No to Fatwa , No to Iran

Both Iran-Contra and Iraqgate arose in part from an excessive fear of Iran. The Reagan Administration believed that it needed to arm Iranian “moderates” via under-the-table arms against Iranian extremists. The Bush Administration believed that it needed to arm Iraq, secretly if need be, against the same Iranian extremists.

But Iran is essentially a nation without an ally. Its capacity to do military harm outside its borders has always been limited and today is more limited than ever. Iranian relations with Saudi Arabia are at a low thanks to a dispute over Abu Musa Island in the Persian Gulf. Turkey has accused Iran of killing a Turkish journalist on Turkish soil. Relations with Egypt are strained, at best. And needless to say, Iraq loathes its eastern neighbor.

It is only as an agent of international terrorism that Iran commands attention. Last week Iran’s spiritual leader, the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, renewed the infamous fatwa , or death decree, against British novelist Salman Rushdie . Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Velayati told Western countries to keep the Rushdie issue separate from diplomatic relations with Iran. But Britain responded with a renewal of its own: no diplomatic relations with Iran until the decree is lifted.

The fatwa is a sentence of capital punishment to be inflicted by one nation, without trial, upon a citizen of another nation. Every nation threatened by such violence, and the list is deplorably long, should do as Britain has done. The United States, in particular, which still has no diplomatic relations with Iran, should resist the hypocritical overtures made toward the Clinton Administration by Iranian President Hashemi Rafsanjani and heed instead the view of U.S.-Iranian relations vouchsafed by the Ayatollah Khamenei to an Iranian newspaper: “This system is not on speaking terms with the arrogant enemies of the revolution, and that’s forever, and we’ll never reconcile with them.”

You said it, ayatollah. We won’t.