OPINION:
In a distorted and highly implausible column (“Pro-Iranian fabrications,” Commentary, Nov. 26), Kenneth R. Timmerman tries to discredit a group of top scholars, experts and diplomats - individuals with years of experience studying and dealing with Iran and holding highly influential and prestigious academic, government and scholarly positions - for their endorsement of a new, factually grounded and widely received Joint Experts’ Statement (www.expertsoniran.com) that lays out an effective and diplomatic road map to deal with Iran successfully.
Mr. Timmerman goes as far as labeling these scholars as a “jolly band of ’useful idiots’” whose goal is to “parrot Tehran’s line” and refers to the highly regarded and transparent nonpartisan advocacy group, the National Iranian American Council (NIAC), as an organization that uses techniques “reminiscent of those pioneered by Nazi propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels.”
It comes as no surprise that individuals like Mr. Timmerman cannot accept the failures of a warmongering (and outgoing) administration they once wholeheartedly supported. False accusations and defamation serve as their final, awkward attempt to justify an ideological foreign policy that has proven erroneous and embedded in hostile rhetoric - rhetoric that almost everyone agrees has only backfired and put the United States in a more vulnerable position in the Middle East.
As recently stated so eloquently by John Tirman, executive director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Center for International Studies, in the Boston Globe,”coercion has been an abject failure at every step of engagement. If the mantra of change has any meaning in Obama’s foreign policy, the Persian Gulf is the place to realize it.”
A NIAC-sponsored congressional event recently attracted members of Congress from both sides of the aisle and was an opportunity to create a forum to re-examine the failed approaches of the past and discuss prospects for a new policy that can finally succeed and be effective. Mr. Timmerman needs to face the music. Attacking the integrity of individuals and groups who support President-elect Barack Obama’s dedication to diplomacy will only discredit him.
JUAN R.I. COLE
Richard P. Mitchell Distinguished Professor of History
University of Michigan
Ann Arbor, Mich.
FARIDEH FARHI
Professor
Affiliate Graduate Faculty
University of Hawaii
Manoa, Hawaii
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