US foreign policy in Iran

Submitted by Anon (United States), May 12, 2019 at 12:12

US foreign policy in Iran has always struck me as short sighted and frozen in 1979. Problems of terrorism have been compounded by the fact that the US coddles Saudi Arabia the main epicenter of Islamic terrorism. The disturbing irony today is that the ideology emanating out of Saudi Arabia can blow you to bits in Sri Lanka or Paris or Boston while Iran is actually free of this hideous influence. Here is an excellent article that gives a glimpse from the other side wrt foreign policy decisions.

https://lobelog.com/iran-an-indispensable-ally-in-the-war-on-terrorism/

"During the run-up to the U.S military intervention in Afghanistan, one of us (Seyed Hossein Mousavian) was the head of the Foreign Relations Committee at Iran's Supreme National Security Council. The Committee, as he witnessed, spent countless hours evaluating the pros and cons of cooperating with the U.S military in Afghanistan. Despite the bitter history and the bad blood between the two governments, most Iranian high officials, including prominent Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) commanders, concurred that Iran should give cooperation with the United States a chance and use the opportunity to assess whether Americans could be trusted until Afghanistan was clear of terrorist elements and fully stabilized. The model could then be replicated, or so Iranian officials thought, and serve as a blueprint to jointly tackle similar and future security challenges in the region.

The Bush administration rewarded Iranian cooperation by placing Iran in its co-called axis of evil. Iran walked out in disappointment and left the United States alone to deal with its "Afghan problem." Saudi Arabia and other U.S "allies" covertly propped up the Taliban and al-Qaeda affiliates as they regained control over large swathes of Afghanistan. Today, after 17 years, the current U.S. administration is desperately soliciting the Taliban in order to "negotiate" its way out of Afghanistan. Had the United States not committed the strategic blunder of ignoring Iran's regional status and stabbing the country in the back, things could have turned out very differently."

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