One would have thought that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's eighteen page letter to President Bush would devote at least one paragraph to a political settlement of Iran's troublesome nuclear problem.
There was not a single paragraph that addressed the issue. In fact, there was not a single word about it. The word "nuclear" is used once and it is used to criticize Washington's wariness of Iran's potential nuclear capability.
The Bush Administration examined the letter for any proposals that would have given both nations a foundation for talking and then rejected it when they failed to find anything useful in it.
A one-page letter from Ahmadinejad proposing a halt to Iran's nuclear program, an immediate termination of Iranian support of international terrorism and an abandonment of fiery rhetoric against Israel in exchange for a non-aggression pact would have led to immediate talks between Washington and Tehran. It could have also lead to an eventual exchange of ambassadors between the two countries.
Ahmadinejad fails to grasp that this is not a religious matter with a religious solution. This problem requires a political solution.
In fact, religious discussions are a separate issue from the nuclear issue entirely. So are the failings (in the Iranian President's own words) of liberalism and democracy. As a teacher, Ahmadinejad should remember that despotism and theocracies precede gigantic body counts, as Nazi Germany, Armenia, Cambodia, Yugoslavia, Kosovo, Rwanda, Darfur and Saddam's Iraq have shown us.
This nuclear crisis is entirely of his making. He's the one who wants nuclear arms, not Bush.
President Bush should write back a one-page response with some kind of political solution to Ahmadinejad and his mullah overseers, who are the true rulers of Iran and see what happens. Let the scholars debate Islam and democracy and the politicians negotiate.
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