Jonathan Tobin, Commentary Magazine, 10.8.2014

Supporters of détente with Iran can almost taste it. After years of having to listen to even a liberal Democratic president vow to stop the Islamist regime’s drive for nuclear weapons and regional hegemony, Tehran’s apologists are tantalized by the prospect that President Obama will go all the way and sign on to a comprehensive nuclear agreement with Iran that will, they hope, put an end to the confrontation between the U.S. and Iran. If true, it will mark a major victory for Iran and present a clear and present danger to both the West and Israel as the regime will be immeasurably strengthened and undeterred from its nuclear dreams.

But though such a pact is not yet signed, Laura Rozen, one of the leading cheerleaders for this effort, writes in Al Monitor today that a lot of the credit (or blame, depending on your point of view, belongs to William Luers of the United Nations Association. While future historians probably label Luers as a minor figure among this generation’sGuilty Men who worked to appease a dangerous and possibly genocidal rising power, especially when compared to the central role played by President Obama and Secretary of State Kerry. But Luers’ work to normalize a government that ought to remain beyond the pale for decent people nevertheless deserves thorough scrutiny.

Luers, 85, is a former veteran diplomat who served in Moscow as head of the State Department’s Soviet Affairs desk and later as ambassador to Czechoslovakia before the fall of the Communist empire. In the last decade, however, he has devoted himself to fostering good relations with Iran, and becoming according to Rozen’s sources, the driving force behind a “track 2 dialogue” bringing together members of the Iranian regime with Americans. Luers and those backing his effort have also promoted The Iran Project, a think tank devoted to Iran détente and pooh-poohing concerns about the nuclear threat from Tehran.

The Iran Project is backed by major figures within the U.S. foreign policy establishment and has found an eager audience in the media for its reports downplaying the Iranian threat and promoting the virtues of friendship with the ayatollahs even as the regime’s domestic oppression and promotion of terror abroad has increased. More importantly, it has played a not insignificant role in convincing the Obama administration to abandon the president’s pledges to end Iran’s nuclear program and isolate the rogue regime and to pursue the current diplomatic track that Luers and his friends believe is so close to a happy conclusion.

What was the secret to their success?

First, it must be admitted that they have worked the system perfectly in championing the notion of a newly moderate Iran, a campaign that received a major boost when the seemingly more moderate and reasonable Hassan Rouhani replaced the seemingly irrational Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as president of Iran last year. Since President Obama came into office determined to pursue a policy of “engagement” with Iran only to be repeatedly rebuffed by the Islamists. But advocates of the notion that Iran was only waiting to be embraced by the U.S. didn’t have to struggle too hard to get both the president and Kerry to try again. Their zeal for a deal overcame their common sense and the West wound up forfeiting the enormous economic and political leverage it had over Iran when an interim nuclear agreement was signed last November. That deal didn’t significantly lessen Iran’s ability to build a bomb but it did start the process of unraveling the international sanctions on the regime that had been so painstakingly built up in previous years.

Second, Luers and company worked hard to cause opinion makers and administration officials ignore the truth about Iran. The idea of Iranian moderation, whether in the form of Rouhani, a veteran regime official who has boasted of deceiving Western negotiators in the past or others taking part in back channel talks sponsored by the appeasers, was always farcical. There has been no change in Iranian policies either at home (where oppression of dissidents is no less fierce than before and official anti-Semitism is rampant) or abroad (as Iran’s terrorist auxiliaries continue to kill and its rogue ally Assad butchers hundreds of thousands of innocents) in the last year. But the point of the Iran Project isn’t to highlight actual change but to promote the idea that the act of diplomacy will itself start the process of making Iran more peaceful.

In Luers’ world Iran is not a hostile power driven by extreme Islamist ideology, bent on regional hegemony and determined to use terror and armed force to intimidate moderate neighbors and support those bent on Israel’s destruction but a reasonable government just waiting for the right offer to be welcomed into the community of nations. In other words, appeasement of this evil government is just a rational response to a difficult problem that can be solved by diplomacy.

This is disturbing enough but what comes across in Rozen’s adoring article about Luers is the diplomat’s indifference to the dangers of the course that he has helped chart. The Iran Project has worked hard to emphasize the downside of confronting Iran over its nuclear effort but done little to point out the hazards of a policy of appeasement.

Interestingly, Rozen points out that Luers befriended Vaclav Havel when the latter was a dissident during the era of Communist rule in Prague. But we hear nothing about a similar effort to support those working to change regimes in Tehran. Indeed, the last thing the Iran Project seems interested in is anything that seeks to undermine the despotic rule of the ayatollahs. As with those who opposed President Ronald Reagan’s labeling of the Soviet Union as an “evil empire,” the Iran appeasers will hear no evil about their negotiating partners even if it means whitewashing a dangerous theocracy bent on obtaining a nuclear weapon.

If a nuclear deal is signed, it will be a triumph for Luers but it will not mark a new period of understanding between Iran and the United States. Iran’s character is as unchanged as its dangerous strategic goals. The only thing that will be altered is the West’s ability to resist an Islamist regime whose nuclear ambition will, at the very least, signal the start of an era of increased instability in the Middle East and bloodshed that will be worsened by the power the appeasers are handing Tehran.

Instead of celebrating Luers, honest observers should be ignoring his advice and pleading with the president to step back from this course of appeasement before it is too late to reverse the damage to Western security that has already been caused.