A Self-Fulfilling Prophecy: Conservative America and Revolutionary Iran

It has been very obvious for years that American conservatives have a very special, very dark place in their hearts for Iran, which, as the CIA Factbook tells us, was "known as Persia until 1935, Iran became an Islamic republic in 1979 after the ruling monarchy was overthrown and the shah was forced into exile." Once a stalwart US ally, before that under the influence of Russia and Britain, Iran has in recent years become America's nemesis, an "evil empire" to replace the failed Soviet Union and, for conservative Christians, new Canaanites bent on destroying Israel and therefore deserving of God's wrath - a wrath best dished out by God's chosen agent - the United States. It is a chilling end-time scenario.

After enduring eight years of almost incomprehensible vitriol from the Bush administration, Americans would do well to ask themselves why this is. It is difficult to arrive at an answer. As the Foreign Policy Association's Public Diplomacy blog's Mark Dillen points out, there is a difference between public diplomacy (aspects of diplomacy outside of interactions between governments) and diplomacy but technology has made the truth more nuanced. And as Dillen reminds us, "One man's strategic government effort to communicate with foreign publics can be another man's tendentious information blitz to smear the reputation of another country." Though this information blitz is now the voice of the opposition, government officialdom from the top down assured us that propaganda had the same veracity as truth. It is a morass, and we must dig our way out of it. Unfortunately, introspection seems to be lacking among America's conservatives, who are more interesting in a strict and unquestioning adherence to ideology and, increasingly, the voice of one man, Rush Limbaugh. If change is going to come, it will have to come from those who can see beyond fear mongering biblical prophecy and talking points.

David Kilcullen, who served General David Petraeus as Senior Counterinsurgency Advisor, takes note of America's odd relationship with Iran in his new work, The Accidental Guerrilla (Oxford, 2009):

There is a certain amount of irrationality in our Iran policy, arising in part from the experiences of the U.S. Embassy hostage crisis in Teheran in 1979-80...There is baggage on both sides, of course: some Iranians remember the U.S.-led overthrow of the Mossadeq government in 1953 with equally vivid bitterness while others, opposed to the current regime, blame America for the revolution of 1979. This baggage sometimes makes American policy-makers reluctant to accept the historical and geopolitical fact of Iran's importance in its region, and hence the underlying legitimacy of Iran's long-term aspirations to play a regional role, including in Afghanistan and Iraq. Of course, the United States and the rest of the international community have a clear interest in ensuring Iran plays a constructive role in these countries, rather than its current highly destructive and de-stabilizing role. Still, it seems clear that distinguishing Iran, as a country, from the clericalist regime in Tehran and from the Iranian people it oppresses, is fundamental to developing an effective Iran policy.

Obviously, there is enough ill-will to cloud vision on both sides, arising both from history and from divergent religious and ideological perspectives. And Kilcullen points out that "lack of diplomatic representation in Tehran, along with limited willingness to engage in discussion with Iran's leadership group - back by force and international consensus, and addressing the broadest possible range of issues in partnership with other Muslim allies - severely limits U.S. options and restricts situation al awareness."

Since diplomacy must be engaged in by both sides for it to work, it is imperative that Americans especially understand both the origins of conservative hatred and the reasons change is needed if the Middle East is to achieve stability.

Background

A little historical review is in order. Americans on the whole seem to know little about Iran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran. The name Iran itself is a cognate of Aryan, and means "Land of the Aryans" The Bush administration lumped all Muslims together - ignoring the distinction between Sunni and Shiite as well as the differences between Arabs, Persians, and other ethnic groups make up the world's Islamic population. This is a mistake, because as the CIA Factbook makes clear, Iran's population is diverse, but it includes very few Arabs - only about 3% of the population. It's estimated 65 million people are predominantly Persian but also include Azeri, Gilaki, Mazandarani, Kurdish and other minorities. Iran is a Shiite Muslim nation; as Bernard Lewis tells us in his recent book Islam (Wharton School Publishing, 2009) most of Islam is composed of Sunni Muslims. For all the talk of Al Qaeda, "Iran and AQ are natural opponents" in the words of David Kilcullen. Al Qaeda is a takfiri movement, takfir being the term "used by radical and violent Islamic sects to condemn and silence their more moderate critics and opponents." Al Qaeda desires a new Caliphate; this is certainly not an outcome favored by any Islamic nation, including Iran.

