Experts Warn Against Engaging Iran

Annie Berman — Talk Radio News Service

A number of foreign policy experts warned the House Foreign Relations Committee Wednesday against engaging Iran.

“We should not be thinking or talking about engagement yet, just as we didn’t want to intervene with Iran’s internal affairs after the election by forcefully coming out in favor of the opposition,” said Karim Sadjadpour, an assoicate from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace . “I think by prematurely engaging before the dust has settled in Tehran we may implicitly endorse these election results, demoralize the opposition and unwittingly tip the balance in favor of the hard-liners,” Sadjadpour said during hearing on U.S. foreign policy options concerning Iranian nuclear development and societal tensions between the Iranian people and the military government regime.

Dr. Suzanne Maloney, Senior Fellow at The Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institute, said that the US needs to adjust it’s assumptions about Iran and “[The U.S.] approach to dealing with concerns about Iranian policies.” Maloney also warned that once the US is engaged with Iran, it must be aware that Iranian government

“The US has to deal to deal with an increasingly paranoid and dogmatic Iranian regime, one that is preoccupied with a low-level popular insurgency and a schism among it’s leadership,” Maloney warned.

Congressman Dan Burton (R-Ind.) advocated applying sanctions against the country.

“We are sitting here talking. They are developing a nuclear weapons program…for almost two decades. They haven’t made any allusions about stopping [that nuclear program]…We’re messing around by waiting and not imposing sanctions today. Every day that we wait we are risking a major conflict over there,” said Burton.

Burton also believes that putting pressure on Iran’s government, rather than on the Iranian people, is the best form of foreign policy for this particular issue.

Wednesday’s hearing was held six weeks after the Iranian election results which sparked massive protests in Tehran.