Since President George W. Bush's labeling of the three "Axis of Evil" countries—Iraq, Iran, North Korea—the world has waited for a tough American response to Iran's emboldened nuclear ambitions. Since invading the first nation on the list, however, the administration has become sidetracked and waiting has become a policy unto itself.
Ilan Berman, the 30-year-old policy prodigy and author of "Tehran Rising," argues that such inaction is not only uninspiring but actively dangerous. Berman's concise book is the alarm clock blaring next to President Bush's seemingly snoozing ears.
Berman, who will be signing books and holding an informal discussion at Ketchum's Iconoclast Books at 7 p.m., Friday, Dec. 9, organized his book in a neat, two-part argument.
The first part of the book explains, with exhaustive detail and alarming facts, the clear and present danger of the Islamic Republic of Iran. With a full 100 pages of the 150-page book devoted to proving this danger, Berman presents a realistic assessment of the theocracy's threat. He looks to the very roots of the 1979 Islamic Revolution for proof of the state's visions of itself as a major world power and an aggressor of the Islamo-fascist sort.
Six months after the successful overthrow of the Shah's pro-Western regime, the Ayatollah Khomeini declared, "The governments of the world should know that Islam cannot be defeated. Islam will be victorious in all countries of the world, and Islam and the teachings of the Koran will prevail all over the world." Such grand visions combined with histories of supporting terror and regional aggression set Iran as the next major foe to America.
The second part of the book lays out Berman's prescribed trajectory for American policy makers, focusing mostly on the facts of the Iranian people's documented discontent with their own leaders and how these public sentiments can be fomented into an internal drive for regime change.
Berman's own parents emigrated from the Soviet Union in the early 1970s, fleeing the political repression of the communist state. "It tends to give you a different perspective when you or your family has lived in an un-free society," he says of the parallels his book draws between Soviet Moscow and theocratic Tehran.
Towards Iran, Berman believes that the best policy will not be a tunnel-vision desire for forced regime change.
"The problem (for the current administration) is that when you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail," he said.
Rather, Berman suggests a multi-faceted approach that utilizes the numerous tools at Washington's disposal, namely soft power outlets such as the radio programming that inspired Eastern Europeans to free itself from the shackles of Soviet authority. Today, however, American-produced radio broadcasts in Iran are mostly popular music, with scant attention paid to discussions of democracy or a free society.
Though he leans towards the right, Berman thinks that partisanship in Washington has only hindered America's ability to deal with the threat. In an effort to sound tough, he maintains, Republicans are narrowly focused on regime change, possibly forced, without thinking through how such a change may be internally catalyzed.
"Shock and awe is not applicable everywhere ... any mature policy maker must deal with every tool at their disposal," he said. Currently, the Bush administration is ignoring many diplomatic tools and relegating Iran to a secondary concern, he added.
"It's one thing to talk the talk if you are not walking the walk, and right now, we are just not walking."
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Join author and policy expert Ilan Berman as he signs books and leads a discussion on Iran at Iconoclast Books in Ketchum, Friday, Dec. 9, at 7 p.m. Details: 726-1564.