The West’s Iran Policies
M. Orhan Tarhan - President George W. Bush recently included Iran in his list of "Axis of Evil". Yet The European Union (EU) is trying to establish friendly relations with the elected president Khatami of Iran and the president of the Republic of Turkey has just paid a visit to Iran. A question comes to mind: Is this any way to run the war against terrorists? What kind of alliance do we have against terror in the so-called West?

The United States has some friends like Saudi Arabia, in which only the government is somewhat friendly to us, while the entire population is virulently anti-American. Iran is just the reverse: Most of the Iranians are quite friendly to the United States, while the theocratic Islamic Republic is an enemy of the U.S. Iran is like a two-headed monster. One head is an elected president Khatami of the Islamic Republic. That is the Public Relation branch of the state. However, the real power is in the hands of an un-elected cleric named Kamenei. He is the other head of the monster. While President Khatami is trying to cast an image of a peaceful democratic republic, the Molla Kamenei is responsible for all the "Death to America" meetings, for all the assassinations of secularist intellectuals in Turkey, and for all the ropes he keeps on pulling from the Hamas, the Hezbollah, and other organizations that generate suicide bombers in Israel to make sure that there never is any peace in the Middle East. He stands against anything that the secularist Turkish Republic is standing for. Only Iran's envoys insist on not visiting the Ataturk Mausoleum in Ankara, because Ataturk is their nemesis.

This year, Iran has been boiling. The young people want more freedom and democracy and want to get rid of the Islamic laws affecting the women. They should be quite open to U.S. assistance to get rid of the tyrannical clerics.

Now, how should such a two-headed monster be treated? The trick is to help the pro-Western young population without helping the evil mollas. The poor response by President Jimmy Carter to the hostage taking in Teheran by the Khumeini followers, left the impression in the Middle East that the United States is nothing but a paper tiger. The Iranian Mollas therefore continued their sneaky terrorist activities against the West without impunity and so far nothing happened to them.

In Turkey all through the Demirel-era Iranian assassinations of Turkish secularist intellectuals were not thoroughly investigated because Iranians had succeeded in intimidating the Turkish government. No one was convicted. Iran paid no price for its misdeeds.

The present U.S. government is not following the advice of Teddy Roosevelt who said: "Speak softly and carry a big stick." They seem to be doing the reverse. Since the end of WWII, I have been observing that each time the U.S. has been facing a Middle East state, it was stopping to buy its products, e.g., its oil, immediately Europe was approaching that state with friendly gestures to buy the products boycotted by the U.S. Thus, Europe minimized the effect of the U.S. action. They are doing again the same thing with Iran. Europe is saying to the U.S. that they are in our camp in the War on Terror, but their actions belie that. They have never learned that appeasing a dictator does not pay. They appeased Hitler in 1938 and they got WWII in 1939. It is now time to face the music and systematically and all together plan for the destruction of the Iranian theocracy. President George W. Bush does not look like a man who can be intimidated. He is forceful. But he does not make an effort to get Europe on board. That is a pity. He should get the European Union (EU) to stop appeasing Iran and to actually assist the U.S. in planning and executing its actions. His father was very successful in this type of diplomacy.

The Israeli-Palestinian struggle cannot be stopped as long as the Iranian Theocracy pulls the ropes. Thus, the Israeli-Pales-tinian war should be simply stabilized for a while until the theocracy is eliminated. Then it will be much easier to stop the killing and to make peace. Because of its endless influence on the war in Israel, it seems logical to me that Iran should be handled first, before Iraq.

Turks feel no enmity against the Iranian people. But Turkey is a secular republic and want to stay secular. That philosophy is anathema to the mollas who run Iran and they have been doing everything to destroy secularism in Turkey. It is hard to understand why Turkey is still treating Iran as a friendly neighbor and sending its president to visit it.