ANNALS OF DISTINCTIONS: IRAN.

Roger Cohen has a smart column today where he makes apparently unpopular distinctions between present-day Iran and Nazi Germany. It follows the backlash against a column Cohen wrote portraying Iran's Jewish community as relatively prosperous, which led people like Jeffrey Goldberg to accuse him of being suckered by Iran's propaganda machine. Goldberg knows more than I about being suckered, but I don't see a lot of evidence that Cohen's reporting was incorrect, or that Cohen was somehow defending Iran's policies by writing about the Jewish community there. Instead, he was deploying the fine art of observation to understand the region:

But the equating of Iran with terror today is simplistic. Hamas and Hezbollah have evolved into broad political movements widely seen as resisting an Israel over-ready to use crushing force. It is essential to think again about them, just as it is essential to toss out Iran caricatures.

I return to this subject because behind the Jewish issue in Iran lies a critical one — the U.S. propensity to fixate on and demonize a country through a one-dimensional lens, with a sometimes disastrous chain of results.

Recognizing threats is important. Iran has the potential to be a serious challenge to the U.S. national security goals, but the state shouldn't be caricatured. Ironically, it may be more comfortable for some people to envision Iran as a single-minded anti-Israel/anti-U.S. force for evil, since that makes the policy response so much simpler. But in the real world there are shades of gray, and Iran does have a relatively dynamic civil society and moderate impulses alongside the extremism of Mahmoud Ahmedinjad. There are windows for negotiations and engagement with the state that could lead to more secure and stable Middle East for all involved, but if we focus on demonizing the entire country those opportunities will be lost.

On the other hand, the costs of extremely reductive analysis are apparent in Cohen's reference to Hamas. The recent Gaza Conflict has made Hamas more popular, not less. Supporters of the war thought it was possible to destroy a terrorist organization militarily, and it may be, but Hamas is not just a terrorist organization. It's also a populist political movement that has a lot of on-the-ground legitimacy in its territory, and that is a much harder nut to crack. Ignoring regional complexities and how the various actors involved in them are perceived on the ground may be convenient for a little while, but it also leads to bad policy outcomes.

-- Tim Fernholz