Thursday, October 27, 2011

Fareed Zakaria, "To deal with Iran's nuclear future, go back to 2008": Will Fareed Accept the JG Caesarea Challenge?

Fareed Zakaria has returned from a brief visit to Tehran last week, and in a Washington Post opinion piece entitled "To deal with Iran’s nuclear future, go back to 2008" (http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/to-deal-with-irans-nuclear-future-go-back-to-2008/2011/10/26/gIQADQyEKM_story.html?hpid=z3), he takes up where Roger Cohen left off in 2009 and calls for "strategic engagement" with Iran:

"Strategic engagement with an adversary can go hand in hand with a policy that encourages change in that country. That’s how Washington dealt with the Soviet Union and China in the 1970s and 1980s. Iran is a country of 80 million people, educated and dynamic. It sits astride a crucial part of the world. It cannot be sanctioned and pressed down forever. It is the last great civilization to sit outside the global order. We need a strategy that combines pressure with a path to bring Iran in from the cold."

That's very tidy, Fareed. But here's the deal: Go back to that "last great civilization" and request special permission to witness:

• a woman, accused of adultery, being stoned to death;
• a homosexual being hanged;
• the conditions at Evin and Gohardasht prisons, where leaders of the Baha'i community are being held under appalling conditions after being sentenced to 20 years in jail on trumped-up charges in August 2010.
• the manner in which Kurdish journalist Kamal Sharifi is being tormented and tortured at Gohardasht prison.

Let Fareed come back from Iran after accepting the JG Caesarea Challenge and report back whether he still believes the mullahs should be coddled into bringing "Iran in from the cold."

"Last great civilization"? Yeah, right.

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