Making Iran our Friend?

There's an old saw -- can and men and women just be friends? Well, what about Iran and the U.S.? Can the Great Satan and the third member of the axis of evil be friends?

Reza Aslan, an Iranian-American and author of No God but God (Random House, 2006), says yes there is a way. Even if these current talks with Iran don't produce any tangible results the fact that after nearly three decades we're actually talking is an improvement.

Reza, who I had the pleasure of meeting in February when he spoke to the monthly interfaith breakfast at the University Religious Center in Santa Barbara, has written an important op-ed piece for the LA Times that argues that our current actions of demonizing and isolating Iran plays into the hands of the radicals. Iran may not be a perfect democracy, but it is a democracy -- Aslan says -- and therefore it would behove us to take regime change off the table. Let democracy play out. If we try regime change -- will it end any differently than in Iraq?

And why should we make friends with Iran? Well as Reza says:
The days in which Iran could be viewed as a rogue state teetering on the verge of collapse are over. Thanks to U.S. actions in the region, Iran is the new power in the Middle East. It's well past time the United States started treating it as such.

We talked with the USSR and we talked with China -- why? Because they had power that required our attention. With the demise of Iraq, Iran is the power in the neighborhood. We can engage it or not -- but peace will require we stop posturing and start talking!

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