Iran is an ancient country. One of the oldest in the world. Americans would do well to remember this. Iranians are aware, if Americans are not, that Iran was over two-thousand years old when America reached its second century

(Shah Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi celebrated the twenty-five-hundredth anniversary of the Iranian monarchy in October 1971). Christian Americans - and Jewish - would do well to remember that the Persian king Cyrus returned the Jews from captivity in Babylon, and that the book of Isaiah remembers him as Messiah.

Western powers have a long history of intervention in Iran, another fact Americans would do well to remember. If it was never conquered by Britain or Russia, its position was tenuous. We should ask ourselves how we would feel if foreign powers had held such influence over us for several hundred years. Take as an example the following:

As MohammedMossadegh.com points out, The British-owned Anglo-Iranian Oil Company shared profits unevenly with Iran, 85% to Britain and 15% to Iran and did not share their financial records with the Iranian government.

Likely, we would be resentful if our natural resources were being plundered by another country. Yet this was commonplace and those in the West seem oblivious to how such policies could lead to ill-will. To make matters worse, when European influence waned in the aftermath of the Second World War, American influence waxed.

In 1951 Dr. Mohammed Mossadegh was elected prime minister. Mossadegh achieved popularity by nationalizing Iran's oil reserves. This was not all, of course. According to MohammedMossadegh.com,

He implemented many social reforms and fought for the rights of women, workers, and peasants. A fund to pay for rural development projects was created to benefit Iranian farmers. Most importantly, Mossadegh helped to foster a national self-sufficiency that remains unduplicated in Iran since his tenure: balancing the budget, increasing non-oil productions and creating a balance of trade. His policies were frequently opposed by the Shah, army generals, leading clerics, land owners, the Tudeh (Communist) party, and the governments of Britain and America. Nevertheless, Mossadegh could always rely upon the support of the people.

Obviously, none of this meant anything to the West, and high-handed treatment of developing nations, and the exploitation of their resources, was nothing new. It should come as no surprise to us today that this move triggered a response in the oil-sensitive West. "Britain attempted to undermine Mossadegh's authority by inciting division in the country; imposing a worldwide embargo on the purchase of Iranian oil, freezing Iranian assets and threatening Iran with invasion by amassing a Naval force in the Persian Gulf." Finally, they invited the U.S. into a plot to depose Mossadegh. In 1953 President Dwight D. Eisenhower authorized Operation Ajax. The operation, carried out on August 19, 1953, was successful. Mossadegh initially evaded capture but surrendered was arrested two days later (Mossadegh was tried by a military tribunal and sentenced to prison for three years and confinement to his house for the rest of his life. He died at age 85 on March 5th, 1967). It is noteworthy that in its background information on Iran, the CIA Factbook ignores this coup, instead claiming that "US-Iranian relations have been strained since a group of Iranian students seized the US Embassy in Tehran on 4 November 1979."

This is the weakness of ideology. Ideology is the domain of what comedian Stephen Colbert, of the Colbert Report calls "truthiness" - what you know intuitively to be true rather than what can be proven to be true. Unfortunately for ideologues, the real world is out there whether they want to recognize it or not; blindly insisting that something is true when it is not is generally self-defeating. And as we will see in the next section, American conservatives are all too willing to indulge in reckless flights of ideological fancy.

