Michael Ledeen, a frequent and shrewd commentator on things Iranian, is a frustrated man. Today he offers a gloomy assessment of our policy.
...These [Iranian leaders and mullahs] are fanatics, millenarian fanatics who believe that the world is headed for a final and decisive confrontation between the forces of Islam and the infidels and crusaders. They believe that the final days are at hand, and that they are the instruments of Divine power and glory. They have no doubt about their ultimate triumph, and everything they see in the West only reinforces their confidence, and leads them to redouble their murderous efforts.
Their vision is not world peace, but world domination, accompanied by the slaughter of their enemies. And we are encouraging them in that vision.
I do not believe we will surrender and give them a free hand, but our current behavior only makes the ultimate confrontation with Iran more difficult and likely more violent than it need be. No matter how unwilling Western leaders may be to respond to their 27-year war against us, we cannot escape it, because they will not permit us to escape. It is a conflict we can either win or lose, but we cannot opt out of it. Eventually we will be compelled to respond.
At the moment, most of our leaders are trying desperately to convince themselves that there is a way out, that we can make a grand bargain, that we do not have to confront the mullahs. It is the illogic of appeasement so well described by Churchill after Munich. Chamberlain, he said, had to choose between war and dishonor. Chamberlain chose dishonor, and he got war. This is the risk our leaders are running today.
And the hell of it all is that the mullahs are terribly vulnerable, loathed by their own people, our natural allies in what is after all a political and ideological conflict. Our failure to support the Iranians’ cry for freedom is a dark stain on our banners, and worse: Our dishonor leads directly a war that we should not need to fight. We can defeat the mullahs the same way we defeated the Soviet Union, by mobilizing their own people against them, and by consistently stating and supporting our own ideals. Instead we are sending our young men and women into the field to fall alongside innocent Iraqis to whom we promised a better fate.