Iran's Non-Existant Nuclear Program

I've got some thoughts on the National Intelligence Estimate disproving the hype over the Iranian nuclear program over at Tapped. Short version: There is no political official in America who will now be able to claim "they didn't know" that the program was overhyped, and folks should take seriously the report's conclusion that any nuclear enrichment would be done "covertly" and thus not be vulnerable to a fly-by bombing campaign. So not only is the program's very existence unlikely, but destroying it would require that we either flattened the country or invaded it.

The Other Klein has a bit more, including the important point that this isn't just one agency's conclusion: The "high certainty" ranking means it's coming from multiple information streams. Matt and Kevin recount our many opportunities to end Iran's nuclear program through negotiations -- opportunities we didn't only miss, but actively, and hubristically, rejected.

Update: Fuck Howie Kurtz. Anyone can be wrong. The first page of the estimate explains the various probabilities attached to the various predictions, and all of them leave open a window (or a door, or a planet) of doubt. Does Kurtz have any reason to think that the NIE is wrong?

My Commenters Is Smarter Than I: Options On The Table Edition

Jason C. writes:

Another stupid thing about the "no options off the table" rhetoric is that even those who spout it don't really mean it. There are, presumably, plenty of options that are off the table.

1. Suppose Khamenei, having just seen the last episode of South Park, offers to give up its nuclear program if President Bush agrees to suck his balls. Is that option on the table?

2. What if Iran offers to give up its nuclear program if the US agrees to remove all troops from the Middle East starting tomorrow. Is that option on the table?

3. Assume that Iran doesn't believe we would really attack them over this issue. To show them we are serious, we could drop a nuclear bomb on Syria. Is that option on the table?

Etc. etc. etc. etc. There are plenty of options that are off the table. What Hillary et al. really mean is that one particular option - attacking Iran - is very much on the table (even though it's as crazy or crazier than the options listed above).

Right, which is sort of what I'm getting at in the column. "All options on the table" is a meaningless phrase. It's purpose is, in the one case, to signal a willingness to go to war while retaining plausible deniability around what you're saying, and in the second, to signal a willingness to go to war while allowing you to imply that you wouldn't. In both cases, the point is to obscure the politicians actual intent on one of the most acute foreign policy challenges of our time. Some seem content with letting them do that, either for reasons of political expediency or diplomatic theory. I don't buy the underlying diplomatic theory, and I don't think we, as voters, should be so sanguine about our candidate's blithe unwillingness to hide critical information from us.

Taking Options Off The Table

One other thing about taking the "no options off the table" argument off the table. Some will argue that the Democrats need to keep the threat of war front and center when dealing with Iran -- otherwise, they have no way to compel disarmament. I think that gets the causality exactly backwards. The less reticence we display around attacking Iran, the more nuclear weapons cease to be a prestige issue/bargaining chip, and the more they become a necessary precondition for security. We're far better off dealing with an Iran that wants a nuclear weapon, or at least the international respect and aid that comes with the capability to produce one, than dealing with an Iran whose regime feels they need a nuclear weapon in order to guarantee their survival.

It's The Nationalism, Stupid

Drill this into your head: The Iranians want the bomb not because they are Muslims, but because they are Iranians. That's why the atomic symbol is on the currency. That's why the rhetoric is about national pride. This isn't about a global caliphate, but about a nation's arrival into the pantheon of powers. And America's recipe for a deterrence is insane. We're implacably opposed to Iran's nuclear ambitions, and rather than give them the root respect they want as we try and convince them to bargain away the security and symbolism of atomic weapons, we're demanding their total submission to our preferences before we even sit down for negotiations. We have set, as the precondition for their disarmament, their humiliation. This will not disarm them.

What Does Iran Want?

Selig Harrison's explanation of what the Iranians will actually demand in order to shut down nuclear enrichment seems about right. Problematically, I highly doubt that this administration -- or the next -- will give Iran enough in the way of incentives and security guarantees to shut down their nuclear program. Indeed, I think it's almost totally unlikely that they will pressure Israel to freeze their Dimona Reactor, though that sort of concession would finally give Iran the political breathing room to back down from their weaponization plans.

At the end of the day, I don't think we're going to stop the Iranian nuclear program. We're not serious enough about doing so. The country's politicians have committed to it going away, not trading it away. But the former isn't much of an option and the latter is unlikely. So it will likely proceed apace. That's why I'm so insistent on politicians actually signaling whether or not they'd attack Iran to end their atomic pursuit -- because that will probably be the choice they face. And so I'm glad to see that Hillary Clinton is atoning for her vote in favor of Lieberman-Kyl by cosponsoring a resolution that states that any funds used to attack Iran must go through an explicit process of congressional approval. The bill, of course, is unlikely to pass, but if Democrats are willing to stand behind it, they can publicize the problem and make action by the Bush administration significantly less likely.

The Aftermath

Anthony Cordesman describes the avenues for Iranian-retaliation in the event of an American attack:

1) Iranian retaliation against US forces in Iraq and Afghanistan using Shahab-3 missiles armed with CBR warheads; 2) using proxy groups including...Sadr in Iraq to intensify the insurgency and escalate the attacks against US forces and Iraqi Security Forces; 3) turning the Shi’ite majority in Iraq against the US presence and demanding US forces leave; 4) attacking the US homeland with suicide bombs by proxy groups or delivering CBR weapons to al-Qa’ida to use against the US; 5) using its asymmetric capabilities to attacks US interests in the region including soft targets: e.g. embassies, commercial centers, and American citizens; 6) attacking US naval forces stationed in the Gulf with anti-ship missiles, asymmetric warfare, and mines; 7) attacking Israel with missile attacks possibly with CBR warheads; 8) retaliating against energy targets in the Gulf and temporarily shutting off the flow of oil from the Strait of Hormuz; and 9) stopping all of its oil and gas shipments to increase the price of oil, inflicting damage on the global and US economies.

One of the slightly atypical dynamics of the Iraq War is that the enemy can't really hurt us. It can hurt our ability to occupy Iraq, but unless the jihadists we're training over there decide to refocus their efforts -- which they may well do one day, in which case we'll have created them over there to fight them over here -- the majority of the damage they inflict is localized to our mission in Iraq.

Iran, by contrast, can do us a lot of damage. It's much larger and richer than Iraq, with a much more mature global presence. Additionally, it can unleash hell within Iraq, where our presence vastly enhances Iran's ability to battle us asymmetrically. Americans are used to invading and bombing countries like Bosnia and Iraq -- it's been a long time since we've struck someone who can strike back. For that reason, there's very little talk of the consequences of bombing within the media. You hear a lot about whether such an attack would be effective, but very little about the likely aftermath, and thus almost no serious discussion as to whether a military attack would be worth it. We're simply used to evaluating American military actions as if there will be no retaliatory consequences. And that's very dangerous, and in this case, very untrue.

(via)

Iran and Bombs

Front-page headline in the Times: "Iran-Supplied Bomb Is Killing More Troops in Iraq, U.S. Says." So can we believe it? Not sure. We have to wait until the article's 11th paragraph to get anything even resembling evidence, and it's followed up by doubts:

American intelligence says that its report of Iranian involvement is based on a technical analysis of exploded and captured devices, interrogations of Shiite militants, the interdiction of trucks near Iran’s border with Iraq and parallels between the use of the weapons in Iran and in southern Lebanon by Hezbollah.

Some critics of Bush administration policy, saying there is no proof that the top echelons of Iran’s government are involved, accuse the White House of exaggerating the role of Iran and Syria to divert attention from its own mistakes.

