If I'm Iran...
Tuesday, May 22, 2007 at 3:14AM ARTICLE: Those pesky puppies of war, By Spengler, Asia Times Online, May 22, 2007
Good analysis from Spengler on the Middle East, especially in dismissing the "silly" talk from last year on how belief in the 12th Imam was driving everything Tehran did in confronting the West.
Things are settling in rather nicely toward a path of detente with Iran: we need them on Iraq and they need us to back off on the nukes so they can move toward some sort of perestroika on their economy, which is floundering badly, despite the oil wealth. They need access to FDI and that access can only come with some gives on their part.
For now, Iran is sitting relatively pretty other than its economy: our pain in Iraq is profound and growing in terms of domestic discontent, and their path on nukes seems locked in. The more they wait on those two issues, the better the terms get, especially as Bush's term draws to a close.
The question, of course, is how Tehran calculates the economic costs in the meantime, especially since it can trigger political unrest, which seems to grow more frequent with each passing month in Iran.
So the wild card is domestic unrest, which seems largely driven by economic frustration, although petty political repression could end up being a huge trigger (e.g., the daily battles with the supremely annoying morals/fashion police).
If I'm Iran, I rein in Ahmadinejad for now, relax on the public, and wait out Bush while soft-pedaling the nuke issue and Iran, meaning I pretend to cooperate on both but deliver little. The Bush people, so desperate now for signs of success (witness North Korea) won't prove too hard to suffer in their remaining 20 months..
This is what I expect Iran to do, and I expect it to be supremely frustrating for us on Iraq.
But we can hope that Bush will pay the logical prices to salvage some sense of genuine relief on casualties in Iraq prior to his departure.
Thanks to Lexington Green for sending this.
Reader Comments (1)