Diplomats often have a hard time being frank for the entirely understandable reason that they have to talk to the same foreigners day after day. Their love of process - the elevation of means over ends - exists for the same reason. Being amicable and persevering, even in unpleasant situations, is both natural and self-serving.
It would be surprising not to see former prominent American and Canadian diplomats promote continuing dialogue with Tehran over its nuclear program. And in Washington and Ottawa, we now see folks, ex-diplomats foremost among them, asserting that sanctions against Tehran may be counterproductive because they are too tough.
Ottawa's just-enacted total ban on imports and exports to the Islamic Republic will likely provoke such criticism from Canada's foreign-policy cognoscenti. A little bit of pressure is reasonable; a lot of pressure apparently makes the Islamic Republic's supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, and his praetorians, the Revolutionary Guards, who oversee both the nuclear program and terrorism operations overseas, unreasonable.
This disposition, of course, spills over into the discussion of human rights in Iran. A little bit of criticism is okay; too much criticism could, so the reasoning goes, dissuade Ayatollah Khamenei from cutting an atomic deal. Foreign Minister John Baird's recent speech in Toronto at the Global Dialogue on Iran's Future has provoked the kind of criticism in Canada that south of the border has been common among those who associate with former national security advisors Zbigniew Brzezenski and Brent Scowcroft and the Iran-engaging former ambassador Thomas Pickering.
The "don't-be-too-mean" set have, however, one big thing working against them: history. To varying degrees, pressure has already worked with the Islamic Republic on human rights, war, and the nuclear program.
The regime doesn't like it at all when the global spotlight turns toward internal oppression. It went to surreal lengths to deny its culpability for the death of Neda Agha-Sultan, the beautiful young woman shot to death by a security thug during pro-democracy protests in 2009. Its press officials kept a close, punishing eye on Western and Iranian journalists who highlighted the torture that came with the anti-democracy crackdown. The mollahs often try to hide from foreigners the brutality in the regime's enforcement of Sharia law. Many Iranian dissidents now in exile owe their freedom, if not their lives, to Westerners who kept official and media attention on them during their incarceration.
