IN AN INTERVIEW with the Washington Post published yesterday, Democratic vice-presidential nominee John Edwards promised that a Kerry administration would offer a "grand bargain" to the totalitarian theocracy in Iran. This "grand bargain" would allow the Islamic state to keep its nuclear power plants in exchange for a promise to give up the kind of nuclear fuel used to make bombs.
This is a dangerous proposal and should receive close scrutiny. First, the Kerry team has apparently learned nothing from the disastrous deal the Clinton administration made with North Korea back in the 1990s. Edwards's proposal for a "grand bargain" with Iran is almost identical to the Clinton administration's 1994 Agreed Framework deal. In that earlier "bargain," North Korea promised to halt work on nuclear weapons in return for American assistance with "peaceful" nuclear programs. We now know that the North Korean government lied all along and used the agreement to proceed with its nuclear weapons programs.
But the Kerry team is undeterred by this record of failure. In fact, Edwards's proposal is of a piece with Kerry's generally soft approach to dangerous regimes like the one in Teheran. Back in March, Kerry told the Council on Foreign Relations that he wanted to carry out a "non-confrontational" policy toward Iran that emphasizes areas of "mutual interest." |