When there are discussions of public policy, all too often, domestic issues predominate. As my friend and colleague Bruce Herschensohn has pointed out on many occasions, Americans neglect foreign policy at their peril. A mistake on the budget may pale into insignificance compared to a failure to understand the needs, mentality and capability of a potential foe of the United States. If citizens, or even elected officials, think of Iran at all these days, mostly they believe that things are improving there. We went to war against Iraq in 1991 and Iran somehow seemed then, and now seems, less ominous when compared to Iraq and Saddam Hussein.
Recent elections indicate that moderate Iranian leaders are in the ascendance.
In March, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright announced that the United States will lift US sanctions on some Iranian products as a gesture of good will. And just yesterday we received the news that Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran s supreme leader, ordered that the results of the February Parliamentary elections should stand. But the importation of missile technology from China, North Korea, and Pakistan receives just modest attention from time to time. Rarely do we hear much of the testing of Iranian missiles that go 1,400 kilometers. This record makes the late Shah seem benign indeed.