Why big mouths don’t translate into big actions on Iran
Sunday, February 5, 2006 at 5:52PM ARTICLE: “Why U.S. Wages Diplomacy With Defiant Iran: Strike on Nuclear Sites Could Derail Reformers, Trigger Broad Retaliation,” by Carla Anne Robbins and Greg Jaffe, Wall Street Journal, 3 February 2006, p. A4.
ARTICLE: “Hurdles Await U.S. Bid for Sanctions Against Iran: Compromise, Interpretations Cloud Agreement for Reports On Tehran’s Nuclear Efforts,” by Marc Champion, Neil King Jr., and David Crawford, Wall Street Journal, 1 February 2006, p. A6.
EDITORIAL: “An ‘Intolerable’ Threat: What a world with an Iranian nuclear weapon would look like,” Wall Street Journal, 3 February 2006, p. A12.
ARTICLE: “Senators grill intelligence chief about surveillance: Negroponte says it’s ‘probably true’ that N. Korea has nukes,” by John Diamond, USA Today, 3 February 2006, p. 4A.
Greg Jaffe’s piece with Carla Robbins is a tremendous explanation of the reasons why the Bush Administration, while talking plenty tough, has actually taken a fairly reasoned and low-key approach to Iran.
They argue that it would be easy to lay facilities to rubble, but that Iran’s distribution strategy means that impact would be minimal in terms of actually setting back their efforts (hence the argument of some that the only quick successful strike would necessarily be a nuclear one).
But the main reason why the administration wisely lays off is the fear of blowback from a population (Shiite) that frankly hasn’t been the bulk of our problem yet in the region, so why add them to the battle against the exclusively Sunni-based Salafi jihadist movement?
That’s the fear, but the hope is not small either. State and the White House are smart enough to know that there are substantial reformist elements and a rather restive, largely pro-American population that’s not worth losing.
Clearly, our inability to master the second-halves in both Afghanistan (where we do better than people realize) and Iraq (pretty tough slog still) is the underlying cause of our inability to threaten Iran with much beyond the lightning strikes. So if we’re going to keep the Big Bang rolling in the time remaining in this administration, we’ll have to do it by coopting Iran, not invading it.
So radical when I wrote it a year ago, but looking more and more like the only logical play for us. It’s so logical, in fact, that Bush is willing to suffer the criticism from all sides that he’s not being “tough enough.”
Fortunately, or unfortunately, our sanctions, however arranged, won’t have much impact, so the long-term squeeze on Iran yields us only one significant positive: a longer conversation with Europe, Russia, China and (hopefully) India on what we collectively want the Middle East to look like in coming years and decades.
“Intolerable” to the WSJ, but the board is blowing smoke on this one, because they’re ignoring the sheer realities of how tied down our ground forces are right now.
Actually, the WSJ editorial shoots itself in the foot, by quoting Simon Jenkins, editor of the Times of London: “I would sleep happier if there were no Iranian bomb. But a swamp of hypocrisy separates me from overly protesting it. Iran is a proud country that sits between nuclear Pakistan and India to its east, a nuclear Russia to its north and a nuclear Israel to its West… How can we say such a country has ‘no right’ to nuclear defense?”
Ouch!
But clearly, a country that supports terrorism outside its borders can’t be trusted with the bomb?
Double ouch, as only India might be easily excluded from that list.
Meanwhile, new Director of National Intelligence says North Korea probably already has the nukes.
I mean, Iran will always dream of one thing first: Iran’s continued survival in a world where it has existed for thousands of years.
But North Korea? You know Kim fears the inevitable: his country will disappear. It will disappear like South Vietnam, the lesser Yemen (can’t remember), and East Germany. It will not survive because it is a relic that’s lived beyond its time.
That regime and that leader truly has nothing to lose by going out with a bang.
And that’s why Kim needs to go.
Reader Comments (2)
I see in your Iran positions an echo of your experience as a Cold Warrior. When you were trained, the Soviet Union had become a sclerotic gerontocracy. Unlike the Soviet Union in the last three decades of its, mercifully brief, existence, Iran is only 25 years post revolution (1942 in Soviet terms).
In 1953, the members of the Central Committee became concerned that Stalin did not understand the damage that a US Nuclear Strike would do to the Soviet Union and that he was planning to provoke the US in a way that would cause one; so the poisoned him.
We were lucky, we may not get lucky this time.
Here are the known facts about Iran's nuclear program:
1- Iran has a legitimate economic case for nuclear power, which the US (including some of the members of the current Bush administration) encouraged. (see http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A3983-2005Mar26.html and http://www.atimes.com/atimes/ Middle_East/GH24Ak02.html)
2- Iran's enrichment program was not clandestine, and was widely reported in the nuclear industry literature & on Iranian radio. Iran's deals with countries like CHina to make the necessary plants had been reported to the IAEA, and the IAEA had even visited Iran's uranium mines in 1992. (See Le
Monde Diplomatique: "Iran Needs Nuclear Energy, Not Weapons" November 2005)
3- While there were undeclared facilities in Iran, the IAEA reported in Nov 2003 that "to date, there is no evidence that the previously undeclared nuclear material and activities referred to above were related to a nuclear weapons program."
4- In Nov 2004, the IAEA reported that "all the declared nuclear material in Iran has been accounted for, and therefore such material is not diverted to prohibited activities."
5- In Jan 2006, the IAEA reported that "Iran has continued to facilitate access under its Safeguards Agreement as requested by the Agency . . . including by providing in a timely manner the requisite declarations and access to locations."
6- Repeated offers of compromise by Iran that would have addressed the risk of proliferation of nukes were simply dismissed without any consideration. Most recently, Iran's Jan 2006 offer to continue the suspension of enrichment for another 2 years of additional negotiations were summarily dismissed, and not even reported in the US press though it
was reported in the Iranian press (see
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/HB07Ak01.html )
Oh yeah, there's also a "magic laptop" which has literally fallen out of the blue sky, and conveniently provides all the evidence of a nuclear weapons program in Iran that no one else has found after 3 years of inspections.
So, there we have it. Draw your own conclusions.