POST: Iran and the Goldilocks Principle: Why Kuperman is Completely Wrong and the Leveretts are Only Partly Right and There are no Tunnel Bombs, By Juan Cole, Informed Comment, January 07, 2010

Very intelligent piece by Cole that's worth reading from top to (way below) bottom. Good points throughout, but I liked this one best:

The logical problem is, how can you both acknowledge the depth and legitimacy of the Green Reform movement and at the same time urge President Obama to pursue engagement with Ahmadinejad's government? Me, I don't see the problem here. We didn't close the Polish embassy during the Solidarity movement. You deal with the government in power on bilateral issues as long as it is there. If it falls, then you deal with the new government. It is not as if we are offering the regime weapons or materiel that could be used against the protesters. We're just jawboning them.

It has such a sensible, duh-like logic to it ("Big deal! So we talk to them!"), and yet Cole is but one voice among so many experts arguing otherwise that it seems remarkable and daring for him to make his case so starkly. There are, of course, others who speak such common sense, eschewing all manner of hyperbole, and they are like strange islands of quietude in this rancorous debate. Hard-liners seem to be saying that any interaction somehow spits in the face of the opposition. I just see such efforts doing much to deny the regime the excuse of the external enemy at a time when it needs it most.

Cole's take on the NYT tunneling piece was different from mine: he worries that a case is being made for strikes with such breathless reporting. Me? I just spot more logic against the notion that bombs will get us some definitive outcome, whether they're actually operating equipment under ground or simply stockpiling them to protect them from airstrikes (Cole's argument).

I am especially glad that Cole found the Kuperman piece as supremely bad as I did. I almost didn't blog it I felt it was such a bad piece of analysis, but then I felt compelled--on that basis--to say something. Cole really nails it nicely.