http://www.nationalreview.com/

http://www.nationalreview.com/ledeen/ledeen073102.asp

July 31, 2002 9:00 a.m.
Propping Up the Terror Masters
Europe's Solana on tour.
Michael Ledeen

National Review

on Javier Solana, Europe's very own foreign minister, is on a foreign tour, and he stopped off in Tehran to show the flag of continental appeasement. The Europeans just don't see why they should cut themselves off from lucrative oil contracts — even if they have to pay outrageous commissions to the ruling ayatollahs and their bagmen — just because the regime oppresses its subjects, trains, funds, and arms the world's most dangerous terrorists, and hails the slaughter of Jews by suicide terrorists. In the Brussels view of things, that's somebody else's problem, certainly not theirs.

The Europeans have gladly discarded their feelings of responsibility for the destruction of the European Jews, so they feel no moral obligation to sacrifice their slightest chance for gain merely because it involves dealing with monsters like Khamenei and Rafsanjani. Moreover, it gives them the chance to tweak our nose, which Solana did at his press conference in Iran, when he smugly observed that Europe and America had different approaches to countries like the Islamic Republic. The Americans go for confrontation while we prefer engagement and dialogue, he lectured.

At the event, he got nothing. Even he was forced to point out to the Iranians that it would be better if they were less aggressive in their support for the likes of Hamas and Hezbollah, and if they eased up a bit on crushing the Iranian people. The result was a torrent of insult from Khamenei's newspaper, and French television declared the meeting a failure.

The Europeans are in grave danger of being hoisted on their own selfish and shortsighted petards in the Middle East; that is likely to follow our defeat of the terror masters in Tehran, Baghdad, and Damascus. European oil companies — most notably the British, French, and Italians — have multibillion-dollar contracts that make Enron and WorldCom accounting look like the model of transparency. Big commissions and kickbacks go to the tyrants? European bank accounts, and the leaders of the newly freed countries will assuredly not forget that British Petroleum, Elf, and Eni are big backers of the evil regimes. If the Europeans were as clever as they think they are, they would be taking out insurance today by giving support to the opposition forces instead of sending their appeasers on a hopeless mission to achieve some sort of détente.

This is not idle speculation. Over the weekend I spent many hours on an Internet telephone chat room, talking with Iranians all over the world, including many inside the country. And one of their most frequent questions was whether the United States would consider the current oil contracts to be legitimate once the regime is overthrown. Their inclination is clearly to declare them void.

Perhaps this was in the back of Solana's mind when he insisted on meeting with a "reformist" parliamentarian who faces trial and prison in the near future. If so, it was a feeble gesture. At a minimum, he should have called for the release of the scores of students, journalists, and intellectuals who have recently been sent into the depths of the country's prisons and torture chambers. Had he wanted to take a real stand for freedom, he would have echoed President Bush's words: The regime is illegitimate and the "reformers" are either frauds or impotent. The future belongs to the Iranian people.

Such a step would have been a real triumph of Realpolitik. It would have driven home the pariah status of the mullahs, encouraged them to get out before the situation becomes even more violent, and built up credit with the successor governments.

But the Europeans are not up to this kind of statecraft. They seemed doomed to lose their standing with the peoples of the Middle East at the same time they unnecessarily prolong those peoples' agony by reinorcing the tyrants' illusion that they still have powerful friends in the civilized world.