BRET STEPHENS: AH’JAD IS THE MOUTH….NOW MEET THE THE CONSIGLIERE OF IRAN
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204190504577040190007689600.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEFTTopOpinion
On President Obama: “Either he was incompetent or he didn’t possess a vision.” On the revolts in the Arab world: “The success of these movements [reflects] a failure of the policy pursued by the U.S. year after year to support dictators.” On economics: “The private sector needs more support within the Constitution.”
Am I nodding off to the sound of my own thoughts?
There were moments yesterday morning, as I sat around a conference table at Iran’s Mission to the United Nations, when I almost thought so. But not quite. The speaker is Mohammad Javad Larijani, secretary-general of Iran’s High Council for Human Rights and older brother to both Sadegh Larijani, Iran’s chief justice, and Ali Larijani, the speaker of Iran’s parliament and a perennial contender for the presidency. The Larijanis, favorites of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and sons of a famous ayatollah, are often compared to the Kennedys, which is especially apt if you think there was a dark side to Camelot. Then again, none of the Kennedys could hold an intellectual candle to this guy.
Mr. Larijani’s arrival in New York—he’s here to defend Iran against charges that it abuses human rights—comes right on the heels of an explosive report by the U.N.’s nuclear watchdog that Iran has secretly been at work on a nuclear-weapons program. That in turn followed the Obama administration’s bombshell allegation that the regime had sought to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to the U.S. But Mr. Larijani betrays no hint of being worried about the potential fallout of either revelation, not that there has been any so far. Instead, he seems convinced Iran’s horizons are only getting brighter.
“We are happy to see the movements in the Arab world,” he says in the fluent English he acquired as a graduate student in math at Berkeley in the 1970s. “We think democracy in each of these states will let these countries revive their Islamic sentiment. . . . [Their] relations with Iran will be deepened and expanded.”
As for Syria, where the embattled Assad regime has had close ties to Tehran for 30 years, he sees mostly sunlit uplands. Either Bashar Assad will survive or, Mr. Larijani thinks, the Muslim Brotherhood will take over. Whichever way, “the future relations of Iran and Syria will be as strong as they are right now.”
He’s also optimistic about Afghanistan, where he says “the United States is on the verge of a grand failure that may be as devastating as the Russian failure.” For Iran, that’s an opportunity. “We are in Afghanistan, very active. . . . Go to Herat [in western Afghanistan]. We’re opening hospitals, universities, schools.”
That grand failure, and the opening it offers Iran, may be the result of Mr. Obama’s preference for “nation-building at home” rather than abroad. Ditto for Iraq. And ditto, too, for the West’s failure to stop Iran’s nuclear program. Mr. Larijani dismisses the International Atomic Energy Agency’s report as “a disgrace,” and “part of an American strategy to create an atmosphere against Iran.”
The more salient remark is Mr. Larijani’s suggestion of what Iran will do with its “very sophisticated” nuclear technologies. “We are quite ready to share it with our neighbors and friendly countries in the region.” Turkey, for example: “For years, [it’s] been trying to have a nuclear power plant but no country in the West is willing to build it for them.”
I ask Mr. Larijani to assess Iran’s relationship with Saudi Arabia, not only in light of the alleged assassination plot but also following WikiLeaks revelations that Saudi leaders have strongly urged the U.S. to attack Iran. He dismisses the plot allegations as a “sign that American policy is falling apart in the region,” and he warns that in the event of any initiation of hostilities against Iran “we will decide when it will cease.” As for the Saudis, he urges them to consider that the waves of the Arab revolt may yet reach them, and that a strong Iran “is an asset for the region.”
It’s easy to dismiss what Mr. Larijani says as typical bravado. It’s also easy to pick holes in his arguments. To take two examples: Turkey has already signed a contract with Russia to build a nuclear power plant. And the IAEA report, which he claims rests on flimsy evidence, is based on over 1,000 pages of documentation “of a technically complex and interconnected nature.”
Yet the story that the Obama administration likes to tell about Iran—and the success of its policy toward it—also amounts to a combination of inaccuracy and bravado. Sanctions and sabotage have not succeeded in slowing Iran’s nuclear program. The accumulation of evidence that the program has military purposes has not stiffened the resolve of the international community. The nations of the Middle East are not coalescing into an anti-Iran coalition that will contain its ambitions. The Arab revolts are not all trending in a pro-Western direction.
Whatever else one might say about Mr. Larijani, he sees this. And while the world has been dulled by the vulgarity of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s mouth, it has only scant appreciation for the sharpness of Mr. Larijani’s brain. It is that brain that an American president, perhaps one more competent than Mr. Obama, will have to contend with.
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