Iran and American Conservatives

Even before the rise of the so-called Religious Right in the United States, then, U.S. relations with Iran were strained. Islamic conservatives were understandably unhappy with the Shah's close ties to the U.S. and the process of "Westernization" he had undertaken. The United States might feel it has not only a right but an obligation to export its culture, but other countries seldom share our enthusiasm, having cultures of their own. Americans, so sure of their cultural superiority (it works for us, after all!) cannot seem to understand that other people might be happy with their cultures and resent foreign intrusion. The term "ugly American" has justification in fact.

Then came the above-noted Iranian revolution of 1979, which deposed the Shah and saw the imposition of an Islamic theocracy under the guidance of Ayatollah Khomeini - an opponent to the Shah's westernizing policies. Ironically (the history of conservative-Iranian relations is full of irony) Khomeini's position is almost identical to that of conservative Christians: his government was, he said, "God's government," disobedience against which was a "revolt against God." This language is now being used by Christian conservatives about the election of Barack Obama: Since God wants to protect Israel, Obama is rebelling against God by offering an open hand to Iran.

What Americans tend to remember most is the Hostage Crisis, which was a sequela to the Shah's flight into exile. The United States allowed the Shah into the country for cancer treatment and on November 4, 1979, the revolutionary group Muslim Student Followers of the Imam's Line responded by occupying the American embassy in Tehran. Fifty-two U.S. diplomats were held hostage for 444 days. And here the 1953 coup that symbolized Western arrogance came back to haunt the U.S.: As reported by Democracy Now , one of the Iranians who seized the embassy told Bruce Laingen, chief U.S. diplomat in Iran, "You have no right to complain, because you took our whole country hostage in 1953" - the 1953 incident the CIA pretends never happened.

Clearly, there is a trajectory here, from the days of European colonialism to U.S. intervention in 1953 to the coup and hostage crisis of 1979. None of these events took place in a vacuum. Iran, contrary to conservative rhetoric (or shall we call it schoolyard?), did not "start it". A self-indulgent and ill-thought-out U.S. foreign policy is to blame for the events leading up to 1979. To further exacerbate the problem, the U.S. broke diplomatic ties with Iran on April 7, 1980. The hostages were returned on January 20, 1981 with the signing of Algiers Accords in Algeria. Diplomatic ties were not renewed. They have not been renewed to this day and U.S. support for Iraq when the two countries went to war in 1983 should come as no surprise.Another bone of contention: Following the seizure of its embassy, the United States froze some $12 billion in Iranian assets. The U.S. claims that most of these assets were returned in 1981 following the signing of the Algiers Accords but Iran claims that some $10 billion remain in U.S. hands. In 2000, U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright expressed regret for U.S. support of Iraq. Certainly it did nothing to warm Iranian regard of the U.S.

In 1995 President Clinton imposed sanctions on Iran which were renewed by President George W. Bush on the grounds that Iran poses an "unusual and extraordinary threat" to U.S. national security. How exactly a country without a fleet, and lacking long-range bombed fleet or missiles poses a threat to the United States may be understood by Bush and his conservative backers but is less clear to the rest of us.

Reasons for U.S. opposition to Iran are another irony in light of the record of the Bush administration. Jahangir Amuzegar wrote in "Iran's Crumbling Revolution" (Foreign Affairs Jan/February 2003, 1):

• State sponsorship of international terrorism

• Pursuit of weapons of mass destruction

• Threats to neighbors in the Persian Gulf,

• Repeated statements by the Iran's highest government officials that they wish "Death to America" and to "wipe Israel off the map".

