With increasing evidence that Iran is a dangerous and unpredictable country, the best thing for the United States to do is have "a maximum diplomatic relationship" with that country, former U.S. President Jimmy Carter said on Tuesday.Carter, whose re-election bid in 1980 may have been foiled by the 1979-80 Iranian hostage crisis, said in a CBS "Early Show" interview that the United States, which has no diplomatic relations with Iran, needs to find a way to communicate directly with the Iranians "to reassure their fears that we might attack them, which is constantly a drumbeat out of Washington, maybe deliberately from the (Bush) administration or inadvertently." If the Iranian leaders feel they are going to be attacked, "then I think that is one incentive for them to be more militant," Carter said. "So I think to assuage their fears and to tell them the truth about our intentions would be very helpful." A U.S. military strike against Iran at this time "would be completely unnecessary and counterproductive," the 83-year-old former president said.
Carter questioned where the United States would get the troops to invade Iran, since it does not even have enough troops for the war in Iraq. "And I do not think we would have any other nation in the world that would join us in any sort of military intervention against Iran," he said. "So diplomacy is the best approach."