So has The New York Times seen any of this evidence? Is it compelling? And is there any evidence that these are Iranian-made in the governmental sense, rather than simply produced by Iranian splinter groups that don't much like our country? We're never told.

And who are these critics? Should we be listening to them? No one knows. They don't even get a quote.

You know, I've seen this movie before, and I didn't like it.

Meanwhile, In Iran

It's not only the US which may be on a more moderate bent. Ayatollah Ali Akbar Meshkini, chairman of the mega-powerful, 86-person, "Experts' Assembly," died yesterday. The early favorite to replace him is Hashemi Rafsanjani, the former president of Iran and a generally more stable, internationalist, and, compared to Ahmadinejad, pro-Western member of the country's ruling elite. Rafsanjani, to give folks an idea, was the presidential candidate we were comfortable with last time, until he was beat out by an unexpected swell of populist support for Ahmadinejad.

Currently, Rafsanjani has the support of three-quarters of the assembly. That leaves him the heavy favorite. But relations between him and Khatami are famously fractious, and Khatami could try and block him, though it doesn't appear to be expected. In any case, the Experts' Assembly chooses the country's Supreme Leader who, unlike Ahmadinejad, actually runs Iran. If Rafsanjani were to wrest the chairmanship, it would be heartening news indeed.

The Passion of the Cheney

I'm not really sure what Brian is getting at here. The fact that there are NeoCons and Christian Rightists and atheists (are there atheists?) in the Bush administration doesn't detract from the outfit's ideological coherence in recent years. It just means they have separate spheres of influence. The Christian Right controls the social policy, while the NeoCons have, at times, governed the international sector. There are business types in there too, and they control regulatory policy. And all these groups unite around Bush because he sections the place off to give them their own personal fiefdoms.

But within these fiedoms, there can still be conflict. The central division in foreign policy has been between Scowcroft-style realists and NeoCons. In the years following 9/11, the NeoCons -- led by Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Wolfowitz -- were ascendant. In the last few years, they have lost Paul Wolfowitz, Donald Rumsfeld, John Bolton, and a variety of lesser known, but still important, fellow travelers. These are big losses for the NeoCons. And literally every one of these positions has been filled with a realist, Rice-type of some sort. Rice passed over Bolton for Zoellick. Gates succeeded Rumsfeld. Gordon England succeeded Paul Wolfowitz. This dude you don't know succeeded some other guy you didn't know, but who mattered. Cheney's Middle East advisor just quit. And there are more.

And this has been over Cheney's objections. One of the interesting stories in Stephen Hayes book-length massage of the vice-president is that after Bush let Rumsfeld go, Cheney was angry enough to disagree publicly:

An aide fired one tough question after another at the vice president. Then: Did you agree with President Bush's decision to replace Donald Rumsfeld as secretary of defense?

"Absolutely not," Cheney replied without elaborating. His answer surprised the small group with him, but it was the answer he was determined to give if Wallace asked, even at the risk of angering his boss. But the story was a month old, and Wallace never asked the question.

To believe that America will go to war with Iran is to believe that Cheney will overcome Condoleeza Rice, Robert Gates, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, just about everyone controlling the machinery of the government, and convince Bush to make a move that could very well lead to impeachment and would, at the least, imperil the project in Iraq -- to which Bush ties his legacy -- beyond anything we've yet seen. And unlike with Iraq, he will be making this argument without an available military, without public support, without an ally heading the Defense Department, without Tony Blair providing international cover, without the memories of 9/11 emboldening the president, etc. It's a far tougher road to hoe.

That doesn't mean it won't happen. Events can take over. Cheney could input the launch codes during Bush's next colonoscopy. But, for now, Cheney's power appears to be ebbing, and the odds are against an attack.

Will We Go To War With Iran?

You know, it's worth remembering that when the Bush administration wanted to invade Iraq, they spent the better part of two years pursuing a massive PR strategy to sell the deployment. Going to war is actually a relatively tough thing to do, even in a system that gives fairly significant levels of foreign policy autonomy to the executive.

But when talking about going to war with Iran, a lot of arguments rest on what I'll call the reverse-crazy theory. It's become a truism among liberals that you can't rule out any Bush administration actions based on the formerly useful analytical strategy of "doing that would be $^%&# nuts." Some folks, though, take that a bit further, and come pretty close to saying that the Bush administration will do X because X is $^%&# nuts, and so are they. But I don't buy that.

This is, rather, a deeply ideological group, with a set of fairly coherent goals, who approach the world in an almost surprisingly predictable way. And going to war with Iran would be very counterproductive to a number of those goals. The first, and in some ways most important, is that it would roll back the administration's long-term effort to arrogate more power to the executive. It's been a core part of this White House's philosophy that the post-Nixon era resulted in too much authority being devolved from the executive, and that part of their mandate was to recapture that freedom of movement, as the post-9/11 world required an absurdly powerful executive. But go to war in Iran without congressional approval, and we'll see a series of laws passed very quickly that make it almost impossible for the president to declare war on his own. That's not something they want.

Second, there's actually been a change in the Bush administration towards realism on foreign policy. Dick Cheney may still be nuts, but all reporting suggests that his power is ebbing, particularly as compared to Condoleeza Rice's influence. And Rice does not want to go to war with Iran. What she does want to do is, say, negotiate with North Korea, which the Bush administration then did, to the consternation of longtime Cheney favorites like John Bolton. Indeed, Cheney's favorites are actually leaving the White House in frustration. Bolton fled, for one, as has J.D Crouch, a hardline deputy national security advisor, and the former policy planning director at State, Stephen Krasner. And the new hires, as Steve Clemons has been ecstatically documenting, are realist-Rice types.

None of this is to say that we couldn't yet bomb Iran. But literally no foreign policy type I've spoken to -- which includes establishment folks who wouldn't be unhappy with that outcome -- thinks there's much of a chance that we will. And the actual movement within the Bush administration appears very much against the hardliners on the issue. And reporting on the opinions of the military types suggests that they too are against bombing Iran, and are probably telling Bush what a disaster it will be. The scenario in which all bets are off is one in which Cheney becomes president, as the Daily Show so ably documented a few weeks ago (mildly not safe for work). But in general, I think the situation is largely aligning itself against such crazed actions.

Un-Crazy

It's a little weird to watch conservative columnists present the Iran's recent behavior as sheer, reckless thuggery, rather than a series of calculated responses to Western actions. The four Western activists detained, for instance, were detained not long after revelations that the US government is pursuing a $75 million democracy promotion plan explicitly aimed at destabilizing the Iranian regime. If, scaling up for population, an avowedly hostile nation revealed they were funneling $450 million to groups hostile to the American government for the sole purpose of changing our system, is it unlikely that we would, in some way, respond?

And if, shortly thereafter, it was reported that, simultaneously, this hostile nation's intelligence agency was running a covert operation that "include[d] a coordinated campaign of propaganda, disinformation and manipulation of Iran's currency and international financial transactions," is it again so crazed to imagine we might detain some employees of that nation's democracy-promoting non-profits? You may not like the move, but it's not particularly shocking.

And if that power had arrested our diplomats in Iraq, would you not expect that we'd make retaliatory moves? In this case, as Joe Klein points out, Iran actually retaliated cautiously, by detaining the British soldiers, knowing that the Brits would negotiate rather than move straight to missiles -- and that's why one of their diplomats was actually released in the deal.

Look, you can believe that every action undertaken by the US is pristinely moral, and every action of the Iranian government an absolute atrocity. But you shouldn't pretend that Iran's actions are completely mysterious, unpredictable, or unprovoked. And the Bush administration clearly doesn't believe so either. That's why they've engaged Iran in high-level talks on Iraq this week -- not the sort of cooperation you pursue with a nutty, untrustworthy nation.

