BUSH THE TALENTED POLITICIAN
By Caroline Glick, JPOST
[..]For the past four years, US military commanders have provided mountains of evidence demonstrating unequivocally that Iran is the central force behind the terror and violence in Iraq. Iran arms the forces terrorizing the Iraqi people and fighting coalition forces. Iranian Revolutionary Guards and Hizbullah forces direct and organize the insurgency. Al-Qaida operatives in Iraq receive their orders from al-Qaida leaders who have been operating in Iran since December 2001.
Iran’s activities in Iraq are not limited to directing the terror war. In the Kurdish areas in northern Iraq, Iran exploits its close relations with Kurdish President Masoud Barzani to undermine US-Turkish relations. On Tuesday, Michael Rubin, who serves as a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and previously worked as an adviser to the Pentagon in Iraq, discussed this situation in testimony before the House Foreign Relations Committee.
Rubin testified that “Barzani has provided safe-haven and arms to PKK terrorists responsible for the deaths in Turkey of more than 100 people since January alone.” Stemming from this state of affairs, in recent weeks, US-Turkish relations, and especially US relations with the anti-Islamist Turkish military, have reached an all time low. For the first time there is a distinct possibility that Turkey may withdraw from NATO. This state of affairs transpires as Turkey’s Islamist Prime Minister Recip Erdogan moves to strengthen Turkey’s relations with Iran and Syria.
At his press conference last week, Bush spoke forthrightly about Iran’s role in the Iraq war. Bush said,
-
“The fight in Iraq is part of a broader struggle that’s unfolding across the region…The same regime in Iran that is pursuing nuclear weapons and threatening to wipe Israel off the map is also providing sophisticated IEDs to extremists in Iraq who are using them to kill American soldiers.”
Bush also pointed his finger at Hizbullah and Syria for the central role they too play in the war.
Bush’s remarks were music to the ears of those who have been urging the US to confront the Iranians. But unfortunately, his statement last week, like countless statements that preceded it, was not matched by any revision of the administration’s Iran policy. That policy, which the Bush administration has pressed for the past four years, is characterized by continuous and consistently escalating attempts to appease Iran’s leaders.
Two months ago the administration held the first US diplomatic contacts with Iranian officials since the Islamic revolution in 1979. With the declared goal of convincing the Iranians to put out the fires they are lighting in Iraq, the administration dispatched its ambassador in Iraq to meet with Iranian diplomats.
Iran responded to this radical departure from traditional US policy with unbridled contempt. Iran’s supreme leader Ali Khamenei taunted, “”Why don’t you admit that you are weak and your razor is blunt?” Days after the meeting, the Iranians announced that they had arrested four US citizens who were in Iran visiting their relatives. This week, two sickly looking American female prisoners were paraded before television cameras presumptively admitting that they had been working as US agents to subvert the Iranian regime.
CONTINUE
