New Article: Küntzel, The German–American Dispute over Iran

Küntzel, Matthias. “Hidden Diplomacy: The German–American Dispute over Iran.” American Foreign Policy Interests 36.4 (2014): 225-33.

 

URL: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10803920.2014.947873

 

 

Excerpt

A policy that seeks to integrate Iran into a strategic partnership is flawed for several reasons. It is naïve, because it ignores the hostile national and foreign policy interests of Shiite Islamism. It is unrealistic, because religious totalitarianism cannot be harnessed for secular ends. It is arrogant, because, in currying favor with a country that “in fact shows little inclination to adopt the Western political and economic model as its ideal,” it assumes that Iranians are neither ready nor capable of living in freedom and democracy. It is morally untenable, because it shamefully betrays the Western world’s most threatened country—Israel. According to Hans Morgenthau, “political realism is aware of the moral significance of political action” and must judge it “by universal moral principles, such as that of liberty.”