A great deal of energy is being spent discussing the advisability of "engaging" Iran in discussions of the future of Iraq and the entire Middle East. Many hope, without any particular evidence, that by such engagement, Iran will ultimately become a more responsible international citizen and in due course the threats that have been emanating from Iran's leadership will be ameliorated without the need for military action of further international isolation. This hinges on a formulation that is worth examining.
In order to imagine that Iran can become a responsible member of the world community, it is necessary to see Iran's leadership in traditional political terms. In other words, we must believe that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is Nikita Kruschev rather than Adolf Hitler.
The image of Kruschev presented to the West was of a buffoonish thug whose statements were bombastic and hyperbolic and not meant to be taken seriously. While he vowed to "bury us", we were to understand, the Cuban missile crisis notwithstanding, that he was not interested in a nuclear exchange but was committed to proving that Communism was far superior to Capitalism in delivering a beater life to its people. He was a true believer, but his belief structure required temporal superiority. In fact, Communism was unworkable and the USSR required an empire to support its fantasies of greatness.
Hitler, on the other hand, was a different sort of true believer. From his base in the greatest industrial nation in the world, he firmly believed that it was the racial superiority of the German that naturally lent itself to German supremacy. His system was already the most powerful in the world in the late 1930s, with a motivated, hard working population, fueled by grievances, ready to wreak revenge on those who were not only inferior but were noted as obstacles. Because Hitler's belief structure was inseparable from his identity, he could not tolerate losing a competition with his enemies. In other words, losing WWII proved he was wrong about German racial superiority and was intolerable. His country's failure required his death.
Compare this to Ahmadinejad, who I would suggest personifies the Iranian ideology.
Ahmadinejad is a true believer, like Hitler, whose identity cannot tolerate humiliating defeat. However, unlike Hitler, his system is failing, and like Kruschev's Communism, Iran requires an empire in order to maintain the fantasy of their version of Islam's superiority. In fact, Iran's system is even more parasitic than Communism, since Communist systems at least required some work to produce more material goods than the hated Capitalists. The quintessence of Islamist superiority is the longstanding belief that by virtue of their religion they are naturally disposed to be supported by those who are considered inferiors (infidels). As a result, for the Islamist, working hard to extort wealth is preferable to producing wealth.
Ahmadinejad faces two major problems that render the outcome of any talks problematic. First, he knows that he is ruling over a parasitic, failing system. This makes it absolutely necessary for Iran to extend its hegemony over the oil producing states of the Middle East. They need to maintain a high enough price of oil in order to maintain domestic peace and purchase enough armaments to expand their sway. At the same time, they know that a high price of oil will eventually, via the magic of the marketplace, lead to the West finding alternative sources of energy; once that happens, Iran will become a forgotten spec rather than a prominent international actor. The time constraints imposed by these factors are on the order of 5-15 years.
The second problematic area for Iran is that their military inviolability has an even shorter life span. In a post from last July, Moore's Law & Counter-Insurgency, I predicted the end of insurgency as a winning tactic will come about because of technological innovation. Such innovation will change the face of counter-insurgency in such a way that only a high tech society would have any hope of winning a fight with another high tech society:
During the day, a flock of Smart Sparrows networked together offer daylight coverage of areas of concern; at night, they are replaced by a flock of smart bats equipped with night vision and all part of a meshed network. These flying birds and bats provide 24 hour real time coverage of whatever parts of an enemy territory you desire. They can fly high enough to be invisible from the ground and are nearly impossible to shoot down even when spotted. The Palestinians can kill all the birds they see in Gaza, but when Smart Sparrows cost a few dollars and the next generation of surveillance includes Smart Mosquitoes, their problems become exponentially greater. If they spend all their time hidden indoors, they can't fire Qassam rockets at Israel, which is one of the goals of the current Israeli incursion. Furthermore, Smart Snakes can slither into buildings, and even if they can be defended against, Smart Cockroaches and Centipedes, once cheap enough, will be ubiquitous. If necessary, it would be simple to equip such robots with reservoirs of Cyanide or some other such poison (spider venom?), at which point targeted killings and Smart bullets would take on a whole new meaning.
We lost too many soldiers and Marines re-taking Falluja; imagine a future Falluja, or Mogadishu, (or Tehran?) where we fight machine guns and IEDs with Smart Birds, Bats, Insects, Snakes, and Spiders. Our military could see the theater and manage the entire operation from safe bunkers connected by networks to the battle field, which could be an underground bunker, or an isolated field.
Israel is approximately three years away from deploying bionic wasps. If the pace of technological change is at all predictive, they may, in fact, be much closer to the day when a swarm of wasps, or mosquitoes, can surgically remove the entire leadership of a terrorist organization, or the leadership of a state which has spent many years threatening to finish the job Hitler started. At minimum, such stories will fuel Iranian (and Palestinian) paranoia and make more likely their use of WMD.
These factors suggest that Ahmadinejad much more nearly resembles Hitler than Kruschev. The religious factors worsen the prognosis.
Ahmadinejad's belief system is based on an apocalyptic form of Islam, which they have interpreted to mean that if they create chaotic conditions in the world, they will hasten the return of the twelfth Imam. They also need to destroy the Jews to "prove" Allah is more powerful than the God of Israel. In so far as the Iranian leadership believes in the imminence of the twelfth Imam, and all accounts suggest they take their religion extremely seriously, the risks of their first use of WMD rises exponentially as time goes on.
Between the religious imperative, the risk to their system of Western technology, and their domestic politics, all indications suggest that Iran can never become a reliable, well behaved International citizen under its present leadership.
The upshot is that unless there is regime change in Iran, once Iran has an arsenal of nuclear weapons, they will be used. The only question is when and where. If the West continues to appease them until they are strong enough to go forward, they will use them (if they think they can get away with it) or threaten to use them, to gain hegemony over the Middle East. If their grip on power begins to slip, they will necessarily use them, because they do not see themselves as separable from their ideology, and their religious ideology requires their victory, either by their use of their WMD or by the intercession of the Twelfth Imam.
Talking to Iran without acknowledging these factors is folly.
Update: Fortuitously, Glenn Reynolds links to a number of posts germane to this discussion. He quotes Spengler:
DEMOGRAPHICS AND DESTINY: SPENGLER WRITES THAT IRAN HAS ALREADY LOST: "One does not have to destroy an opponent's military forces to defeat him. Russia collapsed without a single shot fired when Mikhail Gorbachev and his generals understood that they could not compete with Ronald Reagan's United States. The Islamic world also has been defeated, by a globalized economy in which the US dominates the top, and China blocks entry at the bottom. As the most urbane people of Western Asia, the Persians grasped the hopelessness of circumstances quicker than their Arab neighbors. That is why they have ceased to bear children. Iran's population today is concentrated at military age; by mid-century, today's soldiers will be pensioners, and there will be no one to replace them."
Follow the links to M. Simon and Chris Farley as well. Notice that all three posts tend to support my conclusions.
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