Is Iran Copying China?

Is the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the Supreme leader of the Islamic Republic, a RINO — a revolutionary in name only?

So they must be muttering around the barracks of the Iranian Republican Guard Corps today.

For while American hawks are saying we gave away the store to Tehran, consider what ayatollah agreed to.

Last week, he gave his blessing to the return of 10 U.S. sailors who intruded into Iranian waters within hours of capture. He turned loose four Americans convicted of spying. And he gave final approval to a nuclear deal that is a national humiliation.Which brings us back to the ayatollah.

From his actions, he appears to have blessed Iran’s taking the same road on which Deng Xiaoping set out some four decades ago.

After Mao’s death, Deng found China with a backward economy in a booming world led by Reagan’s America and a Japan on the march.

To save Communism, Deng decided to embrace state capitalism.

And as there is nothing new under the sun, Deng had a model.

In 1921, in the wake of Russia’s crushing defeat in the Great War and bloodletting in the Civil War between “Reds” and “Whites,” Lenin saw his regime imperiled by a rising revolution against the Bolsheviks.

He dumped “war Communism” for a New Economic Policy, opened Russia to Western investors, while assuring the comrades that the capitalists “will sell us the rope with which we will hang them.”

Similarly, Iran’s regime seems to have concluded that the path to power and permanence of the regime lies not in conflict with the United States, but in avoiding conflict — and taking the China road.

President Hassan Rouhani, who also sees Iran’s future as best assured by resolving the nuclear issue and reengaging with the West, described his triumph to the Iranian parliament:

“All are happy except Zionists, warmongers, sowers of discord among Islamic nations and extremists in the U.S. The rest are happy.”

If this deal is truly in the interests of the United States and Iran, whose interests would be served by scuttling it? Who seeks to do so?

And why would they want a return to confrontation and perhaps war?

The post Is Iran Copying China? appeared first on LewRockwell.