Rewards for Iran?

The press is full of trial balloons with respect to proposals for Europe or America to offer "incentives" for Iran agreeing to stop work on a nuclear weapon. The New York Times reported yesterday that "The package would lift a ban on exports to Iran of certain badly needed civilian aircraft parts, without which its fleet of civilian airliners has been virtually grounded."

One of the lessons of September 11 is that civilian aircraft in the hands of terrorists can do considerable damage. This is a point so obvious that it is painful to have to point it out. On what grounds does an officially designated terrorist regime get help from their target countries in flying civilian airliners? If the Europeans who are negotiating with the Iranians do not grasp this essential point, certainly the people of New York do.

Beyond that, it will be important in considering any proposed deal with Iran to focus on the fact that Iran's nuclear ambitions are not at the heart of America's dispute with Tehran. After all, India, Pakistan, Israel, and France all have nuclear weapons and America has full diplomatic and economic relations with them. There are a host of other issues on the table with Iran: its human rights record that includes executing a Canadian journalist, jailing student dissidents, and persecuting Jews, among others; its financial and logistical support for radical Islamist terrorist groups like Hamas and Hezbollah that engage in suicide bombing attacks in Israel that kill Americans and Israelis; its harboring of Al Qaeda terrorists; and its aid to anti-American forces in Iraq.

Even were a deal reached in which the Iranians promised progress on all those fronts, there is no guarantee that the Iranians would not cheat on such a deal. Iraq cheated on its United Nations-supervised oil-for-food and disarmament arrangement. North Korea cheated on the nuclear disarmament deal that it cut with an overly credulous Clinton administration.

It is true that diplomacy is more likely to be successful when it is backed, as it is in the Bush administration, with a credible threat of the use of force. But count us as skeptical that America or its allies should send nuclear fuel or civilian airplane parts or anything else useful to Iran - other than aid to its democratic opposition - so long as the regime there is aiding and harboring terrorists and oppressing internal opposition.

Senator Kerry is on record as preferring a negotiated approach to the Persian problem. President Bush himself has been too willing to countenance a European approach. On the campaign trail, Mr. Bush has said of the terrorists, "You can't negotiate with them." This would be an excellent moment for the president and his diplomats to keep that in mind.