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Bush's flip-flop on Iran is better late than never

James Klurfeld

July 17, 2008

In praise of flip-flopping, part two.

Last week, I defended Sen. Barack Obama's seeming flip on his policy for withdrawing troops from Iraq. Although it looks like he might be flopping back now, I still think he's giving himself some needed wiggle room. At least I hope he is.

But the half gainer off the high board this week, with a huge flip, was performed by none other than President George W. Bush. He has agreed to send a high-ranking official to Europe for talks with a representative of Iran.

You might recall that this is the president who lumped Iran with Iraq and North Korea in the "axis of evil" back in January of 2002. We all know what happened to Iraq, and it hasn't been very good from the perspective of the United States' vital interests. One unintended consequence (if not unanticipated by some) of the fall of Saddam Hussein and the ensuing chaos in Iraq is that Iran is now the hegemonic power in the Persian Gulf region.

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Bush has done a flip on North Korea already, and that might well be a wise policy. But the decision to send Undersecretary of State William Burns, the No. 3 ranking official in the State Department, to talks with Iran is an even greater reversal.

It represents the highest-level official contact with Iran since the 1979 hostage crisis, and even more of a reversal for an administration that has vowed not to deal with Tehran at all until it renounced its program to enrich uranium.

The point is not that Iran is suddenly a benign country. Its growing power and potential for nuclear weapons is at least a menace to the region, and may be worse. But the tendency of presidents or presidential candidates to lock themselves into intractable positions - whether a specific timetable to withdraw from Iraq or a vow not to negotiate with Iran unless it meets specific conditions - is just plain foolish. It's not been in U.S. interests for Bush to have maintained such a dogmatic approach to Iran for the past seven and a half years.

It's useless to try to fathom why the switch in policy now. Perhaps it's just the usual later-term concerns about legacy. No doubt there was quite a row within the administration about even this small, one-time-only (maybe) move.

The hard-line position is well articulated by Bush's former ambassador to the United Nations, John Bolton, in Tuesday's Wall Street Journal. Bolton says Washington should be giving Israel all the support it needs for a military strike against Iran's nuclear program. He warns we are at a historic turning point in a critical part of the world. Bolton and his crowd have always adhered to the axis-of-evil approach. As did Bush ... until recently.

The problem with that unbending approach is that it utterly ignores the complex reality of Iran, a nation awash in political cross currents. Iran wants to be modern, it wants to be powerful, its religious leaders want to maintain its orthodoxy, its young people - many of them - want greater self expression. The revolution begun by the Ayatollah Khomeini hit a dead-end years ago, but the battle for control of the country between the fanatics and the modernizers is ongoing. And nobody knows how long the end game will take to play out.

A one-dimensional, militant approach to Iran by the United States has not and will not be productive. Is it possible to convince Tehran to give up its nuclear program? That's uncertain. The overthrow of Hussein in Iraq certainly gave some in Iran incentive for having a deterrent. A more sophisticated approach by Washington, one with carrots and sticks, always made more sense. If that's what Bush is doing now, better late than never - although it's awfully late for him.

And let it be a lesson for the two candidates: flexibility makes sense, and flip-flopping isn't the worst sin a leader can commit.