• Opposition to the Arab-Israeli peace process

• Violations of human rights

The U.S. has also sponsored terrorists. It has weapons of mass destruction (as does Israel). The United States proved to be the greater threat to nations in the Persian Gulf when it illegally invaded Iraq in 2003. If Iran's government has expressed hostility towards the U.S. and Israel, Christian conservatives have shown themselves equal to this hate by advocating the utter destruction of Iran as well as the Palestinians. And, of course, the Bush presidency is now infamous for its own violations of human rights, not only in this country, but abroad. The Abu Ghraib prison scandal and the situation at Guantanamo in Cuba, as well as the violation of international law and the Geneva Convention have removed any moral high ground the United States might previously have occupied. American conservatives, however, seem blithely aware of the contradiction, and as Media Matters for America

makes clear, conservative pundit Rush Limbaugh has gone on record as calling the Guant�namo facility "Club Gitmo" and a "Muslim resort" despite the documented abuses that have taken place there. What's more, on his own website, RushLimbaugh.com , Limbaugh has denied that torture took place, saying "This notion that we engage in torture all the time is another one of these myths, these liberal myths that's been promulgated out there. It's established itself now as a reality, when I don't think it is." The extent to which Limbaugh has become the voice not only of American conservatism but over the past eight years, the voice of America, is frightening and we cannot pretend that such language does not have an impact on Islamic audiences.

Iran's relationship with the US was no doubt further strained by conservative efforts to put Iran permanently beyond the pale. MSNBC reports one example of these efforts: an amendment sponsored by Senators Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., and Joe Lieberman, an independent from Connecticut, that designated "Iran's Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist organization." In response, "Clinton and 29 other senators wrote to Bush...to tell him he has no congressional authority for war with Iran." In this letter, Bush was accused of "provocative statements and actions stemming from your administration with respect to possible U.S. military action in Iran."

Given Bush's recent crusade against Iraq, such fears were well-founded. If James Dobson and other conservative Christian leaders embrace the Augustinian concept of a "just" war, in a policy paper,

"The National Security Strategy of the United States of America", published on September 20, 2002, the

Bush's administration embraced the idea of "preventative war". This Bush Doctrine insisted that the United States has the right to depose foreign regimes that might at some future date be a threat to the security of the United States. The threat did not have to be imminent. Bush was sending a signal to Iran that he could attack them, unilaterally and without a declaration of war, if he felt they posed a threat to the security of the United States. Unfortunately, the system of checks and balances seems to have come a-cropper during the Bush years and only Bush himself had to know what posed a threat and what didn't. Justification after the fact would be meaningless in the face of tens of thousands, if not millions, of deaths (For a discussion of preventative warfare see Mary Ellen O'Connell, "The Myth of Preemptive Self-Defense").

Hostile feeling towards Iran remained in the news during the 2008 presidential campaigns. In an interview with ABC's Charlie Gibson, vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin, spoke for the conservative viewpoint. When asked by interviewer Charlie Gibson about the threat posed by Iran, Sarah Palin answered that she agreed with John McCain that "the only thing worse than a war with Iran would be a nuclear Iran" and that an Iran under the leadership of Ahmadinejad would be "extremely dangerous to everyone on this globe." She argued that both the United States and Israel have a right to defend themselves; she did not apparently feel that Iran has a right to defend itself. The extent to which such rhetoric would increase distrust of the U.S. in Iranian circles was apparently of little concern to McCain-Palin or to the Republican base, which gobbled it up hungrily.

When Barack Obama raised the possibility of actually talking to Iran, rather than bombing it, conservative ire came to a boiling point. On November 2, 2007, the New York Times reported that "Senator Barack Obama says he would "engage in aggressive personal diplomacy" with Iran if elected president and would offer economic inducements and a possible promise not to seek "regime change" if Iran stopped meddling in Iraq and cooperated on terrorism and nuclear issues." Hilary Clinton, running against Obama, suggested that this would mean a propaganda victory for America's enemies, a suggested repeated recently by conservatives. According to FactCheck.org, the McCain campaign repeatedly misrepresented Obama's words in an effort to portray Obama as soft on terrorism and as somebody who could not care less about the threat a nuclear Iran posed to long-time US ally, Israel.

It is Israel that lies at the heart of conservative distrust and even hatred of Iran. They see Iran as the biggest threat to Israel. Why is Israel to important to conservative Christians?