Democracy Promotion by the Numbers

Publius unloads on foreign policy moralists who wander about yearning for a more creditable Democratic push for democracy promotion abroad (italics mine):

[Ronald Asmus's column] dignifies the Bush administration’s foreign policy by pretending that it (1) is coherent and (2) embodies moral ideals. Putting aside morality, if you look at the administration’s actions (not its words), it’s difficult to conclude that democracy promotion has been a consistent priority. I can’t really complain about that though. The fact that the Bush administration has only selectively pushed for “democracy promotion” is its saving grace. Indeed, the administration’s greatest failures have come when it has tried to promote democracy (e.g., Iraq/Palestine) and/or has taken militant stances in the name of abstract ideals (Axis of Evil).

Publius goes on to outline the dynamics that have led many of us to turn decisively against democracy promotion as a foreign policy goal. It's not that we're against puppies and pretty things, but like Lennie Small petting his beloved mouse rabbit, our good intentions tend to leave a lot of death and troublesome outcomes in our wakes:

by affirming democracy promotion as an explicit foreign policy goal, it restricts our ability to promote liberal values and human rights in both these and other countries. Take Iran and our recent “democracy promotion” initiatives. Iran -- correctly -- believes that the American administration views its regime as illegitimate and wants it to go away. Accordingly, America’s efforts to promote liberal reforms and human rights in this country are viewed as threatening, revolutionary acts that must be resisted (and that require arrests). If, by contrast, the two nations worked from a mutual recognition of each other’s sovereignty and worked from this baseline, it would likely be easier to push Iran to adopt reforms (see, e.g., the 1990s). That’s because reforms would be seen more as human rights issues than pretexts for regime change.

And that's the key of it. The absurdity of our game on Iran almost can't be overstated. Iran knows three things: 1) It is our government's explicit aim to effect regime change. 2) It would be impossible for us to invade them if they had a nuclear weapon. 3) They need a nuclear weapon.

Our method of responding to this has been to 1) Reaffirm our disgust with the regime. 2) Demand they give up nuclear weapons. 3) Continually threaten invasion, thus reaffirming Iran's commitment to a nuclear weapon. More oddly, we have done all this while losing a war in a neighboring country, which has overstretched our military, degraded faith in our government, destroyed our international standing, and left our populace profoundly skeptical of foreign adventurism. In other words, we're threatening all this during a moment when Iran knows we're least likely to follow through on those threats. In doing, we prove 1) our commitment to overturning their regime is enduring and 2) they need a nuclear weapon, and should probably try and make it right the fuck now.

Baerly There

Democracy may be a "journal of ideas," but I wouldn't trust their quotes. In his attempts to make me a straw man on the subject of Iran, for instance, Ken Baer lops off the first half of my sentence, leaving me saying that that "attempt to make the country look like some sort of tyrannical, dictatorial regime is just another element of the war propaganda." The first half of that sentence, in a post whose evidence and argument Baer entirely ignores, is "[t]hat's not to say Iran doesn't have all sorts of human rights violations of its own." Sadly, Baer doesn't respond to my evidence of dissent in Iran, and doesn't provide any evidence of his own suggesting the country's dictatorial nature. This is how I become evidence that "[s]ome even go so far as to excuse the Iranian regime."

Forget the quote, though: Where are "the ideas?" Baer's fear is that I -- and the unnamed others I represent -- "excuse the Iranian regime" -- Excuse them from what? Baer doesn't say -- in order "to deny the very existence of a threat."

Problem is, it's hard to figure out just what Baer thinks the threat is. Almost the entire column is given to a recap of the Six Day War -- a war fought and won by Israel, but which Baer seems to wish America had entered. And when he does turn his attention to the present-day, the focus remains the same. "In Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s Iran," he writes, "Israel is again staring down a possible existential threat, and the United States is once more facing a serious challenge to its interests in the region." So the actual threat appears to be not to America, but to Israel. This, assumedly, is what Baer believes I deny. But I don't. I just happened to be talking about America. I wasn't aware Israel had been annexed.

Indeed, the whole column follows the Ken Baer method of Iran demagoguery. A lot of assertions and insinuations that progressives are criminally incompetent on the issue, but not much in the way of facts, evidence, or argumentation backing him up. You can see the results of our last go-around on the issue here. It should be sufficient. Baer could have tried making a case to the contrary and explaining precisely what the dangers were and what needs to be done, but the piece offers neither argument nor prescription. It's straight assertion.

One more thing: I assumed this riposte would appear in the next issue of Democracy, as they have a section entirely devoted to responses, and I'm attacked by name in the article with an out-of-context, edited quote. Baer refused.

Clarification: Baer called to explain that we'd misunderstood each other. He didn't want a response focused on whether I was misquoted, but would be interested in one based on "deeper, more theoretical" disagreements. I, for my part, hadn't realized he thought my response would be mainly about the quotation, given that his reference to me is based on our broad disagreement about Iran's threat level.

Mahmoud, You're The Single-Blind

By Neil the Ethical Werewolf

Via Kevin, I liked this sentence from the Guardian's piece on the British sailors crisis:

There is also general agreement in London and Tehran that once the crisis had been triggered it took nearly two weeks to untangle, because their release had to be agreed by all the key players in the perpetual poker game that passes for government in Tehran.

They also say that "the decision to seize the Britons was taken locally, and was not part of a grander scheme cooked up in Tehran." 

I've heard about the fragmented nature of the Iranian government from a lot of people, and how it's hard to figure out who controls what.  It's one of the things that makes me optimistic about the possibility of peaceful movements towards a more liberal and democratic Iran.  A subtle and careful American foreign policy might be able to take advantage of internal divisions to promote liberal reforms.  This is a lot less likely to happen as long as the various factions feel a need to unite against an external threat. 

Autocratic Iran?

The latest Time Magazine has an article on internal criticism of Ahmadinejad that demonstrates something important:

The scene was like the Iranian answer to March Madness. At Amir Kabir University of Technology in Tehran this past December, a crowd of several thousand packed the school's auditorium. On one side were hundreds of members of the Basij, a volunteer paramilitary force controlled by Iranian hard-liners, who had been bused in to cheer their most prominent alumnus, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. They waved placards and roared as Ahmadinejad boasted about Iran's growing power and dared the country's enemies to challenge it. But in the back of the room, a group of 50 activists burned an effigy of the President, set off firecrackers and interrupted his speech with chants of "Death to the dictator!" Ahmadinejad grinned tightly and struggled to finish, but few people would remember what he said. At the height of his power, in a time and place of his choosing, Iran's President had been upstaged.

This just isn't that repressive a society. For all the talk of Iran's autocratic tyrants, here you have the president being burned in effigy, interrupted by firecrackers, and condemned to death, all while he's giving a speech. And he does nothing more than "smilie tightly" throughout it! In this country, if an activist exposes an anti-war t-shirt while the president is talking, she gets muscled out of the room. That's not to say Iran doesn't have all sorts of human rights violations of its own, but the attempt to make the country look like some sort of tyrannical, dictatorial regime is just another element of the war propaganda.

Iran's Nuclear Cash

I have some more substantive thoughts on Iran, Russia, and the anti-Putin line coming out of the Post over at Tapped, but this factoid from the article documenting Russia's cessation of nuclear fuel transfer to Iran struck me as worrisome:

Iran's central bank issued a new bank note Monday that includes a nuclear symbol, the Associated Press reported. The note shows electrons flying around a nucleus on a map of Iran.

