In a fit of appeasement, the man who served as foreign minister of Germany between 1998 and 2005, Joschka Fischer, is calling for America to offer the Iranian leadership “binding security guarantees.” In an article in yesterday’s Washington Post, Herr Fischer proposes the guarantees be offered in exchange for Iran’s “long-term suspension of uranium enrichment.”

Keep in mind that had Reagan or Kennedy – or Kohl, for that matter – reacted to Soviet Communism by offering East Germany “binding security guarantees,” Mr. Fischer’s capital would still have a wall running through it. On one side of the wall, people would be free. On the other side, the people would live in a sclerotic state-run economy in fear of being thrown in prison by the secret police for speaking out in favor of freedom. Much as in present-day Iran.

The notion that “talks” with Iran will produce anything other than more time for the mullahs to work secretly on their a-bomb is delusional. After the attacks of September 11, 2001, President Bush didn’t enter into “talks” with the Taliban or with Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq. He offered them ultimata – turn over Al Qaeda, submit to intrusive snap weapons inspections – and then destroyed the regimes when they failed to comply.

Better than offering “talks” or “security guarantees” for the regime in Tehran would be offering freedom to the Iranian people. Given Mr. Bush’s strong rhetoric so far, anything less would raise doubts in the wider Middle East about the sincerity of the president’s commitment to freedom and democracy. To avoid raising those doubts, any ultimatum Mr. Bush gives Tehran would have to deal with not only the nuclear issue but also the questions of freedom and democracy in Iran and of Iranian support for terrorism against Americans, Israelis, and Argentinian Jews.

The question of $3 or $4 or $5 a gallon gasoline in America looms over this debate. But the prices are partly fixed by a cartel, in the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, that includes Iran, and they are influenced by global supply and demand questions that go beyond Washington-Tehran tensions. The interests of American gasoline consumers call for a pro-American regime in Tehran, not truckling to the price-fixing terrorists.

This goes beyond the politics at the pump to what kind of world we – and Joschka Fischer, for that matter – want to live in. Today the German news magazine Spiegel publishes an interview with President Ahmadinejad in which he urges the Germans to stop feeling guilty about the Holocaust – “if the Holocaust actually occurred.” Do Americans – does Joschka Fischer – really want a world in which we offer “security guarantees” to such a regime?