All We Are Saying … Is Give Investment a Chance

"Sometimes money trumps peace," quoth President George Bush.

Amazingly, he wasn't saying this was a good thing. Don't worry, he didn't mean American business. Instead, he was answering a question from John McKinnon of The Wall Street Journal today about how U.S. chest-beating over Iran was received by America's European allies with significant financial ties to Iran. Dubya bemoaned their putting profit first. (Actually, what he said was, "Sometimes money trumps [long pause, looks up to one side], erm [another long pause], peace.")

Unsurprisingly, he may have it bass-ackwards. In his excellent recent book, Hidden Iran, senior fellow of the Council on Foreign Relations Ray Takeyh makes a strong argument that there is and always has been an economically driven pragmatism to Iranian foreign policy. Those financial links are one of the reasons it has messed with Europe less.

Takeyh also reminds readers that without Iranians helping the U.S. navigate the tricky politics of the Northern Alliance, the invasion of Afghanistan would have been much tougher. Furthermore, while Tehran wants a Shi'ite Iraq, it doesn't need continued instability in the region. In short, he argues, if the U.S. government was run less by idealogues and more by European-style pragmatists prepared to blunt Tehran's militarism with trade links, it might achieve its idealistic end goal of a stable Persian gulf.