US, Iran Step Back From the Brink

To awaken Thursday to front-page photos of U.S. sailors kneeling on the deck of their patrol boat, hands on their heads in postures of surrender, on Iran’s Farsi Island, brought back old and bad memories.

In January 1968, LBJ’s last year, 82 sailors of the Pueblo were captured by North Korea and held hostage with Captain Lloyd “Pete” Bucher, and abused and tortured for a year before release.

In the final 444 days of the Carter presidency, 52 Americans were held hostage in Tehran, and released only when Ronald Reagan raised his hand to take the oath.

In 2001, under George W. Bush, an EP-3 with 24 crew members was crashed by a Chinese fighter and forced to land on Hainan Island, where they were held for 11 days until we expressed “sorrow.”Indeed, assuming no clash in the next six weeks, the date to watch is Feb. 26, when elections are held for control of Iran’s 290-seat assembly.

A Guardian Council has power to disqualify candidates and it is likely that of the 12,000 who have filed, many will be purged for not supporting the principles of the Islamic Republic as required.

Yet, if President Rouhani, his prestige enhanced by the nuclear deal, to which all five U.N. Security Council members have signed on, and with billions being released to Iran, wins, a brighter day will begin.

And the world will await the reaction of the defeated hard-liners.

That same Feb. 26, elections are to be held for the 88-seat clerical Experts Assembly, which will choose the successor to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, himself the successor, 25 years ago, to Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, founding father of the revolution.

Rumors of Khamenei’s deteriorating health — he reportedly has suffered from stage 4 prostate cancer — could mean the Experts Assembly will be naming soon a new Supreme Leader of Iran.

The Feb. 26 elections could thus decide whether there is to be a cold peace between the United States and Iran, or a new war in the Middle East.

In the summer of 1914, the Great War came because, in the great capitals — Berlin, Vienna, Moscow, Paris, London — those who saw war as a disaster for civilization were outmaneuvered by more resolute men who saw war as the opportunity to smash hated rivals once and for all.

Anti-war Americans and Iranians won this one; they will have to win them all. The war parties, here and over there, need win only once.

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