Conservative Christians believe that US support for Israel fulfills a biblical injunction. After all, if the Second Coming centers on Israel, Israel must exist. A threat to Israel is seen somehow as a threat to God, an interesting position to adopt given that an all-powerful God would hardly be troubled by an Iran with nuclear weapons. Yet conservative Christians are quite open and vociferous in their views and are not shy about expressing them, either individually or as organizations. As explained by Jews on First:

Christian evangelicals who avow support of Israel based on a belief in Biblical end-times scenarios -- are whipping their followers into a fervor in favor of an attack on Iran. In a related development, conservative commentators like former House Speaker Newt Gingrich have been beating the drum for a US attack on Iran, characterizing the current conflict in Lebanon as the start of World War Three."

Christians United for Israel, or CUFI, founded by the controversial Rev. John Hagee, is an evangelical Christian Zionist organization and Jews on First reported in 2006 that CUFI "is advocating confrontation with Iran based on "cherry-picked" Biblical interpretations." CUFI, citing Genesis 12:3, "I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you," asserts that "It is crucial to educate Christians on the Biblical and moral imperatives of supporting Israel." According to Op-EdNews, Senator Joe Liebermann, who sits on the Senate Armed Services Committee, and who actively campaigned against Barack Obama despite nominally being a Democrat, used these words himself at a CUFI summit in 2008. As Bill Moyer writes in The Bill Moyers Journal,

Many Christian Zionists subscribe to Dispensational Premillennism, a theological approach that claims that "God relates to human beings via different covenants ("dispensations"); in particular, dispensationalists believe that God's covenant with Israel, including promises of land, continues in full force distinctive from Christianity" (Bill Moyer, citing Donald Wagner, SOJOURNER, July-August 2003).

Apparently, because conservative Christians (perhaps 25% of the population) believed that their god will curse them if Israel is not protected, 100% of Americans should risk nuclear Armageddon to ensure Israel's survival. Their fears could be a self-fulfilling prophecy. As Timothy P. Weber writes on Beliefnet, by catering to extreme elements in Israeli society, "dispensationalists are helping the future they envision come to pass." Too, those filled with messianic fervor are known from time to time to seek to "force god's hand" through their actions. The most notable example of this is the Jewish revolt against Rome (66-73 CE), which had very unhappy results as god ignored the ploy. Add nuclear weapons to the mix and it is not difficult to imagine a much less happy outcome for any 21st century redux of those events.

One troubling aspect of this conservative rhetoric is that Christians cite the dangers of an Iran with nuclear weapons while ignoring Israel's own long-standing arsenal. Apparently, only Israel is allowed to have nuclear weapons - a rather absurd - and quite biased - assertion. Obviously, if a country is threatened, and to date, Iran has not threatened the U.S., it will take steps to defend itself. So far, all the threats have been from the U.S.

Still, conservative Christians like to compare Ahmandinejad with Hitler, as James Dobson, a believer in Augustinian "just war" demonstrated in 2007 during a radio address made available by EvangeclicalRight.com:

During a discussion about Iran with author and self-proclaimed "prophecy expert" Joel Rosenberg, Dobson drew a parallel between current Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad and Adolf Hitler.

"The world looked at Hitler and just didn't believe him and tried to appease him the way we're hearing in Washington today," Dobson remarked. "You know, the President seems to me does understand this, as I told you from that meeting I had with him the other day, but even there it feels like somebody ought to be standing up and saying, 'We are being threatened and we are going to meet this with force -- whatever's necessary.'"

Dobson continued, "Some of our listeners might not like that but I tell you, if we didn't stand up to Hitler, we'd be speaking German today."

It is possible to see irony in such statements, given the fact that Dobson's hero Bush and Hitler share a liking for attacking sovereign nations on trumped up charges. The irony would, however, no doubt be lost on Dobson.

