Offering carrots to Iran carries a heavy price

Check out my column today about carrots and sticks, Barack Obama's dunderheaded grasp of foreign policy, and the reality about a lil' regime called the Islamic Republic of Iran:

"Abbas Khorsandi has a dream of democracy.

In 2004, the economics professor in the Iranian town of Firouzkouh was arrested for helping form the Democratic Party of Iran, along with five other activists located in different cities around the country. Khorsandi was tortured and warned to stop his democracy activism, and was released on bail a few months later after suffering a heart attack.

Khorsandi On Sept. 17, the 50-year-old with two small children was arrested again, taken to the notorious Ward 209 of Evin Prison, where it is believed that those who go in stand a much slimmer chance of coming out alive. Charged with taking action against the security of the government and establishing an illegal organization (political party), Khorsandi has been allowed no legal representation and his wife, who has been told to stop coming to the courthouse to inquire about her husband, has only received information about him through another inmate, a human-rights activist who received a five-minute trial with no representation.

Khorsandi's situation, we're told, is 'grave,' and the only way to save the life of a man with no trial date and whose case is shrouded in morbid silence is to 'make noise.'

Iran has been on the lips of a bigger and richer Democratic Party, the one here in the U.S. Sen. Barack Obama last week expressed his eagerness to meet directly with Iranian leaders to 'engage in aggressive personal diplomacy.'

...'There are both carrots and there are sticks available to them for those changes in behavior,' he said. These bribes could include membership in the World Trade Organization and backing off any aims of 'regime change' - in other words, hanging the Khorsandis out to dry.

Would Obama, swiftly becoming the master of confounding foreign policy, have the campfire singalong with Iran before or after he attacks Pakistan?..."

Read the whole thing!

Also worth noting: On the "Today" show last week, Obama lifted up China as a model example of the value of diplomatic gestures in ensuring progress. There was no indication of the senator believing we should hang our heads in shame for extending a hand to a regime that still leads the world in executions, political prisoners, forced re-education through labor, heinous violations of reproductive rights and religious rights, and the incarceration of journalists and bloggers for exercising free speech.