http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2014/09/us-no-place-iran-at-islamic-state-talks-20149131350596285.html
Secretary of State John Kerry announced on Friday that Iran will have no place at talks regarding the Islamic State due to their support of the Syrian regime.
This however, does not represent the whole picture. It is true that the Supreme Leader of Iran holds almost all the political power, but the current President of Iran, Rouhani, is a reformer and has stated that the future of Syria should be decided by its people.
This has created tension within the Iranian government, between the ideologically right-wing supreme Leader Khamenei who has been in power since 1979 and Rouhani. We should not let this opportunity go to waste and should start dialogue between Rouhani and the United States. If we do this than there is a possibility of renewed protests like we saw in 2009 and since the majority of people support Rouhani as we saw in the 2013 elections we can be fairly certain which side the people are on. This is further proven by how the 2009 elections were clearly fraudulent and the 2005 elections had suspicious characteristics. Basically, most Iranians favor relations with the West along with liberal ideas which gives us a huge advantage over Khamenei.
So, the United States should not unilaterally go into Iran and take out the Supreme Leader given his opposition to his policies. That was a frequent occurrence of American foreign policy and is destructive because it is illiberal and causes people to not support our policies. It also makes it hard to be a liberal nation. George W. Bush (in Iraq), Ronald Reagan (in Grenada), and Richard Nixon (in Chile) performed these policies which made us hated abroad. The future should be more collaborative and focus on expanding the ability of people to determine their own future. When we depose people such as Allende in Chile our image abroad is damaged, decreasing global freedom, and making it harder for America to perform foreign policy. Hurting the people of a nation hurts our ability to have relations with that nation and can take decades to recover. If we want to make long-standing trade relations they need to be beneficial to both sides, make a situation where the people of the nation will favor of our policies and cooperate with foreign governments while respecting sovereignty. This is the most effective way to build long-standing relations, which is what we have done with Europe and Japan and has made those some of our strongest relations in the world with some of the highest approval ratings of the United States. Our relations with nations in the Middle East have been filled with decisions which make them distrust us which makes it the place where people most hate the United States to our peril, and theirs. Overthrowing dictators by bringing the people to our side and improving our image will make this world better in a more effective manner than any other method.
So, this is why we should open the door to the President of Iran who has the support of the people to someday make our relations stronger so Iran can be a land where people have the rights they deserve and we need to change course. We have a golden opportunity right now to help the People and expand freedom and if we are serious about our founding values we will take it. We need to be the peacemaker which will make people across the world love us and want to work with us. Iran is a nation of 77 million people, and if we have them as an ally in a collaborative way we will be better off, and Iran will be able to have freedom.
America loves Iran.
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