That sort of thing is going to make it very hard for Iran to walk back its nuclear ambitions, even if its leaders want to. I've talked before about the need for America to give other countries the space to say yes to our priorities without sacrificing their dignity, but Iran seems to be boxing itself in here. The more they make nuclear power a matter of national pride, the less political room they'll have to eventually bargain it away.

But it is worth noting that in other countries, nuclear capabilities are considered a mark of national achievement, and one reason Ahmadinejad's brinksmanship isn't particularly unpopular (as opposed to his inattention to the economy and corruption) is that Iranians perceive America as simply denying their country what all great nations already possess, and thus, denying their country its rightful ascendance into the pantheon of world powers.

Iran's Meddling

Tony Karon wonders if we're going to go to war with Iran. Increasingly, I think not, if only because the administration doesn't have near the political capital to support such a venture. When Iraq was being debate, the fault line where support turned to opposition came part way through the Democratic coalition, the Republicans were united. Now, it's the opposite, with all Democrats and many Republicans against war with Iran. Congress right now is too full of presidential hopefuls and scared incumbents to allow an executive with approval ratings in the high-20 and low-30s to lead them into a disastrously unpopular conflict. So I'm becoming somewhat more sanguine on the unlikelihood of an attack.

That said, continued belligerence, radicalization, and even provocation as the administration tries to provoke Iran into something that looks like a war with us is entirely possible. And in thinking about that, Karon makes an important point:

[T]he idea that Iran is “meddling” in Iraq. What exactly is the U.S. doing there? Iran has far more legitimate interest in shaping the politics of its neighbor, whose last Sunni regime initiated a war that killed more than a million Iranians. Not only that, the overwhelming majority of Iraq’s democratically elected political leaders (both Shiites and Kurds) are on close terms with Iran and welcome its involvement in rebuilding their country. And the Iraqi government has not echoed the U.S. accusation about Iranian activity[...]

The distortion is clear in the language of this report from CNN on changes being considered in the Iraqi intelligence structure: Under the headline “Pro-Iran Agency May Take Over Iraq’s Intelligence,” it notes that the current Iraqi intelligence structure was created entirely by the U.S. and that the Iraqi government wants to bring it under its own authority. “But now, the future of the U.S.-controlled agency appears to be in jeopardy. A document from Iraq’s National Security Council lays out a blueprint for Iraq’s new intelligence community. Under that plan, all intelligence gathering would be consolidated under Iraq’s Iranian-friendly central government.” So, the democratically elected government of Iraq wants to exercise its sovereignty by putting its own intelligence service under its control (rather than that of a foreign power, i.e. the U.S.), and this is portrayed as some sort of Iranian power grab!

It is true, according to sources I've spoken to, that the last few months saw an uptick in Iranian involvement in the region. But the uptick wasn't against, or even about, us. It coincided with the accelerating deterioration of a state that is right on Iran's border. In the end, we can leave Iraq, and absent a very long plane ride or an even longer boat trip, they're not coming over here. Iran can't leave. And so the idea that they're going to stay uninvolved, or that their interference represents some sort of casus belli, is war mongering through illogic.

Who Runs Iran?

WHO RUNS IRAN? Mark Kleiman is bothered, rightly, by the tendency to treat Iran as a sovereign, Western-style country whose actions "are the results of political conflicts and agreements among Iranian politicians, interest groups, and factions." In other words, when we talk about Iran, we don't take the complexities and oddities of its politics into account. Agreed. Moreover, there's a bias towards evaluating states in basically the analytical frame we use for America, and so the guy called 'the president" who spends a lot of time attending international summits and appearing on the nightly news, is assumed to be basically in control of things. Which is why, of course, Iran is now a pluralistic, open democracy, much as President Khatami wanted it.

Oh, wait. That didn't happen. Because, as it turns out, president is not a particularly powerful office in Iran. Last night, I was talking with a pollster who kept insisting that Ahmadinejad was a nearly unique threat, as not only did he possess the means to eventually construct nuclear weapons, but he had a rationale for using them. I disagree on the last clause, but there is absolutely no reason to think President Ahmadinejad has the power to launch a nuclear strike. On anyone.

In the Iranian political system, the Supreme Leader controls the armed forces, the television, the judiciary, the prisons, and basically every other lever of power. The President, conversely, is a very high-ranking civil servant. His only intersection with the military comes in the appointment of defense and intelligence ministers, who must then be approved by the Supreme Leader and then by the legislature. He is impotent when it comes to the armed forces. Iran, remember, is a revoultionary republic, and Khomeini's "innovation" was to argue that the country should be run by those schooled in Islamist thought. The president, a popularly elected politician, not only isn't the highest leader, but his subordinate position is woven into the deepest fabric of the country's political structure.

So President Khatami, who just wanted to institute some political reforms, was completely stymied by the Supreme Council. And yet we think Ahmadinejad will be allowed to launch nuclear attacks -- which will result in massive reprisal against Tehran -- all on his lonesome? It's nuts! He doesn't have the power. And no one with the power has proven particularly reckless or hungry for annihilating confrontation. And yet, the media still presents the situation, and the administration still prortrays it, as if Ahmadinejad is George W. Bush rather than Mohammed Khatami. This is not clear thinking and it will not lead to sound policy-making -- but it does help with the fear-mongering.

Also at Tapped

Letting Iran Say "Yes"

I know we're all supposed to be getting ready to attack Iran and being really concerned that their nuclear program has accelerated to a speed that's still slower than we thought, but it may be time to notice that the regime is desperately trying to negotiate if only we would give them a face-saving way to do so. A spokesperson for Khamenei -- who, unlike Ahmadinejad, has real power -- said that freezing uranium enrichment would be on the table in negotiations, declared the Holocaust a historical matter that should be left to scholars rather than politicians, and even hinted at a willingness to accept a compromise plan by Mohammed el-Baradei that would essentially end their nuclear program while keeping a few face-saving centrifuges in operation.

The impetus for all this talk of compromise? The UN Resolution passed last month, and the onrushing reality of real sanctions, particularly at a moment when oil prices are falling. According to Abbas Milani, head of Iranian studies at Stanford, the one thing that could fundamentally disrupt this process is an American strike:

In other words, what the unilateral and increasingly quixotic American embargo could not do in more than a decade, a limited United Nations resolution has accomplished in less than a month. And the resolution succeeded because few things frighten the mullahs more than the prospect of confronting a united front made up of the European Union, Russia, China and the United States. The resolution was a manifestation of just such a united front.

While the combination of credible force, reduced oil prices and a United Nations resolution has worked to create the most favorable conditions yet for a negotiated solution to the nuclear crisis, any unilateral American attack on Iran is sure to backfire. It will break the international coalition against the Islamic Republic’s nuclear adventurism; it will allow China, Russia and even some countries in Europe to legitimately side with the mullahs; it will lead to higher oil prices and an increase in Iranian government revenues; and finally, it will help revive the waning power of the warmongers in Tehran.

So let's stay away from that, huh? And maybe even enter into talks with the Iranian regime that will allow them to bargain away their nuclear program without preemptively sacrificing their dignity and, in reality, their political futures. Giving your opponents the room to say yes is a treasured negotiations tactic, albeit one we've completely and inexplicably tossed out the window. Moreover, a demonstrated willingness to end this crisis diplomatically -- even at the cost of contravening our no-negotiations rhetoric -- might increase the confidence of our allies that they're not just aiding a crazed, ideologically-motivated invasion scheme, and thus heighten their willingness to exert real economic pressure. That's the sort of thing we should do now, in the winter, while gas prices are low. The closer we get to summer, the less sanctions will matter.

Does Anyone Think We Shouldn't Attack Iran?

