U.S.-Iran Interaction

President Barack Obama has held out a tentative open hand to Iran. Which Iran instinctively smacked down. Leading the United States to chide that its open hand would be singularly inefficient, meeting a clenched fist. Clenched fist, however, comes naturally to the leaders of Iran, since the Iranian Revolution. Most particularly toward any vestiges of the West, but absolutely toward the Great Satan, and the little-brother Satan.

For Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to stoop so low as to give any credence to the new American administration's wish to embark upon a new understanding with the Islamic Republic of Iran, some pre-conditions were sternly stipulated: it must end its support for the Zionist Entity and it must apologize for past crimes against the Islamic Republic.

That being understood, Iran might consider opening talks with the United States, as superpower to superpower. With the understandable proviso that they meet as equals. "The Iranian nation will welcome genuine changes" to U.S. policy, grandly asserted President Ahmadinejad. "The Iranian nation is prepared to talk. However, these talks should be held in a fair atmosphere in which there is mutual respect."

One recalls the efforts of former President Jimmy Carter, himself a fundamentalist believer in God, and who believed that as a devout Christian, devout Muslims would respect him, his administration, his country. How wrong he was. Then there was former President Ronald Reagan, yet another devout Christian, who attempted, through the fierce determination of Oliver North - another devout Christian - to open a dialogue of trust - and release of American hostages - with Iran.

Americans offered trust and Iranians proffered contempt. Playing the U.S. actors for fools, assembling from them armaments enabling them to get on with their war with Iraq, while pretending innocence with respect to the whereabouts of the horribly maltreated American hostages. Ah, but that was then; there is no American Embassy stuffed with diplomats for Republican Guards to hold indefinitely, though there might be, if talks succeed.

And if President Obama's overtures delivered through his trusted diplomats fail to deliver what President Ahmadinejad insists upon: Americans to reject their long-time trust in and support of Israel and Iranian opposition groups based outside Iran; those "terrorists" who seek to bring the Islamic Republic to its knees (an impossible but tiresome aspiration of traitors and fanatics), there can be no dialogue.

Iran, said he, would be willing to co-operate with the United States. In such obvious areas as combating drug trafficking, and terrorism. "If you truly want to fight terrorism, come and co-operate with the Iranian nation, which is the main victim of terrorism", offers Mr. Ahmadinejad. Unblushingly, resolutely, righteously; he knows of what he speaks.

Iran's proxies in Lebanon and Gaza fight mightily on Iran's behalf to combat the forces of terror. It is not only Israel, but Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, the Gulf States that are guilty of fomenting terror and violence against peace-loving Iran.