The U.S.'s long troubled relationship with Iran has taken a dangerous turn, as the Bush administration escalates rhetoric about Iran's nuclear industry and Iran stiffens its posture in response to U.S. threats. Published leaks by Seymour Hersch of advanced Pentagon planning for tactical nuclear strikes and covert forays into Iran have pushed tensions even higher.

The immediate challenge for the peace movement, and all concerned Americans, is to help de-escalate the immediate threats of U.S. aggression and to force the administration to renounce its aggressive, illegal and disastrous doctrine of "preventive war."

The idea of yet another country seeking to acquire nuclear capability is disquieting, but the idea of attacking to stop the possibility is worse. This is especially true given that Iran consistently says it does not plan to build nuclear weapons and even U.S. military experts say it would take five to ten years even if they did decide to switch from a civilian to a military nuclear program. We need to build public pressure on the administration and our legislators to stop the threats, and to steer away from our present zero-sum confrontation with Iran toward more practical and cooperative ends.

Historically, the U.S. public has been kept in the dark about U.S. policy toward Iran. Back in 1953, the newly minted CIA overthrew the democratically elected President of Iran and installed the Shah's long dictatorship. But the Eisenhower administration never admitted to U.S. involvement. In fact, it was not until the late 1970s after the passage of the Freedom of Information Act that the shameful tale was brought to light.

Likewise, Americans were kept in the dark about longstanding U.S. decisions to arm the Shah's dictatorship, ignore his gross human rights abuses and cooperate with his ambitious nuclear program.

Because the public knew little of the anti-democratic role our government played in Iran, the sudden emergence and unmistakably anti-American tone of the 1979 Iranian revolution perplexed many Americans. The subsequent student takeover of the U.S. Embassy and seizure of American hostages shocked the U.S. public and generated a media frenzy that tilted our whole political spectrum to the right

The pattern of U.S. government deceit continued even as Iran's revolutionary religious right ruthlessly consolidated its grip on power. During the 1980s few Americans knew that the U.S. provided major support to Saddam Hussein during the eight-year war he launched against Iraq at a cost over a million Iranian and Iraqi lives.

U.S. support for Saddam Hussein was accompanied by the double-dealing of the Reagan-Bush team, who secretly delivered critical spare parts and missile defense systems to the embattled Iranian hardliners for cash that went to pay for the U.S.'s covert war against Nicaragua's Sandinistas, half the globe away.

This bitter history complicates efforts to reduce tensions between the two countries, but it also helps keep conservative forces—in both Iran and the U.S.—in power.

Since the end of the 1970s, the right wing hard-liners who rule Iran have become adept in using U.S. hostility to rally an otherwise increasingly skeptical Iranian public to their side. This ploy was made easier by Bush's attack on neighboring Iraq, and his declaration that Iran was part of an "Axis of Evil."

Yet in fact, recent U.S. policy has greatly strengthened Iran's regional strategic position due to its intimate links with the leadership of Iraq's powerful Shia political parties and other Islamist opponents of U.S. policy in Palestine and Lebanon. It even seems, at times, that the President Bush feels obligated to show excessive hostility to Iran's leaders to compensate for and obscure the enormous strategic advantage he has handed them.

If the White House is serious about preventing the spread of nuclear weapons, there are many steps far more promising than threatening to bomb Iran. First, the U.S. should explicitly take the option of a military strike off the table. Currently, the administration articulates the idea that diplomacy should be the first option, but stubbornly refuses to assure Iran's leaders that they have nothing to fear from the U.S. Deterring a U.S. military action is one of the obvious motives the Iranians have for building a nuclear threat of their own. It would be wise to remove this fear.

Additionally, the U.S. should show leadership by renouncing our own development of new nuclear weapons. As long as we stay in the business of creating an ever more sophisticated nuclear arsenal, we are hardly in a position to dictate terms to others. We should also end the hypocrisy that allows Israel, Pakistan and India to develop nuclear arsenals with almost no impact on our aid or trade with them.

Finally, we need to talk directly with the Iranians about the problems and potential common interests we have. And we should seek to restore full diplomatic ties with Iran. Our ineffective attempt to isolate Iran has the perverse effect of reinforcing the Iranian factions most hostile to our interests.

We are far more likely to succeed in convincing Iran to stick to its pledge not to acquire nuclear weapons through some combination of the steps outlined above, than though the incoherent bluster and dangerous threats that currently masquerade as U.S. policy.