Ken Baer has an overwrought post up attacking me for suggesting that Democrats should publicly state that Iran's pursuit of nuclear weapons will not trigger a military response. Baer, in a graf that reveals his own lack of engagement with the issue, wonders, "And as for those who doubt the strategy of no nukes, no options off the table, my only question is: what is that based on? Again, is there any person with real experience with the Iranians, diplomacy, or nonproliferation who has argued that? If so, let’s hear it. But – to my mind – rightly, the major candidates are listening to seasoned experts on this issue, and are thus sticking with the above formulation of no nuclear Iran, no options off the table."

Well, Matt gets us started off with two, noting that, "Ray Takeyh, Council on Foreign Relations Fellow and author of two books on Iran along with Vali Nasr, another CFR fellow and author of three books on Iran or Shia politics, think we should eschew military threats in favor of engagement. Joseph Cirincione, formerly senior associate and director for nonproliferation at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and currently something or other at the Center for American Progress, thinks there's no military option whatsoever here."

Ken Pollack makes three, as he recently said that "a war with Iran would be very messy and would cost us a lot more than we would gain. While many members of the Administration agree with that, others do not, and some seem willing to risk it to accomplish other goals. I am very concerned both by the President’s military moves toward Iran (like moving a second aircraft carrier and Patriot anti-missile batteries to the Persian Gulf, and ordering the U.S. military to use “all necessary means” to shut down Iranian activities in Iraq) and his unnecessarily threatening rhetoric toward them. Some degree of quiet pressure on Iran to stop their more damaging operations in Iraq could be useful, and the Iranians probably would back down under those circumstances; but the President’s policy risks engaging Iran’s nationalist pride, its strategic interests, and its real fear of the United States." And Bruce Jentleson, Baer's co-contributor at TPM Cafe thinks, "the use of military force against Iran likely would set off a rallying effect around both the regime and a nuclear weapons program. This is one way in which the presence of regime change as an option has a counterproductive effect on
current diplomacy."

But that's not all!

Scott Ritter, who we of course can't listen to because he got Iraq exactly right, is against hyping war with Iran. Iranian-born Shahram Chubin, author of the best book on the subject, is fundamentally pessimistic about any military options, and makes exactly the argument I did when he writes, "After all, the only conceivable justification for Iran’s acquisition of nuclear weapons might be that they are needed as a deterrent against the United States. Yet, it is in fact only Iran’s quest for nuclear weapons that makes a U.S. attack on Iran at all likely." My argument, of course, was that we short-circuit that cycle by taking our attack off the table.

Flynt Leverett thinks proposing war with Iran is nuts ("analyses have raised serious doubts that U.S. military strikes against Iran’s nuclear infrastructure would delay significantly its nuclear development...[and] Tehran could reconstitute its nuclear program relatively rapidly. At the same time, U.S. military action against Iran almost certainly would have profoundly negative consequences for a range of other U.S. interests"), while James Fallows summarized the conclusions of wargame composed of experts by saying, "The experts disagreed on some details but were nearly unanimous on one crucial point: what might seem America’s ace in the hole—the ability to destroy Iran’s nuclear installations in a pre-emptive air strike—was a fantasy."

Meanwhile, if you listen to the candidates Baer is talking about, they're perfectly aware war with Iran is a stupid idea. Indeed, it was talking with Edwards himself that helped convince me of the essential idiocy of the "no options off the table, no nuclear Iran" formulation. Here's Edwards, the recipient of all that star advice Baer is enamored with:

what happens if America were to militarily strike Iran? Well you take this unstable, radical leader, and you make him a hero -- that’s the first thing that’ll happen. The Iranian people will rally around him. The second thing that will happen is they will retaliate. And they have certainly some potential for retaliating here in the United States through some of these terrorist organizations they’re close to, but we’ve got over a hundred thousand people right next door. And most people believe that they have an infrastructure for retaliation inside Iraq. So, that’s the second thing that’ll happen. And the third thing is there are a lot of analysts who believe that an air strike or a missile strike is not enough to be successful...I think would have very bad consequences.

Nevertheless, Edwards, like all the other "serious candidates," is keeping "the options open." And the reasons seem clear enough: Crafters of elite consensus opinion will absolutely pillory a Democrat who publicly swears off the use of force in a situation. It clicks right into a preexisting narrative about the party. Were I Edwards, I'd twist away from my questions too. But what Baer is doing is far more pernicious, pretending that the entire weight of wise, elite opinion agrees that Iran should be publicly threatened.

Not only is that actually untrue, but the folks Baer is grouping within his superteam of advisors are exactly the crew who got Iraq so very wrong, and this tactic of Baer's -- to marginalize competing arguments -- is exactly what enabled the previous disaster. About four years ago, John Kerry, and John Edwards, and Richard Gephardt, and Joe Lieberman -- who together comprised every initially "serious" candidate for the 2004 Democratic nomination for president -- listened to their advisors and voted "yes" on the Iraq War resolution. Four years later, every one of them but Joe, who's basically become a Republican, wishes they could take back that vote. Ken Baer, it seems, has learned nothing about the fallibility of that process, or the dangers of enabling Bush's belligerence.

Iran and America

I'm a bit late on this, but Newsweek's cover story on the potential for war with Iran is really very good, not least because it clearly and quickly explains that we're engaged in a variety of actions aimed at goading Iran into retaliation, which the White House will then bully the media into framing as provocation:

The Iranians have reason to feel paranoid. In recent weeks senior American officers have condemned Tehran for providing training and deadly explosives to insurgents. In a predawn raid on Dec. 21, U.S. troops barged into the compound of the most powerful political party in the country, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, and grabbed two men they claimed were officers in Iran's Revolutionary Guards. Three weeks later U.S. troops stormed an Iranian diplomatic office in Irbil, arresting five more Iranians. The Americans have hinted that as part of an escalating tit-for-tat, Iranians may have had a hand in a spectacular raid in Karbala on Jan. 20, in which four American soldiers were kidnapped and later found shot, execution style, in the head. U.S. forces promised to defend themselves.

Some view the spiraling attacks as a strand in a worrisome pattern. At least one former White House official contends that some Bush advisers secretly want an excuse to attack Iran. "They intend to be as provocative as possible and make the Iranians do something [America] would be forced to retaliate for," says Hillary Mann, the administration's former National Security Council director for Iran and Persian Gulf Affairs.

What comes clear, too, is how thoroughly our post-9/11 belligerence wrecked an opportunity for the normalization of relations:

For Iran's reformists, 9/11 was a blessing in disguise. Previous attempts to reach out to America had been stymied by conservative mullahs. But the fear that an enraged superpower would blindly lash out focused minds in Tehran. Mohammad Hossein Adeli was one of only two deputies on duty at the Foreign Ministry when the attacks took place, late on a sweltering summer afternoon. He immediately began contacting top officials, insisting that Iran respond quickly. "We wanted to truly condemn the attacks but we also wished to offer an olive branch to the United States, showing we were interested in peace," says Adeli. To his relief, Iran's top official, Ayatollah Ali Khameini, quickly agreed. "The Supreme Leader was deeply suspicious of the American government," says a Khameini aide whose position does not allow him to be named. "But [he] was repulsed by these terrorist acts and was truly sad about the loss of the civilian lives in America." For two weeks worshipers at Friday prayers even stopped chanting "Death to America."