Resolving the Iran Problem

Clearly, part of the problem has been a foreign policy directed not by pragmatism and common sense but biblical belief - a refinement, if it can be called that, of the old debate between realism and idealism. But to the Founding Fathers, the United States was, if composed largely of Christians, still a secular nation and the Founding Documents reassure us that this is so. Therefore, American foreign policy should be free of religious taint - of any kind. The United States has in the past been able to negotiate with an Islamic power without recourse to religion, notably the Treaty of Tripoli, ratified by the US Senate on June 7, 1797 and signed by President John Adams on June 10, 1797. Diplomacy appealing to the Bible, the Qu'ran or any other book of sacred scripture is a sure recipe for disaster. Fortunately, with the election of Barack Obama, a Bible-based foreign policy seems to be a thing of the past.

There is reason to hope things will improve, whatever the continued hate- and fear-filled rhetoric of the Right. As reported by the Washington Post, in November of 2008, following Obama's election, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad wrote a conciliatory letter to Obama, st ating that

In the sensitive Middle East region, in particular, the expectation is that the unjust actions of the past 60 years will give way to a policy encouraging full rights for all nations, especially the oppressed nations of Palestine, Iraq and Afghanistan.

Ahmadinejad went on to say that "The great civilization-building and justice-seeking nation of Iran would welcome major, fair and real changes, in policies and actions, especially in this region."

The Iranians were happy to hear of Obama's election to president. Like many Americans, many Iranians have nothing against the United States, and even identify with Americans, the hostility of our respective governments notwithstanding. As the Christian Science Monitor reports of Obama, "He promised to meet Iranian leaders without preconditions, in a fresh American bid to engage Iran and end 30 years of mutual hostility. And he was not President Bush." But they are not optimistic that real change will come. And rightfully so. Conservatives continue to spin the same old anti-Iranian propaganda we saw for the past eight years. In many ways, it is as if the elections never took place. There is a signal failure among conservatives to take note of the fact that Obama won a mandate from the American people to bring change - including especially to American foreign policy. It could reasonably be argued that this would be the first actual foreign policy the United States has possessed in eight years. After decades of hostility and eight years of intense anti-Iranian US propaganda, the Iranian government seems reluctant to embrace hope. As the Christian Science Monitor reports,

"Our viewpoint is, the US strategy to Iran has not changed, but the tactics have changed," says Hamidreza Taraghi, a conservative politician. "When the US says to open your fist, our fist has always been in defense. It's the US that has always had its fist clenched."

Americans forget, if they know at all, U.S. participation in a coup that overthrew the legal and legitimate Iranian government in 1953 in favor of a more compliant Shah. If Iran had engaged in an overthrow of the American government, it is doubtful Americans would feel any differently than the Iranians do today. America repeatedly failed to empathize with legitimate Russian interests during the Cold War (and yes, the Soviet Union was equally lacking in empathy) and having learned nothing from history (despite decades of opportunity) America has made the same mistake with regards to Iran.

What is shocking is that the very idea of dialogue is anathema to conservatives, who would rather simply pull the trigger on an "enemy" they're ideologically predisposed to attack. If nothing else does, this continued conservative refusal to budge proves the need for Obama's call to step back and reappraise our relations with Iran.

Clearly, both sides have to reach beyond the ill-feelings of the past half-century of bumbled relations. Iran wants to see good will from the United States, which looks for the same thing from Iran. Each sees the other as guilty. Neither is willing to acknowledge its own past failings. On February 3, 2009, ABC News reported that Hilary Clinton, Obama's Secretary of State, reiterated the US position, which is eerily familiar to the Iranian:

"Iran has an opportunity to step up and become a productive member of the international community," she said after a meeting with British Foreign Secretary David Miliband. "As president Obama said, we are reaching out a hand, but the fist has to unclench. And we will see how we proceed together toward a policy that we believe represents the objectives that we share, vis-a-vis Iran."

