Al-Sharq al-Awsat, London, Originally posted in Arabic on August 14
There are many risks associated with fighting a political opponent – whether a person or an entity – but history has proven that perhaps the biggest of them all is the risk of approximating your nemesis.
Such behavior, for example, was easy to notice during the Cold War, when the United States and the Soviet Union imitated each other’s military doctrines and sought to beat each other in developing nuclear weapon systems. Similarly, the United States rushed to train and deploy spies in the USSR, shortly after realizing that Soviet spies breached its own intelligence agencies.
History is full of such examples. All of this came back to me while I was watching President Obama’s speech on Iran last week. His rhetoric seemed to have been taken directly from the speechwriters of the mullahs in Tehran.
Obama portrayed reality in dichotomous terms – good versus evil, heaven against hell – and ignored the wide range of opportunities that exist between going to war with Iran on one hand and signing a placatory nuclear deal, on the other. The President hid the nitty gritty details of the agreement, and chose to speak in vague and abstract terms. He dehumanized those who oppose his policies, describing them as “warmongers” and “belligerents”. Sadly, the President seemed to have forgotten that among these “warmongers” are also his very own Vice President and Secretary of State, both of whom backed the invasion into Iraq.
On the Iranian side, Obama ignored the fact that Tehran is yet to accept the agreement, and that the mullahs, for years, have been raising their popularity by chanting “death to America”. I am opposed to the Vienna deal as it is, because I believe that a better agreement is possible. And no, I am not a warmonger nor an enemy of America.
President Obama’s dismissal of his dissidents at home resembles all too much an Iranian dictatorship. It certainly isn’t appropriate for the world’s greatest democracy. – Amir Taheri