See? Isn't that sweet? Then we included them in the "Axis of Evil" -- a term thought up not to describe a policy initiative, but because it sounded good -- and once again unsettled the regime:

Michael Gerson, now a NEWSWEEK contributor, headed the White House speechwriting shop at the time. He says Iran and North Korea were inserted into Bush's controversial State of the Union address in order to avoid focusing solely on Iraq. At the time, Bush was already making plans to topple Saddam Hussein, but he wasn't ready to say so. Gerson says it was Condoleezza Rice, then national-security adviser, who told him which two countries to include along with Iraq. But the phrase also appealed to a president who felt himself thrust into a grand struggle. Senior aides say it reminded him of Ronald Reagan's ringing denunciations of the "evil empire."

Once again, Iran's reformists were knocked back on their heels. "Those who were in favor of a rapprochement with the United States were marginalized," says Adeli. "The speech somehow exonerated those who had always doubted America's intentions." The Khameini aide concurs: "The Axis of Evil speech did not surprise the Supreme Leader. He never trusted the Americans."

I love that. It's the awesome rule of failing upwards: Michael Gerson, whose facile speechwriting is probably partially responsible for the current tensions with Iran and may, one day, prove to have had a small hand in a war that kills millions, is now a contributor to Newsweek, largely on the strength of that terrific speechwriting. Meanwhile, as we invaded Iraq, Iran made one more attempt to reach out:

Around this time what struck some in the U.S. government as an even more dramatic offer arrived in Washington—a faxed two-page proposal for comprehensive bilateral talks. To the NSC's Mann, among others, the Iranians seemed willing to discuss, at least, cracking down on Hizbullah and Hamas (or turning them into peaceful political organizations) and "full transparency" on Iran's nuclear program. In return, the Iranian "aims" in the document called for a "halt in U.S. hostile behavior and rectification of the status of Iran in the U.S. and abolishing sanctions," as well as pursuit of the MEK...After Iran's National Security Council approved the document (under orders from Khameini), a final copy was produced and sent to Washington, according to the diplomat.

The letter received a mixed reception. Powell and his deputy Richard Armitage were suspicious. Armitage says he thinks the letter represented creative diplomacy by the Swiss ambassador, Tim Guldimann, who was serving as a go-between. "We couldn't determine what [in the proposal] was the Iranians' and what was the Swiss ambassador's," he says. He added that his impression at the time was that the Iranians "were trying to put too much on the table." Quizzed about the letter in front of Congress last week, Rice denied ever seeing it. "I don't care if it originally came from Mars," Mann says now. "If the Iranians said it was fully vetted and cleared, then it could have been as important as the two-page document" that Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger received from Beijing in 1971, indicating Mao Zedong's interest in opening China.[...]

Powell, for one, thinks Bush simply wasn't prepared to deal with a regime he thought should not be in power. As secretary of State he met fierce resistance to any diplomatic overtures to Iran and its ally Syria. "My position in the remaining year and a half was that we ought to find ways to restart talks with Iran," he says of the end of his term. "But there was a reluctance on the part of the president to do that." The former secretary of State angrily rejects the administration's characterization of efforts by him and his top aides to deal with Tehran and Damascus as failures. "I don't like the administration saying, 'Powell went, Armitage went ... and [they] got nothing.' We got plenty," he says. "You can't negotiate when you tell the other side, 'Give us what a negotiation would produce before the negotiations start'."

Now, of course, we can threaten a war that everyone knows we'll lose, or demand negotiations though our position has degraded significantly. Iran, for their part, can survey this sordid history and conclude that the only way they'll be truly secure is when they announce their possession of nuclear weapons. It didn't have to be this way, though. The Bush administration made it this way.

Credible Threat

I'll second Publius's devastating critique of those who advocate keeping force on the table under the theory that a credible threat of attack will somehow deter Iran. His examination of the argument's many failures is thorough and I won't repeat it here, but it is worth saying that every time we utter a threatening or hostile word towards Iran, we underscore their case for nuclear weapons. Indeed, given the possible outcomes here, we should either invade the country tomorrow morning or simply stop threatening to attack.

Every time we so much as hint at invasion, we assure an anxious regime that they won't be safe till they've mastered atomic weapons. Conversely, if we took the much-maligned route of "taking options off the table," and simply stated that we've no interest in attacking even a nuclear Iran, but we commit here and now to ten years of stringent economic sanctions if they weaponize, we'd probably have a better shot at compelling ordinary Iranians to oppose the nuclear program. But it's absolutely nuts to continually threaten a sovereign country and then scratch our heads as they pursue the one weapon they know will forever deter our attack.

Bush and Iran

It's not that I fault Bush for this, and I'm glad he's taking seriously the element of national pride that helps fuel Iran's nuclear ambitions, but after forthrightly acknowledging nationalism's role in his interview with David Ignatius, how can he suggest this as a solution?

He proposed that the West supply enriched uranium to Iran and other countries, and collect the nuclear waste. He argued that this global program "would be a solution that would answer a deep desire from the Iranian people to have a nuclear power industry."

If American provides Iran's enriched uranium and disposes of their nuclear waste, America, not Iran, controls the country's nuclear power industry. If the Iranian people hunger for atomic energy as a way to codify the importance and sophistication of their country, how will becoming a technological protectorate of the US satisfy?

It would seem that bilateral negotiations where Bush expresses these concerns directly, and therefore elevates Iran by proving that America takes their concerns and threat seriously, might help. Bush did allow Khatami's visit to the US and encouraged [Iraqi prime minister] Maliki's trip to Tehran, which bespeaks a certain willingness to create contact, but he remains stubbornly set against the formal, bilateral negotiations which could help calm the country's inferiority complex. But if this psychology is what Bush thinks is motivating Iranian public sentiment in favor of nukes, and he doesn't want Iran to get nukes, he's got to figure out another way to satisfy the country's hunger for respect.

What's With the Fake Iran News?

By Neil the Ethical Werewolf

So what's the deal with the fake news coming out of Iran?  We all heard these reports that Jews were being made to wear yellow badges.  Turns out -- not true.  And we get all these misquotations of Iranian leaders, especially regarding their intentions towards Israel.  Clearly, the media is willing to believe the worst about Iran, and exciting nonsense that makes a good story gets lots of play before anybody checks up on it. 

I'm curious about where the yellow badge stuff is coming from.  Exile groups?  Neocon propagandists?  If I were into the conspiracy theory thing, I might theorize that media executives are interested in touching off a big war that will get everybody buying papers and watching TV.  That's a bit too tinfoil for me, but seriously, what's going on here?

Americans: We Eventually Figure Stuff Out

By Neil the Ethical Werewolf

I wasn't expecting this result, from a Gallup poll at the end of April, but I was quite happy to see it:

"Suppose all economic and diplomatic efforts fail to get Iran to shut down its nuclear program. If that happens, do you think the United States should or should not take military action against Iran?"

Should - 36%
Should not - 57%

There's probably a couple different explanations of the fact that most people are unwilling to attack Iran, but a simple one is just that nobody wants the Bush Administration to lead us into another war and completely screw everything up. People have learned from their previous experience.

For a while now, I've floundered around looking for the best response for Democrats on the Iran issue, but maybe this is it: Do you really want the president who let Osama get away, misled everybody about WMDs, and botched the Iraq War to screw up something else? We can't predict in advance exactly what sort of disaster he'll end up causing. But given his track record, we're pretty sure to get a disaster of some kind or other.

Oil and October

By Neil the Ethical Werewolf

A few of my friends on the left have worried that Bush is going to launch foolish attacks on Iran shortly in advance of elections, so as to help Republicans by forcing foreign policy issues into voters minds. While the Bush administration is perfectly happy to cynically harm American foreign policy interests for narrow political gain, I think a proper cynical calculus will steer them clear of this folly.

