Fareed Zakaria is one of the better columnists writing about the Middle East and in his piece for Newsweek he raises the alarm over our escalating tension with Iran:
Stalin, Mao And … Ahmadinejad?
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.
There is much to agree with in Zakaria's piece but I suspect he is engaging in hyperbole just as he levels the same accusation at Podhoretz.
There are two implicit assumptions that Zakaria makes about Iran, and for neither does he provide a "scintilla of evidence."
First, Zakaria suggests that the Millennialist strain in Shia Islam that is exemplified by Ahmadinejad, should not be taken seriously; after all, the Iranians were actually helpful to us in the waning days of the Afghanistan War, and we can treat with them as rational opponents:
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."
The fact that Iran saw it as within their interests to help us in Afghanistan does not in any way imply they will be helpful in other arenas, nor would anyone expect them to be. They would have happily helped us in Iraq if we had only agreed to allow their proxies to take over the state and institute a Shia Nation subservient to Iran. The lack of such an outcome has fueled much of the Iranian supported violence against our troops in the region, including in Afghanistan, the nation they were so helpful in calming in the past. Iran is a nation with a long history and a long view; they are perfectly capable of taking short term measures in the service of longer term interests.
The second point he implies is that Iran with a nuclear weapon can be tolerated and incorporated into the current world order (an order approaching the Hobbesian model, if the international communities handling of Darfur and Burma among other places, is any indication); he introduces this by way of criticism of Rudy Giuliani:
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.
I think he misreads Giuliani's remarks. The point of Giuliani's comments was that during the Cold War, we were deterred via the MAD doctrine from mutually annihilating each other. The fact that the USSR and China had the bomb meant that we were unable to intervene within their spheres of interest even if we had been so inclined. The policy of containment was based on the necessities of MAD, after all.
It is important from time to time to get a read on the other side of the Blogosphere and on this topic there is no shortage of commentary. In a post by Nicole Belle at Crooks and Liars, amidst some intemperate remarks about William Kristol, an important point slips out:
If it’s Sunday, then it’s time for
Pravda, er…FOXNews Sunday to give a platform for William “The Bloody” Kristol to get his wargasm on. Never mind the truth or facts, like that we haven’t had a diplomat in Iran in 30 years. The time for diplomacy is OVER, I tell you! Never mind that Bush has changed the standards–now it’s NOT actively pursuing a weapons program, something that the IAEA is saying they aren’t doing anyway, but knowledge of how to build a nuke, that now demands that Kristol the chickenhawk scream for a war, ignoring completely the realities of our overstretched military and complete lack of support on the world stage.
I suspect my Left wing friends at C & L would be surprised to learn that I agree with them that an attack on Iran would be unwise and unnecessary at this point. Where I would take issue with their invective is in their failing to recognize that the best way to avoid a disaster whereby one or more cities are lost to the nuclear inferno is to discourage Iran from obtaining said weapons. I suspect they would object that Iran obtaining nuclear weapons is understandable and not at all alarming; after all, Iran, with their minuscule economy and armed forces, is being threatened from right next door by the US military.
There is an argument to be made that if only Iran would do what nations like Japan and Taiwan have done, that is, obtain nuclear technology and arrange for a just-in-time nuclear capability, such a meta-stable outcome could be tolerated. We may well find out. I doubt Iran would stop at such a point since the imperatives of their ideology and sytem requires a demonstrated threat to their enemies real and imagined; this decision is most likely a year or two away, in any event. Beyond such a just-in-time capability, an actual nuclear weapon in Iranian hands remains unacceptable.
Here is the explanation for those new to the discussion. Iran indeed has a fragile economy and the Mullahs act as if they have an insecure grip on power. The latest is a crackdown on Public Displays of Affection, a sure fire way to increase the population's loathing for their puritanical overlords. Between rationing gasoline and jailing Union workers, the Mullahs are trying to manage a system that has failed to meet basic needs of their people. Normally this would not be a problem for us; we could bide our time and await until the inevitable happens and the people become desperate enough to rise up. We could perhaps offer some incentives and a nudge here and there, but direct intervention may well prove to be unnecessary. However, this makes it all he more important to stop Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. When a society is stressed the tendency toward regression means, among other things, that more extreme ideologies become empowered. The Iranian Shia have an ideology of sacrifice and martyrdom (recall the children walking through mine fields in the Iran-Iraq War, holding plastic keys to heaven); Ahmadinejad represents a more extreme version which believes we are living in end times and that the 12th Imam will return if we only bring on the Apocalypse and enable his return. In such a setting, an Iran with nuclear weapons cannot be expected to behave like a rational actor; as far as their nukes are concerned, if their rule is threatened, they can be expected to use them or lose them. On the other hand, if they use nuclear weapons to solidify their regime, there will be no way to deter them form increasing their already high support of anti-Western terror. Further, an Iranian Shia bomb will lead to an arms race among the already not too stable Sunni states. With more and more warheads floating around and more and more Jihadists nurtured on hate seeking to use them, living in Western cities will suddenly become much more of an existential risk. That is why Iran cannot be allowed to obtain nuclear weapons.
As an aside, thus far, by all indications, what has kept the Iranians from gaining nuclear weapons is their own ineptness. This is a thin reed to rely on, however. As President Bush pointed out, the best way to prevent their successfully obtaining nukes is for the international community to take the possibility seriously and act accordingly. Unfortunately, this seems like the least likely scenario, though it still must be played out.
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