Appeasement never works, you say? The optimists in Washington seem to think there’s a first time for everything. Not only is the US planning to sell Airbus parts to Iran to shore up its aging fleet of passenger aircraft, but that offer was a significant component of the incentives package (full text available here) to which Iran still hasn’t given a straight answer:
Civil aviation cooperation, including the possible removal of restrictions on US and European manufacturers, from exporting civil aircraft to Iran, thereby widening the prospect of Iran renewing its fleet of civil airlines.
By doing so, the US both rewards Iran’s behavior thus far on the nuclear issue, and gives into blackmail over the prospect that Iran might not remove unsafe aircraft from service, and that in the event of a disaster, the bad PR would squander those all-important “hearts and minds” around the globe, spontaneously generating more “extremists.”
But they hate us already, you say? Maybe this time, this concession, will do the trick. Or the next one, hopefully. You see, it’s all about “hope,” this “War on Terror.”