If there's anything to the hypothesis that Bush's approval ratings are heavily influenced by gas prices, the administration has much to fear from a pre-election conflict with Iran. Violence and instability in the Middle East tend to drive gas prices up. In this case, it wouldn't just be the violence and instability we generate by bombing Iran, it'd be the violence and instability that Iran and its agents generate by retaliating throughout the Middle East. The administration can't be looking forward to an October filled with oil panics, pipeline sabotage, and anti-American violence.

Defining the Center

By Neil the Ethical Werewolf

I liked Matt's firm rejection of war with Iran when I first read it, because it was right.  I like it even more now after reading Matt's explanation of how it shapes political debate:

Politically, defining the terms of the debate is important. A certain number of people are going to want to hold a nuanced, sophisticated middle-ground position on the Iran question. That's fine, that's the way the world works. The important question becomes what counts as nuanced and sophisticated. I took it as a good sign that in the latest New Republic Peter Beinart's column on Iran refers to my own column as "Not exactly subtle" and the main liberal take on the issue "too glib" while ultimately having much harsher words for Iran hawks. If that's the way things are going to play out, then I say so much the better for unsubtly and glibness on the part of those of us who'd prefer not to see another disastrous war.

It reminds me of something Paperwight once wrote:

Let us imagine that the choice put to the American People is "Death or Cake".

Republicans:  DEATH!

Democrats:  What?  Are you insane? Cake.

Centrists:  Look, here Democrats, you need to back off of this shrill cake position and be reasonable.  Compromise a bit.  How about a cookie and a maiming?

Democrats:  What?  How about just a cookie, no maiming?

Centrists:  Now, Dems, be reasonable.  You have to meet the Republicans half-way.  They want death.  Seems to me that a little maiming isn't too much to ask.

Democrats:  Wha?  But death is insane.  A cookie and a maiming is still insane.  That's not much of a compromise.  Why don't you ask the Republicans to ask for something that's not insane?

Centrists:  Well, they did win the last presidential election by around 3% of the popular vote.  That's clearly a mandate. You need to go their way.  Do you want to be in the minority forever?  Be reasonable.  Maybe just a little maiming, like losing a foot or a couple fingers on your off hand?

Democrats:  I really think just cake is the way to go.  Maybe pie.  Or some kind of food.  But no death or maiming.  I don't care if that's the Republican position.  It's really insane.

Centrists:  Well, you're going to lose my vote.  I can't understand why you're so unreasonable that you won't accept some maiming.

How To Succeed in Politics Without Really Trying

by Nicholas Beaudrot of Electoral Math

Greg Sargent asks a difficult question—assuming a peacnik "war is not an option" response is unfeasible, what should be the Democratic response on Iran, given that many Democratic Presidential hopefuls will feel the need to be "hawkish"? Sargent's worry is that the hawks will fall into the trap of conditional support for an invasion or even air strikes, giving Bush enough domestic cover to start World War III (and let's be honest, that's what we're talking about). I'm worried about that possibility as well, especially since Iran is in some ways a greater threat than Iraq was in 2002. But other options are available. One effective technique is to make bipartisan support conditional on terms completely unacceptable to one party. Republicans have been playing this game for years, hoping since at least the 1992 campaign that Democrats would support "common ground" in the abortion debate in the form of parental notification and waiting periods. Hillary has recently turned the tables by challenging the pro-life groups to accept contraception education and Emergency Contraception as valid ways to reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies. But back to Iran. Even the need-to-be-hawkish Dems (Bayh, Biden, HRC, et al.), can  demand reasonable steps towards bipartisanship from Bush.. Here are some possible endings to the sentence the sentence "I will consider supporting air strikes against Iran if Bush agrees to ...":

• "... fire Donald Rumsfeld and appoint Sam Nunn/Wes Clark/Eric Shinseki/Anthony Zinni as Secretary of Defense. Now."
• "... obtain UN or NATO support for any peacekeeping or humanitarian operations for any Iranian civilians displaced by our bombing. We've seen that he can't keep the peace after the initial attack."
• "... offer a cease-fire to Iran after we destroy half their nuclear development capabilities. If Iran agrees to abandon its weapons ambitions, we will provide inspectors to monitor their energy plants—the same people who stopped Saddam from acquiring WMD."

So there's no real need to panic ... yet.

Random Iran Thoughts

By Neil the Ethical Werewolf

While the rest of us throw around half-assed ideas about what Democrats should say about Iran, Brad Plumer has been working out what a good Iran policy would look like.  A couple things he says:

-Ahmadinejad's belligerent anti-Israel comments might be explained by a desire to make a nuclear Iran acceptable to its Sunni neighbors, who would otherwise fear that Iranian nukes are pointed at them. 

-It's not really clear whether Ahmadinejad has any real power.  His predecessor, Khatami, didn't. 

-Why does Iran want nuclear weapons?  One reason is the massive American presence in the region -- "Understandably, the mullahs feel a bit cagey about the nearby presence of a belligerent nation that frequently invades sovereign nations for no good reason."

Brad is interested in a more engagement-oriented policy, and he cites an Iranian human rights activist who is requesting exactly that.  It seems to me that the only way to bring the Iran problem to a complete resolution is to move the country towards being a stable regime that respects human rights and doesn't feel like hurting anybody.  At that point, it's not too bad for them to have nuclear weapons -- though if things go really well, they may not even feel the need for nukes anymore.  Constructive engagement with Iran is the only way to get there. 

In other Iran-related material, this dispatch from Kevin Sites, a journalist who Yahoo is sending to all sorts of crazy places in the world, was pretty neat.  I liked the part about the Iranians playing basketball out on the street, one of whom was wearing a Celtics jersey and one of whom had Kobe Bryant's #8.  Another dude was selling western records at a flea market, and had a bunch of beloved Pink Floyd and Eric Clapton records in his personal collection.  I'd be willing to bet that this classic rock fan won't want to nuke America.  Don't believe the right-wing bullshit -- the liberal entertainment media is on our side.

We're MAD Tough

By Neil the Ethical Werewolf

Folks on this site and elsewhere have been thinking about what Democrats should say if negotiations fail and Iran proceeds toward getting nuclear weapons.  As I see it, there are three major desiderata here. We want to (1) Keep the Bush Administration from engaging in stupid slaughter that strengthens the hand of the forces we like least within Iran, (2) Enunciate a strategy that actually works, so we can use it when we're running things, and (3) Sound non-wussy to your average semi-militaristic American voter, so Bush doesn't beat us up with this issue in 2006. 

Lots of grave talk about Mutually Assured Destruction would help us accomplish all of these goals.  It shows why Iranian nukes don't necessarily justify military action -- nobody is crazy enough to face the consequences of a nuclear attack on America or one of its allies.  Nuclear deterrence will be part of anybody's foreign policy.  And when you describe a counterfactual situation where you're willing to destroy millions of people with the most horrific weapons in the history of mankind, nobody will think you're too chicken to use military force in defense of America.

Elections in Iran

In the week's most underblogged story (wherefore art thou, Democracy Arsenal?), the Iranian elections are rapidly hurtling towards the nightmare scenario.  The reformers have been demolished, though it's uncertain whether that's by voter rejection or fraud, and what's left is unsavory at best, dangerous at worst.  When the polls first closed, the government announced that Rafsanjani (a former president and general pragmatist), Mostafa Moin (a reformer in Khatami's vein), and the conservative Qalibaf would be entering into runoff.  The next morning, that was amended.

The new runoff would be between Rafsanjani and Ahmadinejad, the xenophobic, anti-American, ultraconservative mayor of Tehran.  In this context, the reformers, fearful of Ahmadinejab's particular brand of Islamic intolerance, have thrown their weight behind longtime foe Rafsanjani in the hopes that their voters won't sit out the runoff and hand the election to the truly insane. 

