I enjoyed Fareed Zakaria's The Future of Freedom: Illiberal Democracy at Home and Abroad well enough. Decent food for thought on the limits and uses of democracy, but Zakaria's op-ed in today's Washington Post is wrong-headed and seems to be colored more by the desire to be "not a neo-con" than by clear-thinking.

Zakaria feels we have little to lose by giving more with Tehran, pointing out that there really are very few other options.

Talk to Tehran

Zakaria enumerates a number of "sticks" toward Tehran that haven't or won't work in order to sell his view that what we need to exercise now is the softer touch. It does not inspire much confidence that when he gets to his prescription, he first looks to Mohamed ElBaradei for a hook...

"[B]etter relations with the United States..." It sounds kind of warm and fuzzy doesn't it? But what would that mean, exactly? This is a country that just elected -- a better word would be "installed" -- a master terrorist as its president, and who's governing philosophy continues to revolve around the cult of martyrdom. It keeps its people enslaved to a bunch of Stalinists in black robes and hopes to spread its philosophy world wide. What would change in that with "better relations" other than strengthening that self-same regime. What profit in selling the rope with which to hang ourselves?

I can think of several worse things. First of all, clearly we have been floating offers, either through back channels or by taking a back seat and letting the Europeans do their best. It doesn't seem to be working.

Second, changing to an appeasement course at this time makes us look like weaklings, and rewards nuclear sabre-rattling while making it appear that we care about only one thing -- nuclear proliferation -- while being willing to ignore all the rest, including repression at home, sponsorship of international terrorism, killing our guys in Iraq and destabilization of our friends. That is something we should not do and will only garner us more of the same. Playing the proliferation card would become and purchase of indulgences for a laundry-list of other sins.

Third, if we facilitate an Iranian nuclear program, they could very easily cheat on it, or allow us to take them right along to the end, whereupon they kick out the inspectors, stop cooperation and go the final stretch hurdles to a bomb. We might never even know they succeeded until yes, a mushroom cloud appears delivered by a terrorist with unclear ties.

Not every situation in the world has a clear solution. Perhaps that's how things are with Iran as they are with North Korea. As there is little to be gained and much to be lost by appearing weak, far better to stick to our principles and bide our time. Perhaps a solution will present itself. That's far better than strengthening our enemies -- and they are unlikely to become our friends any time soon, nor should they be.

Perhaps some day, some of the international bodies, the NGO's, religious groups and "peace" organizations, will stop obsessing over Israel and searching for American oil conspiracies, and put some pressure on the terror enablers who really are in it for the oil, like Russia and China. They may also some day be convinced to pressure a terror exporter like Iran.

As that would mean that all the dilettantes and peace posers would have to get serious all of a sudden, I'm not optimistic that will happen any time soon. In the meantime, we'll just have to continue being vigilant. It's not easy, and it's not comfortable, but there aren't a lot of better options available.