3:44AM
Iran's carrot & stick show
Saturday, May 23, 2009 at 3:44AM WORLD NEWS: "Iran Tests Missile, Launching Pre-Election Show of Defiance," by Chip Cummins, Wall Street Journal, 21 May 2009.
Free the journalist, then shoot off the missile.
For a country that brags how unafraid of the U.S. it is, Iran certainly spends a lot of time seeking our attention.
Iran says the missiles are only to deter.
U.S. officials worry that Tehran will eventually put warheads on them.
Well, duuuuh!
That makes for world-class deterrence!
Reader Comments (5)
We then have to create a deterrence policy that works to prevent a nuke being popped off via container ship or some other non-traceable means.
It will be impossible to prevent such an attach 100% of the time, forever. So what do we do?
Non traceable is a myth.
There are always signatures galore.
To be honest, I think some of it comes down to subtle racism that links Iran and the ‘Mad Mullahs’ to all of the negative doctrines of Islamic religious life. The issues with women, a legal and court system unrecognisable to us in the west and other issues that seem to affect normally decent, open minded people, in such as way as to make the idea of a reasonable and rational Iran a conversation stopper.
But William is right – the long term centuries based workings of the Persian people, show that they are not idiots who fail to understand the basics of international relations.
The hardest part of this may be convincing seemingly rational people in the west that not all Iranians are waiting in the wings to smuggle WMDs to terrorists or bomb Israel in the first 48 hours of nuclear operability.
OK, so we can trace a nuke, I stand corrected. But that's not my point. We don't want to have to trace a nuke that has been detonated do we?
What is our deterrence policy? MAD or a variation on MAD applied to only the "bad guys"? A one way Armageddon? Don't think that would fly with our current Western sensibilities. Would we respond in kind, tit-for-tat?
David, I'm not a racist, and to imply that is a weak argument and a none starter. It's quite silly actually. I judge Iran by what they do and say. The support terrorists organizations, they fight a no so covert way against US forces in Iraq, their leaders talk of wiping Israel off the face of the map, they repress free speech and, yes they do not give their women basic human rights. I believe I have proper level of concern regarding Iran. Gosh, even Obama seems to have some concerns with Iran.
Americans are not willing to take preemptive action after our experience in Iraq. Iran gets nukes. What is our government's stated policy to deter Iran from using or spreading nuke technology?
I don't think that our current leaders are willing to proclaim a MAD style policy of deterrence.