George Bush, Diplomat

Michael Hirsh, Newsweek:

The civilized world is now united against Iran. Can the American president exploit the opportunity?

After Eugene “Bull” Connor, the sheriff of Birmingham, Ala., turned dogs and fire hoses on black protesters in May, 1963, John F. Kennedy observed that “the Civil Rights movement should thank God for Bull Connor. He's helped it as much as Abraham Lincoln.” It was the perfect putdown. Connor had been a hero to Southern bigots. JFK, with one withering remark, condemned him to that most ignoble form of immortality for a Southerner. He would forever be remembered as the butt of a Yankee joke.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad may someday qualify for a similar kind of historical ignominy among his own countrymen. Iran's president is probably the last one to realize it, but the joke is on him. Though he is rabidly anti-American, Ahmadinejad has done more to help the Great Satan than anyone since the fellow Iranian he most despises—that great toady of Washington, the Shah.

In fact, Ahmadinejad, who has piled idiocy upon idiocy in a series of offensive remarks that have alarmed the world, has achieved a truly amazing feat. He has made George W. Bush look like a statesman. Since Ahmadinejad has embraced his role as this era’s Muammar Kaddafi, the Bush administration mustered international unity against Iran of the kind that hasn’t been seen since right after September 11. READ MORE

And now this broad diplomatic front will be put to the test. On Tuesday, the Iranians brazenly removed what nuclear expert David Albright calls the “last major technical hurdle” to a nuclear bomb-breaking the seals on a 164-centrifuge cascade that will allow them to master the process of enriching uranium to bomb-grade purity.

NEWSWEEK has learned that Washington, with likely support from Britain, France and Germany, has called for an emergency meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency board of governors for as early as next week. The issue will be whether to refer Iran to the U.N. Security Council over Tehran’s breach of a previous commitment not to enrich. The Americans and Europeans are likely to get a quick meeting despite some balking by Russia and China, which fear an automatic referral. Still, Moscow and Beijing are more aligned with Washington than they have been in the past-all thanks to Ahmadinejad. On Wednesday, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov called Iran's decision “cause for alarm.”

Absent Ahmadinejed, Iran's savvy political elite might be counting their kilotons right about now. Early last year, before Ahmadinejad embraced his role as the new Kaddafi, the Iranians were well on their way to dividing the West, Russia and China over their nuclear plans. The Americans had moved from disdaining European diplomacy to backing it fully; from refusing to consider any Iranian nuclear program at all to conceding that Tehran might be permitted to have what Secretary of State Condi Rice calls a “civil” one. Washington was sliding down a slippery slope. The Islamic bomb was within Iran's grasp.

The Iranians were succeeding for one reason: until Ahmadinejad came along, Bush for many ranked as perhaps the most obtuse world leader of his day. He had colossally botched what he once identified as his No. 1 foreign policy goal after 9/11: stopping nuclear proliferation.

The Iraq invasion was launched for many reasons, but in large part Bush had intended it to be a message of strength to other rogue regimes (mainly Iran and North Korea). Saddam was to have been the poster boy for what happens to autocrats who defy America and proliferate. Bush’s tough-guy message was: this is your country, and this is your country on nukes (flattened or occupied). Removing Saddam was, as one U.S. official told me beforehand, a way of “devaluing” nuclear weapons in the eyes of other rogues. So great was American hubris that some U.S. officials talked of “turning right after we march to Baghdad”—in other words, toward Tehran.

As we know, nearly three years into a bloody occupation, the opposite message has been sent: weakness instead of strength, empty threats rather than restored credibility. Today, thanks to Bush, a generation of leaders in other countries can point to the Potemkin case for Iraq as an excuse not to act when called into action by Washington against the next threat (like Iran). Thanks to Bush, the whole world can now see how strapped America’s all-volunteer military is in Iraq. All this to pursue a trumped-up threat (and one, I would add, that responsible Western intel agencies knew was trumped up before the invasion).

For Tehran's leaders, Bush's bloody adventure in Iraq has been an even bigger boon. Because of it, a military strike against Iran is now all but out of the question. Not necessarily because it couldn't succeed—despite the difficulty of knowing where the Iranians are burying their best facilities, a coordinated strike could at least set back their plans—but because the aftermath is too terrible to contemplate.

Bush knows that Iraq is now going to be his defining legacy. Success or failure there will mean the difference between being viewed as a disastrous president or, perhaps, a visionary one. He also must know how badly Iran can hurt the U.S. effort in Iraq if it so desires (and its diplomats have hinted they would do just that if they were attacked). Tehran can foment civil war, for example, simply by sending a few Shiite militias into battle against the Sunnis. As an Arab commentator said to me, in an ironic allusion to 1979, “The Iranians are in good shape as long as the hostage crisis continues.” He was referring to the 138,000 American hostages—U.S. soldiers—in Iraq.

Indeed, far from being able to antagonize Tehran right now, the administration desperately needs its good will, as Zalmay Khalilzad, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, conceded in an interview late last year when he revealed that President Bush had authorized him to open talks with Tehran on Iraq's political transition. (Tehran, predictably, said it had no intention of talking with Khalilzad.)

So even though some pro-Bush hardliners are making fresh noises about a military strike—worried that the Europeans' dithering diplomacy is making the U.S. president look weak—Washington isn't fooling anyone. Bush isn't likely to attack anytime soon, at least until Iraq stabilizes. And that could be years.

All that Washington can do instead is exploit the fact that Ahmadinejad has handed George W. Bush a golden diplomatic opportunity.

The civilized world is now united against the fiery Iranian leader. Despite the best efforts of Iran's political elite to rein him in—and there is a genuine power struggle going on in Tehran—Ahmadinejad seems to think he is still in the Revolutionary Guards and this is still 1979. That is good. Even the Israelis, as alarmed as they are by Ahmadinejad’s denial of one genocide (the Holocaust) and his threat of another (against them), are feeling part of the world community again. As Chief of Staff Dan Halutz said this week: “International pressure on Iran proves that [its nuclear activities] are not only Israel’s problem.”

Since Ahmadinejad has made it impossible for any respectable world leader to side with him, the door is open to Bush to diplomatically isolate Iran as he never could before. And isolation is the U.S. president’s most powerful weapon right now. The mullahs can’t possibly stay on top forever in an economically cut-off Iran. And since Pakistan shut down the A.Q. Khan network, a successful technological boycott involving Russia and China as well as the West will prevent Iran from getting first-rate nuclear equipment and know-how.

But to achieve this Bush must proceed carefully—edging the IAEA governors toward the U.N. Security Council at their own pace. That means sensitivity to the diplomatic needs of critical allies like Russia, with its huge trade relationship with Iran. It also means understanding the internal dynamics inside Tehran, where some officials have waxed warmly about a Moscow compromise proposal to do Iran’s enrichment in Russia, while others have shot it down. Tehran remains very much divided over whether it wants to remain isolated, or can afford to be so.

All this in turn requires a subtle change in tone from Washington. More inflammatory rhetoric will only encourage the hardliners in Tehran, and cow the moderates into silence. And after all the mistakes he’s made, George Bush simply can’t afford to talk tough without meaning it. He should leave that to Ahmadinejad.