What's going on is pretty unclear.  Assuming there is fraud, the Guardians Council either decided to install a hardliner or rig the election so a Rafsanjani win looks like a reformist triumph, thus short circuiting a lot of post-election pressure.  Assuming there's not fraud, it's a bad direction for Iran to be heading in.  And no matter what the outcome, this bodes badly for American relations with Iran.  If Ahmadinejab ascends to the presidency, expect to hear much more talk among the rightwing about the need for pre-nuclear regime change, and expect their arguments to start looking much more credible (if still impossible given our overstretched army).

--Ezra

Is The Source Named Curveball?

You know, there are some who accidentally fall prey to the maxim "those who don't know their history are destined to repeat it", and then there are those who are downright desperate to prove it true.  Congressman Curt Wheldon, who just published a book alleging that Iran is hiding Osama bin-Laden, building a nuke, and directing the insurgency in Iraq, is one of these.  His source is a shadowy exile figure in Paris, who he was introduced to by another exile whom the CIA branded a liar. 

Speaking of the CIA, they, the government, Wheldon's fellow congressmen, and most everyone else are ignoring the Bilderberg Group danger posed by Iran.  Why are they doing this?  Because Iran is planning to blow up a Boston nuclear reactor and thus obliterate the city, and the CIA knows that admitting to the threat would draw them into war.  So, presumably, would the attack, if it happened.  But hell, if the Shi'ites in Iran are controlling the Sunni's in Iraq, than anything is possible.  And if a guy this dumb, this easily manipulated, can be elected to Congress and then signed to a publishing contract, then everything is possible.  So here's to Iraq, Iran, North Korea and -- why the hell not? -- China.  A few more crazy congressmen and we're going to go commit suicide on your land.

Sidenote: Not to make this a partisan thing, but how come you never see Democrats publishing these crazy books?  Republicans seem to want us in an array of wars we can't fight. Democrats don't seem to have anything quite so crazy up our sleeves.  Hell, we don't even have any socialists anymore.  No wonder the country keeps voting for the right, they're way more interesting.

Iran and the Bomb

Looks like the EU's talks with Iran are failing in a big way, with the Islamic Republic threatening to stalk off and restart uranium enrichment a bit later this week. The article's a bit vague on what's killing them -- likely as not, that information simply isn't known -- but my guess is that there's simply not a lot the EU can offer Iran that they're not already giving them.

It's really a tough spot for those trying to stall Iran's weapon programs. Europe, theoretically, could apply serious sanctions and really pressure Iran into sitting at the table and hammering out a deal. But they won't. Worse, Iran's long-term trade prospects are brighter than their short-term ones, as their huge stores of natural gas (Iran and Russia have the most natural gas in the world, more than half the known total) are going to be in demand no matter how much of a pariah we judge them. China and India, frankly, don't much care how we feel towards Iran.

As far as the options go, this may mean that, pace Justin Logan, the only thing to do is learn to live with a nuclear Iran. Awhile back, I spoke to a disarmament expert who argued that there were two directions to go in when trying to control nukes -- nonproliferation and super-proliferation. The former no longer works well, as too many other countries have nukes for the states left behind to accept their lot in life. The latter's more interesting, it basically argues that we should help countries that're going nuclear do so in a safe way, which means building facilities that won't breach, security systems so the bomb can't be stolen, etc. That way, their weapons are less likely to disappear during times of unrest or revolution, and their relationship with America is less oppositional. Assuming that Iran is going to have one of these suckers sooner than later, helping them down that path -- and trying to improve our relationship with them as we do it -- may be our best bet.

Bad Move

There's really nothing more counterproductive than leaks on Iran. It's not so much that I'm against strengthening the opposition there, but that saying we're going to do it ensures it'll never work. This is a society where the politics regularly refocus on a coup we carried out half-a-century ago. This is a government that routinely calls us "the Great Satan". This is a place where dissidents are tortured -- where bloggers are imprisoned! -- and the reform movement has collapsed through the cowardice of the entirely ineffective Khatami. And, finally, this is a nation that is dangerously close to developing nuclear weapons.

Now, I tend to think that, considering the paltry funds ($3 million dollars? Are they going to get the opposition a midsize home in Los Angeles?) discussed in the article, the whole thing is a sop to neocons antsy over our newfound cooperation with the European negotiations. But the success of those talks is contingent on the Iranian regime's belief in their own security. That's why our involvement is important -- we can offer assurances of non-violence predicated on their nuclear transparency. So long as we're placating our interest groups by leaking ruminations over anti-regime covert-ops to major American newspapers, I think they're going to know about it. And I think they're going to be unhappy. And I think they're going to judge our negotiations as somewhat less than good faith. And I think they're going to continue to seek a nuke. And I think they're going to use this new information to tar even the most innocuous of dissenting groups to America and thus throw them in prison. And I think that we're making stupid, stupid moves that are counter-productive to our interests in the region. Our involvement is the greatest gift to the regime and the worst of luck for its opposition. So long as we keep mucking around, they can continue to blame their economic and political woes on American (and Zionist) spies, and keep credibly destroying reform groups by linking them to us.

Iran and the Bomb

Justin's thoughts on my post arguing the merits of the EU's lead role in Iran deserve a quick response. The world, he argues, is more complex than I give it credit for, mainly because the EU has no credible military force nor the appetite to introduce sanctions and our threats don't matter because they've been spoken aloud. I'll grant him the EU's military impotence, but nobody's talking about an invasion of Iran. The most violence being considered are surgical air-strikes, and even they're out of favor given the spread and secrecy of Iran's nuclear facilities. With America straining terribly to occupy Iran's weaker neighbor, there never was a credible threat of our force in the first place, so I wouldn't worry so much about that.

Sanctions are a bit trickier. As Justin rightly notes, Europe has shown no interest in sacrificing trade to punish Iran during past transgressions, what reason is there to believe they'll behave differently now? This, in a sense, was the point of my original post. In the past, Europe could and did rely on America to take the lead on Iran. In the past, Europe trusted America to take the lead on Iran. That allowed them to play good cop, relying on useless measures like the Critical Dialogue and working to stay our hand when they judged us unfair. That made them, to the Iranians, an honest broker, not to mention the main force ensuring America's enmity didn't isolate Iran from the global community. But now, Europe no longer trusts our ability to calm the paranoid Ayatollah, and, indeed, they quite want to do it themselves. Iran, for their part, can't allow the Europeans to pull away, their economy would collapse and a population increasingly desirous of international relations would grow chaotic for the first time since 1999. So while America's behavior is counterproductive, it's really beside the point. The mullahs will certainly use it for rhetorical advantage, but everyone at the negotiating table knows who the players are, and both sides know the stakes. The EU needs the prestige, Iran needs the EU. So, for once, there is the chance that the EU will implement sanctions simply because they're likely to work. Similarly, Iran will listen because, if they alienate Europe, they've nowhere else to turn. In that way, it's really not very complex at all.

The critical variable in all this is how close Iran is to the bomb. They've dropped vague hints that they've already got one, but that's unlikely (despite A.Q. Khan's best efforts). If they're close, they're going to rush across the finish line no matter who wants to stop them and how serious they are. Once they've got the weapon, the world will have to deal with it as fact, preventing it is no longer an option. But if they're still far, they can only stall for so long, and will probably be forced to make a deal. So is the rhetoric a bargaining chip or an accurate reflection of reality? We don't know and, odds are, Europe doesn't either. Iran's receptiveness to a deal will really be the only way to tell.