Newsweek has finally editorialized what we've been discussing since last year.
http://blog.360.yahoo.com/blog-oyRzqeYyeqkKKFSKN5COYA--?cq=1&p=81
http://blog.360.yahoo.com/blog-oyRzqeYyeqkKKFSKN5COYA--?cq=1&p=145
http://blog.360.yahoo.com/blog-oyRzqeYyeqkKKFSKN5COYA--?cq=1&p=101
With North Korea starting to play ball, Zimbabwe/Burma/Sudan crises fairly inconsequential to us, China/Russia too powerful to punish, and Iraq in shambles, America needs a new whipping boy to focus our ire and security concerns. Even if Iran is far from the next "Evil Empire", conservatives are doing their best to sell the idea to us. But as Zakaria and others have asserted, our hysteria is misplaced because Iran is not even the strongest power in its region (Israel is decades ahead of them). If anything, our war on terror actions since 2002 have only served to strengthen Iran and make its people more nationalistic.
We removed their local rivals the Taleban and Saddam from power, and our thirst for oil (along with China's) has sent market prices soaring, which is the only thing that allows Iran's weak economy to remain viable and able to afford expensive nuclear research and military hardware. Actually Iran's geographic location and vast energy reserves permits them to wreck the global oil trade if they so desire (and they have threatened this action in response to any Israeli or American attack). The West clearly realizes this, which is why we have barely given Iran a slap on the wrist for continuing nuclear research, aiding Iraqi insurgents, arming/supporting Hizbullah against Israel, detaining Iranian-American academics without charge, and even kidnapping British sailors who probably didn't even violate Iranian waters.
Basically the only plays America have left are token unilateral trade sanctions (which hardly work without more international backing, which won't happen from China and Russia at least) and subtle moves at fomenting "soft revolution" by supporting reformist groups within Iran. Everyone but Dick Cheney knows that the military option is definitely off the table despite what our presidential candidates might threaten. They talk a good game, but attacking Iran will definitely do more harm than good, and will make the Iraq occupation look like a successful endeavor in comparison. So instead we exaggerate their wickedness and try to oversell the Iran threat to try to gain momentum for more serious actions, but so far to no avail.
Iran clearly is contributing negatively to local and world affairs in many ways, but those problems can be managed without military escalation and ridiculous rhetoric. And managed means not totally eliminated, but at least controlled so as to not get worse, which is what we could have done with Saddam. Why is Iran pursuing nuclear technology? To spread Islamic Revolution and attack Europe/Israel, as some say? Maybe the just need more electricity, seriously. They have very little domestic refining capacity due to the costly Iran-Iraq War (with our support, the Iraqi military destroyed many Iranian refineries and they are too poor to rebuild them). So even though they're sitting on a billion barrels of crude and natural gas, they can't even meet the meager energy demands of their second-world economy. If gasoline wasn't rationed and subsidized by the government, prices would be more expensive than America, which is ridiculous for the #3 oil reserve in the Middle East. So pursuing nuclear energy seems legitimate, and is lawful under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty that they signed. But of course peaceful and military nuclear activities are hard to distinguish, so the Quartet is trying to block their progress on the suspicion of weapons aspirations. Then why would Iran pursue nukes and suffer the world's condemnation (or even risk attack)? Maybe they feel like they have no choice.
