iran move is part of the preparation for stronger moves against Iran, not weaker. In some ways it is like the prewar dance in the UN with Iraq. We are exhausting the diplomatic alternatives. There is clearly nothing in Bush's rhetoric that suggest he has changed his mind about the core issues of Iran and nuclear weapons or in abandoning Iraq.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Should Republicans go ahead and add Supreme Court Justices to head off Democrats

Washington Post: Some Democrats eye adding more justices to the Supreme Court to change its ideological bent The once-remote idea has gained the attention of liberals angered by the GOP push to remake the federal courts. Probably the easy way to defeat this court-packing scheme is for Trump to propose doing the same thing now.  It would lead to Democrat denunciations and claims that it would be wrong, thereby blowing up any attempt by them in the unfortunate event of Democrats winning a presidential election.
Read more

29 % of companies say they are unlikely to keep insurance after Obamacare

Conn Carroll: A new survey of 368 midsize to large companies found that 29% of them are considering terminating their active employee health care plans when Obamacare is full implemented in 2014. Only 71% of employers surveyed said they did not expect to drop their health coverage, while 20% said they did not know and 9% said they were planning to exit. The latest survey, conducted by Towers Watson, echoes an ealier survey by McKinsey & Co. finding that 30% of private-sector employers were planning to drop their employee health insurance coverage by 2014. When the Congressional Budget Office crunched Obamacare's spending numbers, they estimated that only 7% of employees currently covered by employer-sponsored plans would lose their plans. ... This means the cost of the health care fiasco will be hundreds of billions more than estimated by the CBO and Congressional Democrat. It is also clear that Obama's pledge that you could keep your health care plan if you wanted t
Read more

Bin Laden's concern about Zarqawi's remains

James Robbins: ... Bin Laden suggests that President Bush should allow Zarqawi’s body to be returned to his family in Jordan, but this is a matter that is up to the Jordanian government, which so far has not shown much interest in facilitating a homecoming. Bin Laden mocks King Abdullah II, calling him a Coalition minion, and asking “w hat scares you about Abu Musab after he’s dead? You know that his funeral, if allowed to happen, would be a huge funeral showing the extent of sympathy with the mujahedin.” A large crowd would definitely turn out, though most people would be on hand to demonstrate their anger and disgust. Last November’s hotel bombings in Amman , masterminded by Zarqawi, are still fresh in people’s memory, and mentioning them to Jordanians has the same visceral impact as memory of the 9/11 attacks does here. Jordan has adopted a zero-tolerance policy towards those who choose to mourn the country’s least favorite son, and four opposition members of parliament who paid con
Read more