A Virtual US-Iran Dialogue

I got an e-mail from them (here) to post my comment. Here is my take...

Dialogue/talk/diplomacy or whatever else we want to call it is not going to stop the Iranian regime from getting the bomb. If they are intended as warm-up to a post-nuclear Iran, the story is different. And if the US is getting ready for a world where the regime has its fingers on the nuclear trigger, it should also start making serious strategic adjustments as correctly pointed out in Plan B for Iran: What if Nuclear Diplomacy Fails? One important adjustment that was not mentioned in that document is that the US should start making a U-turn with respect to its middle-east democracy agenda. Why? Because the regime strategy is rather obvious: “expansion through low intensity violence and use of proxy groups in the region while deterring the threat of American conventional force via the nuclear bomb.” American insistence on elections in the region will be the best opportunity for mullahs’ proxies to gain power through a well-coordinated campaign of deception, coercion, and violence. Lastly, the regime-US talks will have another profound impact. Rafsanjani who was regime’s president for 8 years once said that the pro-American Iranians should know that when the time comes, Americans would be throwing them away like a piece of toilet paper. The talks will not stop mullahs from going nuclear but will surely prove Rafsanjani right.