Boot’s idea for dealing with Iran

Re “How to handle Iran,” Opinion, Oct. 25

Each week I read Max Boot’s column with revulsion, but he has reached a peak, a zenith of immorality and violent inhumanity. He now suggests that the United States, the “beacon of light” and “shining city on a hill,” support terrorism in Iran as a legitimate means of “hard-line” diplomacy. If Boot actually represents the thinking on the right, we have truly met the enemy, and he is us.

PAUL MOSER

Studio City

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The only rogue regime in the Middle East that has gone nuclear is Israel. Israel refuses to sign the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, which Iran has. Israel refuses to allow inspections of its nuclear facilities, which Iran has. Israel even refuses to admit the obvious -- that it is a nuclear power. Israel has consistently violated its borders and is in the process of redrawing them yet again. Israel has committed countless war crimes in Lebanon and the Palestinian territories.

If Israel’s behavior isn’t one of a rogue nation, then please give me a definition of what is.

JOHN ZAVESKY

Riverside

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We already changed the regime in Iran once, back in 1953. Look how well that worked out.

BOB WIETING

Simi Valley

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Boot’s idea for dealing with Iran is to sponsor ethnic terrorism in the country. First he was a cheerleader for the war in Iraq, and, not happy having won his aim there, he wants to create another festering pit of death in Iran. These are ramblings he should share with his psychiatrist, not with the readers of a respected newspaper.

PHILLIP B. MILLER

Double Oak, Texas

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Boot’s unabashed espousal of violent options to cause regime change in Iran is all too familiar to the Iranian people, who have a collective memory of the U.S. intervention in Iran in 1953 that caused the overthrow of a democratically elected government and its replacement with a U.S.-backed dictatorship.

Iran today is a stable democracy where competitive elections are held regularly.

Iran’s nuclear program, sanctioned by the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, has no military component.

Iran has not breached any of its obligations with the U.N.’s International Atomic Energy Agency by its pursuit of an independent nuclear fuel cycle, notwithstanding a long history of canceled nuclear contracts and reneged promises warranting Iran’s quest for nuclear fuel self-sufficiency, within the framework of Iran’s safeguard agreements with the IAEA.

Iran has excellent relations with its neighbors, including the new governments in Iraq and Afghanistan, and has offered to help with the escalating security problems in Iraq.

By distorting the facts about Iran and its stability role in the region, the writer makes policy recommendations that only add to the litany of approaches that sadly mishandle relations with Iran.

M.A. MOHAMMADI

Press Secretary

Permanent Mission of Iran to the United Nations

New York