It must be observed that the US does not operate in a vacuum. The US has allies who are equally concerned about Iran's nuclear program. The fact that Iran has also just launched a satellite into orbit enhances Western fears about the potential threat Iran poses. As Al Jazeera reports, "Robert Wood, a US state department spokesman, said that Tuesday's satellite launch by Tehran could "possibly lead to the development of ballistic missiles". Iran's satellite program clearly illustrates the level of distrust and differing perceptions between the two nations. Iran named the satellite Omid (Hope) and say that it "is aimed at improving telecommunications and monitoring natural disasters." And just as the West puts Iran's nuclear research down to a search for nuclear weapons, Tehran insists "its nuclear ambitions are limited to generating electricity." As the old line from the film Cool Hand Luke put it, "What we have here is a failure to communicate."

Obama's attempts at rapprochement with Iran have heightened conservative fears and have been a catalyst for attacks on Obama, claiming (as Hilary Clinton earlier claimed) that his conciliatory approach is seen as surrender by Iran, and a signal that the U.S. has failed. Some liken Obama to Chamberlain and the policy of appeasement with Hitler. President George W. Bush was one of these, as reported by the Huffington Post on May 15, 2008. For Bush, diplomacy was equated with the "false comfort of appeasement." Still, what, precisely, America has failed at might be open to debate. For conservatives the failure is Iran's continued existence and therefore threat to biblically essential Israel. For those of a more liberal bent, the failure might be seen as the failure, quite welcomed this time, of Bush's attempt to commit the United States to yet another war of naked aggression.

Conservative Christians embrace a false dichotomy, the either/or fallacy. Thinking people should hear alarm bells when anyone speaks of there being "just two alternatives." There are always more than two alternatives and artificially defining the problem in this way is an example of "black and white" thinking. The world is far more complex than this and an ideology that narrows possibilities to a state in which we hear things like "If you are not with us, you are against us" (for example, the eight years of the Bush presidency) sets itself up for failure by ignoring other, very real, possibilities. But biblical "truths" are like that: there is good and evil, black and white, and if you don't agree with us you are turning away from god. Such language is powerful, and such certainty is dangerous - especially when both sides are using it. From a neutral perspective, there is little to choose between Hagee and Khomeini.

The United States, if it is to find peace in the Middle East, if it is to achieve peaceful coexistence with Iran, must step outside of the Bush "reality bubble" and seek a new paradigm. In many ways, the diplomacy of the Bush era was conducted on a black and white television. Conservatives could not see the many colors "out there" in the world and so were artificially limited to just two: white and black. Clearly, one will not get a very realistic view of the world in such a manner. Any diplomacy that succeeds will have to take account of a myriad of possibilities and not just two. The United States must open its eyes to the reality of what the world is, and not simply what we wish it to be.

List of Sources:

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Bernard Lewis. Islam. The Religion and the People (Wharton School Publishing, 2009).

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Echoing retracted Bush administration characterization, Limbaugh labeled Gitmo suicies a "PR move" Media Matters for America.

Rush Limbaugh. Incredible Obama Gitmo Remark. RushLimbaugh.com

Associated Press. Obama Introduces Iran Resolution. MSNBC.com

Excerpts: Charlie Gibson Interviews Sarah Palin. ABC News.

Michael R. Gordon and Jeff Zeleny. Obama Envisions New Iran Approach. New York Times.

Context Included: Obama on Iran. FactCheck.org

Christian Zionists Lobby for US Attack on Iran. Jews on First.

About CUFI. Christians United For Israel.

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Gustav Wynn. Lieberman At Hagee Conference: U.S. Should Attack Iran because God Hates Israel's Enemies. Op-EdNews.com

Timothy P. Weber. On the Road to Armageddon. Beliefnet.

Bush met with Dobson and conservative Christian leaders to rally support for Iran policy. EvangelicalRight.com

Translation of Ahmadinejad's Letter to Obama. The Washington Post.

Iranians Wary of Obama's Approach. The Christian Science Monitor.

Iranian Satellite Raises US Fears. AlJazeera.net

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Clinton Repeats Obama on Iran: 'Reaching Out a Hand, but the Fist Has to Unclench'. ABC News.