Israel has a history of military aggression in the 20 th Century (that far exceeds Iran's), and has had nukes for decades with little protest from anyone. Is it right for a regional power to have a nuclear monopoly? India and Pakistan definitely didn't think so. And coincidentally when India and Pakistan got nukes, America and others were suddenly a lot nicer (minus a few meager sanctions by Clinton). Iran is the only Shia-dominant nation on Earth besides post-2003 Iraq. Due to their religious history and the circumstances of the Iranian Islamist Revolution, other Muslim nations have been wary or even hostile towards Iran since 1979 (especially the Ba'athists and Saudis). Many Shias maintain the belief that they must protect themselves or the Sunnis will persecute and annihilate them, as they have tried in the past. Some in Al Qaeda (including the late Zarqawi) even hate Shias as much as Infidels. Iran is surrounded by hostiles, and that was even before 9/11 when the US set up or expanded huge military bases in Persian Gulf states, Turkey, Afghanistan, and former Soviet republics under the premise of pursuing Al Qaeda (virtually encircling Iran in a stranglehold). With so many potential enemies that seriously outgun Iran, and seeing what the US/UK did to Iraq and Afghanistan, do you think the "crazy regime in Tehran" is pursuing nuclear weapons as a deterrent against invasion, or to use them offensively in a vain, limited attempt that would accomplish nothing strategically and seal their destruction from reprisal attacks? Oh how little we think of our enemies.
As you can see, the conservatives' depiction doesn't hold water. We just don't want to admit that we hate Iran because they pose a challenge to US-Israeli-Saudi military dominance in the region. Not even a grave security threat, but just a challenge so we can't bully them anymore (but we only have our hubris to blame). Iran is not about global domination and ideological revolution, as the Nazis or Soviets were at times. They have to deal with national survival first, and their house is definitely not in order socially, politically, or economically. There is plenty of unemployment, fiscal irresponsibility, and media/academic censorship. The Ayatollahs' grip on power is waning as the more secular, educated, pro-Western elements of the country are calling for more reforms and less Islamism. The people want to make money, not convert Infidels. And this is happening without a single shot fired. Bush is right that people want and deserve to be free, but we have to support local movements to do it their way, not "force freedom" on our timetable with heavy-handed methods. Or if we go too far (as in Iraq), we end up turning people off to Western values and increasing hatred/extremism instead of reducing it.
Ahmadinejad and the Iranians might talk tough (calling for Islamic revolution and the destruction of Israel, etc.), but clearly they lack the political will and practical ability to carry it out. Bush said to the world that nations were either "with us or against us" in the war on terror. But clearly he didn't really mean it or act on those words (Russia, Pakistan, and France are clear examples). Politicians talk BS; that is what they do. Only the greater fool overreacts to the BS. Even if the doomsday scenario takes place (Iraq, Lebanon, Afghanistan, and others are taken over by Shia extremists who align with Iran), they will become a bloc of third world war-torn nations with very little geopolitical clout. Their combined GDP will be smaller than Italy's. Yes Iran-Iraq do control a lot of energy reserves and may threaten key neighbors like Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Israel, and Pakistan, but I guarantee that those nations will respond to the problem before we have to. Saudia Arabia and Pakistan have battled Islamist extremists for decades and they haven't lost yet. It won't be pretty, but they know how to defend themselves and won't just keel over to the "Shia menace". And who knows what Israel will do? So for Bush to claim that a nuclear Iran will seal the deal on WWIII is idiotic, even by his standards. A Shia revival does pose a tricky and potentially dangerous challenge for the region, but other regional powers will ultimately work to confine the problem.
Or better yet, they can NEGOTIATE PEACEFULLY to diffuse tensions and work out compromises. Does Iran deserve peaceful coexistence as much as Israel? Certainly. Should they be permitted to pursue a civilian nuclear program? It's debatable and there are alternatives, as with North Korea. Russia's offer to enrich uranium fuel for Iran is an example. But all America offers are criticism and isolation. Though all roads do not lead to war, as the Bush/Cheney boogeymen might assert. And let's not forget that Iran is OVER FIVE YEARS away from a functional bomb, so the world may be a very different place in 2013. Maybe by then we will ameliorate Western-Muslim relations, and work out some mutual security agreements so Iran doesn't feel the need to pursue nukes for national defense, Israel and Iran don't feel threatened by each other, and America doesn't feel the need to maintain a large military presence in the Mideast to fight terrorism. One can only hope.
Stalin, Mao And … Ahmadinejad?
Conservatives have become surprisingly charitable about two of history's greatest mass murderers.
