t one of behavior, as Straw and his colleagues assume. The problem is with the nature of the Iranian regime.
Put in terms of practical power politics the problem is simple: The present global system is almost exclusively a Western creation. Francis Fukuyama’s theory of “the end of history” is true in the sense that there no longer is a major ideological challenge to the Western world, which is now opposed only by a few oddballs such as North Korea, Myanmar, Zimbabwe, and Cuba. The Khomeinist regime sees itself as the successor of the late Soviet Union as the principal challenger of the West’s global domination.
Talleyrand once said that there are powers that will not stop because they do not know how; they stop only when they are stopped. The experience of the past three decades shows that this is true of the Islamic Republic.
Hamid-Reza Asefi, the Foreign Ministry spokesman in Tehran, has already dismissed the package of concessions that the Europeans and, to a lesser extent, the Bush administration, have offered Iran, as “a joke.” He is not being frivolous. Almost half a century of Cold War with the USSR teaches at least one lesson: Your adversary will stop doing whatever it is that you don’t like only if you stop him. If you cannot, he won’t stop. Why should he?
If Iran has decided to get the bomb, it is not going to stop because Straw talks to a junior mulla. Nor would the promise of investment and trade persuade them to change course. As for the threat of “referring” them to the United Nations, then above-mentioned Asefi has already described it as “laughable”.
The European initiative is not only useless but could also be dangerous. By fostering Tehran’s illusion that the Islamic Republic could take the major powers for a ride, the European initiative strengthens the hands of those in the camarilla who believe, or pretend to believe, that their war of attrition against a “corrupt, cowardly and moribund West” is winnable. There are many ways of dealing with the Khomeinist challenge. The European imitative, now heading for another failure, is the worst.
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