Obama, fly to Tehran

It is difficult to believe that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu expected that the fuss he made over Ban-ki Moon's decision to attend the nonaligned nations summit would persuade the UN secretary general to cancel his trip to Tehran. We can assume that Netanyahu does not expect the prohibitions and exclusions to stop Iran's nuclear program. After all, he argues that even heightened economic sanctions do not affect the ayatollahs.

The main "accomplishment" of the media battle Bibi is waging against the Islamic Republic is to turn the dispute over nuclear capabilities into an unsolvable religious disagreement.

How would the religious clerks explain to their followers Iran's public rejection of a strategic weapon that can be found in the arsenals of India, Pakistan and North Korea, as well as "Israel" (according to foreign sources)? And how would the regime justify the long years of shortages in the stores and soaring gasoline prices? From the Iranian perspective, agreeing to open the Natanz facilities to International Atomic Energy Association inspectors (assuming that the gates of the Dimona remain shut) constitutes a humiliation of the Muslims by the Jews.

Issues of honor must be solved with honor. U.S. President Barack Obama holds the key. The tense relations between the United States and a fundamentalist Iran, on the eve of the 2012 presidential election, bears great similarity to the deep crack between America and communist China. Richard Nixon's surprise meeting with Mao Zedong 40 years ago, in the elections of 1972, changed history.

In a conversation with aides prior to his historic journey to China, the conservative president said: "No no one in this world knows how great the gap is between their philosophy and ours, their interests and ours," adding, "But also no one in this world, I think, knows better than I do, how necessary it is to see that great nations that have enormous differences, where you've got the nuclear issue hanging in the balance, have got to find ways to talk, and get along."

The Republic presidential candidate Mitt Romney doesn't believe in dialogue with the enemy. In his speech at the party's national convention on Thursday he noted sarcastically that Obama, in his first television interview, proposed talks with Iran.

"We're still talking, and the centrifuges are still spinning," Romney said, adding, "Obama has thrown allies like "Israel" under the bus."
Obama has indeed thrown "Israel" under the bus, but it's not the bus Romney meant: Obama is standing in front of a bus whose driver, blind to reality, is steering "Israel" into war, and risking face-to-face collision with all of its neighbors and international isolation.

Obama lost the battle for Netanyahu's fans in the U.S. Jewish community and among the Christian right. If the Iran issue was critical to the US presidential election then Obama should have already started packing. Instead of trying to bring the Iranians to their knees, he can offer them a way up toward restoration of their self-respect. What does Obama have to lose by flying to Tehran to begin a dialogue about ending the nuclear arms race and stopping Iran's support for terror organizations and for the genocide in Syria?

Here's a suggestion for Obama's reconciliation speech in Tehran. "No single nation should pick and choose which country holds nuclear weapons. And that's why I strongly reaffirmed America's commitment to seek a world in which no nations possess nuclear weapons. And any nation - including Iran - should have the right to access peaceful nuclear power if it complies with its responsibilities under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. And I'm hopeful that all countries in the region can share in this goal" (from Obama's speech in Cairo on June 4, 2009 ).

By the way, after his historic visit to China, Nixon won the presidential elections.

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