At a meeting with reporters last week, President Bush said that "if you're interested in avoiding World War III, it seems like you ought to be interested in preventing [ Iran] from having the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon." These were not the barbs of some neoconservative crank or sidelined politician looking for publicity. This was the president of the United States, invoking the specter of World War III if Iran gained even the knowledge needed to make a nuclear weapon.
The American discussion about Iran has lost all connection to reality. Norman Podhoretz, the neoconservative ideologist whom Bush has consulted on this topic, has written that Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is "like Hitler … a revolutionary whose objective is to overturn the going international system and to replace it in the fullness of time with a new order dominated by Iran and ruled by the religio-political culture of Islamofascism." For this staggering proposition Podhoretz provides not a scintilla of evidence.
Here is the reality. Iran has an economy the size of Finland's and an annual defense budget of around $4.8 billion. It has not invaded a country since the late 18th century. The United States has a GDP that is 68 times larger and defense expenditures that are 110 times greater. Israel and every Arab country (except Syria and Iraq) are quietly or actively allied against Iran. And yet we are to believe that Tehran is about to overturn the international system and replace it with an Islamo-fascist order? What planet are we on?
When the relatively moderate Mohammed Khatami was elected president in Iran, American conservatives pointed out that he was just a figurehead. Real power, they said (correctly), especially control of the military and police, was wielded by the unelected "Supreme Leader," Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Now that Ahmadinejad is president, they claim his finger is on the button. (Oh wait, Iran doesn't have a nuclear button yet and won't for at least three to eight years, according to the CIA, by which point Ahmadinejad may not be president anymore. But these are just facts.)
In a speech last week, Rudy Giuliani said that while the Soviet Union and China could be deterred during the cold war, Iran can't be. The Soviet and Chinese regimes had a "residual rationality ," he explained. Hmm. Stalin and Mao—who casually ordered the deaths of millions of their own people, fomented insurgencies and revolutions, and starved whole regions that opposed them—were rational folk. But not Ahmadinejad, who has done what that compares? One of the bizarre twists of the current Iran hysteria is that conservatives have become surprisingly charitable about two of history's greatest mass murderers.
If I had to choose whom to describe as a madman, North Korea's Kim Jong Il or Ahmadinejad, I do not think there is really any contest. A decade ago Kim Jong Il allowed a famine to kill 2 million of his own people, forcing the others to survive by eating grass, while he imported gallons of expensive French wine. He has sold nuclear technology to other rogue states and threatened his neighbors with test-firings of rockets and missiles. Yet the United States will be participating in international relief efforts to Pyongyang worth billions of dollars.
We're on a path to irreversible confrontation with a country we know almost nothing about. The United States government has had no diplomats in Iran for almost 30 years. American officials have barely met with any senior Iranian politicians or officials. We have no contact with the country's vibrant civil society. Iran is a black hole to us—just as Iraq had become in 2003.
The one time we seriously negotiated with Tehran was in the closing days of the war in Afghanistan, in order to create a new political order in the country. Bush's representative to the Bonn conference, James Dobbins, says that "the Iranians were very professional, straightforward, reliable and helpful. They were also critical to our success. They persuaded the Northern Alliance to make the final concessions that we asked for." Dobbins says the Iranians made overtures to have better relations with the United States through him and others in 2001 and later, but got no reply. Even after the Axis of Evil speech, he recalls, they offered to cooperate in Afghanistan . Dobbins took the proposal to a principals meeting in Washington only to have it met with dead silence. The then Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, he says, "looked down and rustled his papers." No reply was ever sent back to the Iranians. Why bother? They're mad.
Last year, the Princeton scholar, Bernard Lewis, a close adviser to Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, wrote an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal predicting that on Aug. 22, 2006, President Ahmadinejad was going to end the world. The date, he explained, "is the night when many Muslims commemorate the night flight of the Prophet Muhammad on the winged horse Buraq, first to 'the farthest mosque,' usually identified with Jerusalem, and then to heaven and back. This might well be deemed an appropriate date for the apocalyptic ending of Israel and if necessary of the world" (my emphasis). This would all be funny if it weren't so dangerous.
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