ANALYSIS: “Terror Group Assists in Struggle With Iran: Some in Congress See a role for Anti-Tehran Exiles in Push for Regime Change,” by Jay Solomon, Wall Street Journal, 22 May 2006, p. A6.

ARTICLE: “U.S. Rejects Direct Talks With Iran but Keeps Meeting With Europe, China and Russia,” by Steven R. Weisman, New York Times, 25 May 2006, p. A6.

OP-ED: "The Persian Complex: Iran's centuries-old quest for respect," by Abbas Amanat, New York Times, 25 May 2006, p. A27.

ARTICLE: "Powers Inch Ahead on Nuclear Deal With Iran," by Reuters, Washington Post, 25 May 2006, p. A23.

The rerun dynamic on Iran is kinda stunning: relying on somewhat slimy ex-pat group that’s easily designatable as a terrorist group itself, a lot of loose speculation on the ease of the take-down possibilities using air power, the poor intell on WMD acquisition and a ramping up of timelines (again, with the danger of Israel taking things into its own hands as an implied strategic backdrop).

Noting the similarities is not to routinely condemn all the strategic logic attached (especially on Iraq, which had multiple outstanding UN “warrants”), but rather simply to acknowledge that this administration seems to have only one approach in these things, and that given the lack of success in operation #1, it’s hard to see how either Congress or our allies would bite on operation #2.

Also just as clear is that the Big Bang argument cannot be repeated casually. If you cannot follow up on the first effort, what would make anyone think you’d do better on the second pulsing of the regional system? Furthering the perturbation previously unleashed can be done in a wide variety of non-kinetic means, but trying to sell military ops against Iran just comes off as a widening of the war-like conditions that still afflict too much of Iraq, simultaneously denying the U.S. key potential partners in lessening that conflict--first and foremost Iran itself.

In general, rerunning the Iraq sales job just smacks of an unwillingness to learn. Warren had me write the “Monks of War” because he was interested in showing how U.S. ground forces are learning rapidly in Iraq in an operational and tactical sense, despite the apparent lack of strategic learning going on in this administration. When I started to research the piece, I felt like his original argument was too sharply drawn (i.e., the ground forces weren’t learning that fast and the government wasn’t learning that slow), but the more time passes, the better that judgment looks.

And I think that’s a major undercurrent of the public’s anger toward Bush: not only does he not get it, but his team goes out of the way to avoid getting it. Everything is piled on top of everything else: tax cuts PLUS huge upticks in spending, the GWOT plus China is still threatening, Iraq PLUS Iran, ongoing war ops PLUS a long-term acquisition agenda.

For a group of CEO-types so celebrated for making tough decisions, this crowd never seems to make any. It all just gets added to the pile, the strategic overhang growing like the federal debt.

For all this talk of a new strategic environment, this largely Cold War crowd has simply added all the burdens of today on top of all the fears of yesterday.

There is this Republican strategy that says, We spend like crazy and then force subsequent Democratic administrations to deal with the resulting ceilings--in effect, they load up on their preferred spending packages, especially defense, and by doing so force the hard choices on others. Expressed in this way, it’s beyond any political gamesmanship that any rational actor would accept as reasonable. It’s just so amazing cynical, and to the extent that it accurately describes what this administration is doing in national security, it quickly moves beyond cynical to truly dangerous for the global system as a whole. More to the selfish point, though, it’s just so self-destructive for this nation. It’s simply unsustainable. You can’t get from this A to any Z worth attaining. Instead, you just set the country up for a larger correction.

Choosing to rerun Iran with Iran, while begging off on the far more important dynamics of our relationship with the China/Taiwan/North Korea nexus, for example, just tells me that this administration doesn’t really see the post-9/11 security environment that it claims to understand so much better than the Democrats (that’s not to say that the Dems get it much better, only that Bush and Co. reveal themselves to be disappointingly limited in their ability to move beyond their decision to take down Saddam as THE bold move of the first term).

As I’ve said before: we’re seeing the limits of strategic imagination with this crowd. I felt we were close enough in 2004 that I was very confident in arguing that Kerry would have been a better choice then--that we truly needed to switch that horse right in the middle of the race to connect the Middle East. What stuns me now is not that I was right in that gut instinct (hardly a bold move for a life-long Democrat who’s yet to vote Republican in a national election), but how much that lack of strategic imagination would end up costing us nationally and internationally in a second Bush term.

In short, I think we’re just beginning to realize the price tag.

So if I were a Republican, I’d start running for president more openly against Bush and stop trying to position myself merely as the Hillary alternative. I think the 06 elections may feel an awful lot like the 94 seismic shift, and that it will be a public feeling fed up with this White House’s inability to learn from its mistakes that will constitute the prime force behind this backlash.

I don’t argue any of this easily: I don’t want to see us strategically sidelined, much less isolated, for the next three years. I fear globalization is simply put too much at risk in the meantime, and that none of us realize exactly how dangerous that may end up being for the planet as a whole.

Meanwhile, it’s hard to see how the current tack on Iran will get us what we want either. The Europeans are getting fairly explicit on what the solution set needs to be: a security guarantee if we expect Iran to give up the bomb. This administration won’t offer that guarantee, because it’s more interested in regime change than proliferation. The problem with this strategic approach is that it pushed Iran down this path in the first place.

There is a definition of stupidity (I think from Einstein) that says it’s expecting different results despite doing things the same way over and over again. I think we’re witnessing some strategic stupidity on Iran, and I just don’t get the lack of confidence to try something else that seems to permeate this crowd.

Frankly, we should be a more confident global superpower. I compare our assets to anybody’s, including China, and I trade this nation for nobody. We should act like that’s the case, instead of responding with so much fear to everything around the planet. The confident superpower cooperates with others, the fearful one resists everybody and pretends that’s strength displayed.

Iran wants respect, which it defines as security from our aggression. In a perfect world, Iran would have no oil or gas, and then we'd be able to get acquiesence from Russia, India, and China. But that scenario is not in the works, despite all the polite responses we get.

Meanwhile, none of this approach taps the one asset we need to tap most: the Iranian people and their dissatisfaction with the mullahs and the current government. Instead, we force a choice between perceived self-respect and humiliation, between a sense of identity and a none-too-veiled threat.

Here is Amanat's warning:

If the United States resorts to sanctions, or worse, to some military response, the outcome would be not only disastrous but, in the long run, transient. Just as the West did with Iran's railroad and oil industry, it can for a time deny Iran's nuclear technology, but it cannot wipe out Iranians' haunting memories. And no doubt the Islamic regime will amply exploit these collective memories to advance its nuclear program even as it stifles voices of domestic dissent. Even more than before, Iranians will blame outside powers for their misfortunes and choose not to focus on their own troubled road to modernity.

I see this pathway as the death of the Big Bang.