Iran, So Far Away, Part 8

The Republicans continue to attack the President's Iran policy as "weak" and "appeasement", and while they continue to stumble all over themselves saying that they will take "whatever action is necessary" to stop Iran from getting a nuclear weapon, the President's policy has quietly gotten the Iranians back to the negotiating table.

Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman said only negotiations and not sanctions can resolve the standoff over the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program.

“Consensus can only be reached through serious negotiations based on a cooperative approach and not via the wrong path of sanctions,” Ramin Mehmanparast said yesterday according to the official Islamic Republic News Agency.

The comments come as European Union foreign ministers are set to meet in Brussels tomorrow to consider an oil embargo and additional financial sanctions on the country. The U.S. and the European Union are urging Iran to return to nuclear talks, German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle said Jan. 20. If Iran’s leaders agree to a “serious dialogue,” they must be prepared to discuss steps to give up “options for nuclear weapons,” he said.

Iran is already under four rounds of UN Security Council sanctions. The U.S. and its allies say they suspect that Iran’s nuclear program is a cover for developing atomic weapons, a charge the Persian Gulf nation has repeatedly denied, maintaining the program is for civilian purposes. Mehmanparast told IRNA that claims that Iran is seeking to build nuclear weapons are “baseless.” 

Iran at this point is begging for negotiations, because the threat of US and now EU economic sanctions on anyone who does business with Iran over oil is rapidly killing Iran's currency.

Iran’s national currency fell by 11 percent Saturday amid the government’s refusal to sign off on a move to raise bank interest rates, state news agencies reported.


The semiofficial Fars news agency said the the country’s currency, the rial, was trading at nearly 20,000 to the U.S. dollar on Saturday on the black market, compared to 18,000 rials a day earlier.

The rial was trading at around 10,500 riyals to the U.S. dollar in late December 2010.

In other words, the President's Iran policy has cut the value of the Iranian rial in half.  That's a hell of a "smart power" motivator, is it not?  Enough to have Iran practically begging for a diplomatic solution.  Now granted, there are still tons of ways that this could go wrong, but the alternative is the Republican plan to bomb Iran now and worry about diplomacy after we install a puppet government, plunging us into another ten-year war with unforeseen consequences.

All in all, I'd rather go with the smart power approach.