Boston Review: “Akbar Ganji is Iran’s leading political dissident. He has been given over a dozen human-rights awards, most recently the British House of Commons Press Gallery Speaker Abbot Award. Since his release from prison in 2006 after serving a six-year term for exposing human-rights abuses, he has been on a world speaking tour raising awareness about the human-rights and pro-democracy struggle inside Iran. He is working on the third installment of his “Republic Manifesto,” which lays out a strategy for a nonviolent transition to democracy in Iran, along with a book of dialogues with prominent Western philosophers and intellectuals. He plans to return to Iran, where, he has been told, he will be re-arrested upon his arrival.”

A couple of snippets from this intriguing article [emphasis mine]:

“The disastrous war in Iraq is the natural outcome of America’s military approach to the problems of the Middle East. In Iran, this approach is rapidly bringing the Bush administration to the brink of military confrontation with the government. But an attack against Iran would be morally and legally indefensible, and will produce calamitous results.

In saying this, I defend the nation of Iran, not the domestic or foreign policy of its current repressive, despotic government. But opposition to the current regime must not lead to a blanket endorsement of U.S. foreign policy.”

“On the nuclear side, Israel has about 100 to 200 ready-to-launch nuclear warheads. The January report of the International Institute for Strategic Studies put Iran’s nuclear-weapons manufacturing capacity years away: “If, one day, Iran has 3,000 operational centrifuges, the IISS estimates that it would take a minimum of 9 to 11 months for it to produce 25 kg of high-grade enriched uranium which would be enough for making one explosive weapon. On the most optimistic assessment, that day is two or three years away.”

There are lunatics among us who believe that bombing Iran is morally right. Iran’s leader in opposing the theocratic government does not. Ganji is an investigative journalist who has done time in Iran’s prisons and has put himself through repeated hunger strikes. The pants-wetting, Caliphate-fearing preemptive warriors would have us ignore Iran’s internal political situation, ignore the repercussions of bombing another nation in the middle east, and ignore the reality of the threat.

Ganji wants major change in Iran, and he wants to adhere to his principles along the way. He knows that U.S. interventionism in Iran fuels much of the anti-American rancor there. He also knows that America will do more harm than good with any sort of attack on Iran.

It’s time for some serious diplomacy. Diplomacy that lets American negotiators really show their stuff. We don’t need any more of the lip servicey saber-rattling we get from George W. Bush and his slavish toadies.