The Obama administration has been behaving as if Iran cannot be prevented from obtaining a Nuclear capacity and that they are amenable to containment. The point is made that we were in much greater existential danger form the Soviets during the Cold War and the MAD doctrine prevented us form destroying each other in a nuclear conflagration. The reasoning is that the Iranians are no more irrational than the Soviets and, if anything, once the Iranians get the bomb, the regime will feel less endangered and behave more maturely. Tom Barnett is one of those who support this formulation, as he repeats this morning:
Baseless NYT editorial on IranEDITORIAL: Iran Punishes Its People, New York Times, November 25, 2009I couldn't disagree more with the subtitle here: "Washington must work to curb Iran's nuclear ambitions with the same zeal used to condemn Tehran's assault on reform-minded opposition."
The exact opposite makes more sense: keep ratcheting up on the human rights and forget about trying to influence the nuke question.
This BS about Iran being able to "threaten the world" with a nuclear weapon is very unhelpful. Nobody's ever successfully gotten anybody to do anything by threatening a nuke attack. It simply does not work. The only thing that such threats have ever achieved is a moratorium on attacks against the threatening party--that's it.
Furthermore, the idea that Israel might see itself as being under an existential threat from an Iranian bomb is equally nonsensical in this view:
Iran will get the bomb and Israel will survive
POST: The Looming US-Israel Split, By Andrew Sullivan, The Daily Dish, 08 Dec 2009Another growing consensus that "off shoots" from the reality of Iran achieving its sloppy asymmetrical deterrence--as far as declared nuke powers are concerned.
Shocking in a traditional sense, but in an interconnected, interdependent world, there's no strategic logic for any binding "special relationships"--truth be told.
Does that seal Israel's "doom"?
Please. That is one country that is incredibly adept at thriving in a globalized world.
History certainly supports this formulation. Unfortunately the past does not always predict the future and there are two major flaws in the policy of containment for Iran.
The first major flaw is that, although MAD worked, we actually came close to nuclear war with the USSR on several occasions. On one particular occasion, only the wisdom and judgement of a single Russian soldier stood between us and nuclear Armageddon.* In retrospect, our margin of error for MAD was quite a bit thinner than most commentators are willing to acknowledge. Furthermore, in the more recent past, two nuclear armed powers have come close to nuclear war on a number of occasions and have only stepped back from the brink at the last moment. Even now, the risk of a nuclear exchange between Pakistan and India, while far less than several years ago, remains significant.
The second major flaw is the notion that Iran will behave at least as rationally as the USSR. There are reasons for concern over this possibility: [HT: Elder of Ziyon]
Ahmadinejad: U.S. blocking savior's return
TEHRAN, Dec. 8 (UPI) -- The United States is doing whatever it can to prevent the coming of the Muslim savior, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad says.
The Iranian news Web site Tabnak reported that Ahmadinejad, while speaking to survivors of soldiers killed during the 1980's war against Iraq, asserted that U.S. officials believe the Mahdi-- or the Hidden Imam whom Shiite Muslims believe will be ultimate savior of mankind -- is coming and they are working to prevent it from happening, al-Arabiya said Tuesday.
"We have documented proof that they (U.S. leaders) believe that a descendant of the prophet of Islam will raise in these parts (the Middle East) and he will dry the roots of all injustice in the world," the Web site quoted Ahmadinejad as saying. "They have devised all these plans to prevent the coming of the Hidden Imam because they know that the Iranian nation is the one that will prepare the grounds for his coming and will be the supporters of his rule "
Tabnak also reportedly said the hardline Iranian president revealed plots by both the West and the East to wipe out his nation.
It is often difficult for Western secular rationalists to appreciate that when paranoid religious zealots make what sound to their ears like irrational statements, the zealots actually mean what they say. Ahmadinejad, the public face of the most religious fundamentalist Twelvers, actually tells us, repeatedly, what he believes. The fact that so many sophisticated Westerners don't believe he means it is their limitation, not a comment on his perspective.
Consider one possible, perfectly plausible future scenario in which the Iranians have collected a small number of nuclear weapons, the public has escalated their protests with parts of the military and the Basij fragmenting under the pressure, with increasing strife within the ruling elite, and an accompanying escalating sense of catastrophe for the revolution. At this point, Ahmadinejad could well believe that conditions are not only ripe but predictive for the return of the Hidden Imam. The Twelver eschatology includes the idea that the Persian Shia can hasten his return by attacking those who aim to defeat them. The fact that this is tantamount to paranoid projection does not make it any less real. At such a point, with the rule teetering, the only logical and rational action for the Iranian Mullahs to take is to use their nuclear weapons to bring about Armageddon and the return of the Hidden Imam. The confluence of "use it or lose it" with their Eschatology would be compelling to the likes of Ahmadinejad.
[Please note, paranoids are not less dangerous because they are disturbed; they are more dangerous because they imagine dangers where none exist and behave in ways which increase the risk that they will be assaulted. The paranoid believes that people are going to harm him. As a result, he feels he to be ready to defend himself. Once armed, his fears make him more dangerous as he mispercieves innocuous acts as threats. This can then lead to the paranoid attacking his imagined attacker. At that point, the paranoid then must be subdued in order to protect the innocent; in effect his efforts to defend himself lead to him being assaulted by the police or other protectors. That his fears were fantasied and produced a self-fulfilling prophecy should not give us any comfort in regards the situation with Iran.]
The idea that Iran can be contained, as the Soviet Union once was, is a bet that the above scenario could never happen. It seems irrational to attempt to impoverish ourselves over the probably false premise that AGW threatens the planet, when the possibility of nuclear weapons being used in the service of religious zealotry is discounted as impossibly unlikely. One or two nuclear explosions that level cities would do more to destroy the global economy than any conceivable outcome of AGW, even the most frightening scenarios being bandied about in Copenhagen. To argue otherwise is blinding oneself to science in the one case and reality in the other.
* I believe that it was Wired magazine that had a recent article (I do not have time to find the link) discussing the seven times we came closest to war; the story of the Russian soldier is explained in the article. He disobeyed orders and avoided a nuclear war; he was not rewarded for his behavior.
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