Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul is demonstrating an appalling ignorance on the Iranian nuclear issue and the threat it poses to world security. In fact, several times during the recent GOP debates he blamed the animosity against the U.S. in the Middle East on America's foreign policy.

Paul recently argued on "Fox News Sunday" that sanctions should be removed altogether to get Iran to act differently and that the U.S. response to Iran's nuclear pursuit was an "overreaction." He added that Iran does not pose a threat to either the U.S. or the region.

The congressman from Texas insists that a better art of persuasion would be to offer friendship, the way the U.S. approached the Soviets and Chinese in the 1970s and 1980s.

So Paul not only has shown that he has no understanding of the murderous radicals who rule Iran but has a dangerous lapse of memory.  President Obama at first tried to do exactly what Paul argues now should be done -- and failed miserably.

When Obama took office in 2009, he immediately changed the U.S. approach toward Iran, believing that the mullahs would only change behavior if a kinder, gentler approach were implemented. His appeasement of the mullahs started when he sent his video message on the occasion of the Iranian New Year in 2009, stating his desire for friendship with the Iranian leaders. That was followed by a letter to the Iranian supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, in which he reiterated that America did not intend to interfere in Iran's internal matters and that it respected the sovereignty of the Islamic state and that he desired better relations between the two countries.

Obama not only legitimized the brutal regime in Iran but he also then turned his back on the Iranian people, who had taken to the streets by the millions after the fraudulent elections of 2009, demanding an end to the thugocracy. Obama was promised by the Iranian leaders that they were ready to negotiate over the nuclear issue, and so the Iranian people's desire for regime change did not become of interest to Obama. After all, he believed he was close to a historical point in reaching an agreement with the Islamic regime of Iran.

The leaders of Iran, as they have done for over three decades, fooled the Obama administration, extending negotiations until they had brutally suppressed the uprising in Iran, during which thousands were imprisoned, tortured, raped and even executed. Then they announced that the U.S. proposal on the table that they had indicated was acceptable was now unacceptable.

The radicals went further by stating that "America can't do a damn thing" and announced that they had now enriched uranium to 20 percent, a significant milestone toward weaponization.

However, it is not only the Obama administration that has been fooled by the mullahs.  President Carter and his national security adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski, began America's misguided policy toward radical Islam, Carter by calling Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini "a man of God" and Brzezinski with his plan to help Islamic militants confront the Soviet Union.  Unfortunately, that policy of negotiation and hope for a moderate leader in Iran who would open the doors to the West continued under President Reagan.

Many in the Reagan administration were jubilant by the prospect of better relations with Iran. U.S. officials began holding clandestine meetings with the Iranians.  Requests from the Iranian side were fulfilled, with many shipments of arms sent to Iran, but in the end U.S. officials realized that they had been duped.

This shortsightedness continued with President George H.W. Bush, who ignored the Iranian terrorist activities in his secret negotiations with Ayatollah Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, the Iranian president at the time, who had promised better relations.  That effort also failed, just as President Clinton (who looked the other way at Iran's involvement in the Khobar Towers bombing in Saudi Arabia) failed in negotiating with Mohammad Khatami, the next Iranian president, with another promise of cooperation, all the while secretly buying parts for Iran's nuclear project.

During this misguided era, the radicals in Iran not only committed the most heinous crimes against their own people, violating every principle of human rights, but also engaged America on several fronts, accurately concluding that their actions would diminish the U.S. presence in the region and strengthen theirs.

As Iran closes in on getting the bomb, it is of utmost importance to once and for all realize the very ideology that drives their actions. We must acknowledge their progress with their missile program and the threat they pose not only to the region but to the world.

The Iranian Revolutionary Guards have been publicly cheering Ron Paul's statements, for they know that this complicity is needed for them to push on with the conquest of Islam worldwide.

Reza Kahlili is a pseudonym for an ex-CIA spy who requires anonymity for safety reasons.  He is a Senior Fellow with EMPact America and the author of A Time to Betray, a book about his double-life as a CIA agent in Iran's Revolutionary Guards, published by Threshold Editions, Simon & Schuster, April 2010.  A Time to Betray was the winner of the 2010 National Best Book Award and the 2011 International Best Book Award.