I borrowed the title to this post from George Friedman at Stratfor. In an attempt to move the discussion of Iran's nuclear ambitions (and his assumption that President Obama will do nothing meaningful to prevent Iran obtaining a bomb) from the current binary choice, Friedman suggests that are solid grounds for a tacit understanding between the United States and Iran:
Thinking About the Unthinkable: A U.S.-Iranian Deal
As long as the problem of Iran is defined in terms of its nuclear program, the United States is in an impossible place. Therefore, the Iranian problem must be redefined. One attempt at redefinition involves hope for an uprising against the current regime. We will not repeat our views on this in depth, but in short, we do not regard these demonstrations to be a serious threat to the regime. Tehran has handily crushed them, and even if they did succeed, we do not believe they would produce a regime any more accommodating toward the United States. The idea of waiting for a revolution is more useful as a justification for inaction — and accepting a nuclear Iran — than it is as a strategic alternative.
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Iraq, not nuclear weapons, is the fundamental issue between Iran and the United States. Iran wants to see a U.S. withdrawal from Iraq so Iran can assume its place as the dominant military power in the Persian Gulf. The United States wants to withdraw from Iraq because it faces challenges in Afghanistan — where it will also need Iranian cooperation — and elsewhere. Committing forces to Iraq for an extended period of time while fighting in Afghanistan leaves the United States exposed globally. Events involving China or Russia — such as the 2008 war in Georgia — would see the United States without a counter. The alternative would be a withdrawal from Afghanistan or a massive increase in U.S. armed forces. The former is not going to happen any time soon, and the latter is an economic impossibility.
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It is said that Ahmadinejad is crazy. It was also said that Mao and Stalin were crazy, in both cases with much justification. Ahmadinejad has said many strange things and issued numerous threats. But when Roosevelt ignored what Stalin said and Nixon ignored what Mao said, they each discovered that Stalin’s and Mao’s actions were far more rational and predictable than their rhetoric. Similarly, what the Iranians say and what they do are quite different.
("This report is republished with permission of STRATFOR")
George Friedman has come up with an eminently reasonable and elegant solution to our current difficulties with Iran; read the whole thing. Note, however, that the entire edifice rests upon the assumption that, even if Ahmadinejad's beliefs and pronouncements are crazy, Iran's foreign policy has been rational and predictable.
In contrast, Steve Schippert at ThreatsWatch, is far less sanguine about an Iranian nuclear capability:
Iran Cleric Calls for "Special Weapon"
Furthermore, consider the words which directly followed the above excerpt from Yazdi's revealing book, which was never meant to be made widely public.
"In seeking to acquire the [necessary] technology Iran must be patient and not be deterred by economic shortages: Divine, messianic support has been the determining factor in the success of the Iranian regime during the various trying periods which have plagued it since its foundation...We cannot be broken because of temporary difficulties, they will pass, and Muslims must be patient and not be deterred by material or economic shortages, because if they do, it may lead them to be separated from [Islam]."
To be clear, the primary threat from Iran is, has been and remains its position as the chief state sponsor of international terrorism. Nearly every terror group has some degree of of Iranian fingerprints - whether wholly owned subsidiaries such as Hizballah, co-opted muscle such as Hamas, or willing students with a common American enemy such as bin Laden's al-Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan.
The Iranian regime, in that context, with nuclear weapons should fill the West with a palpable fear. And it should address it directly and in the manner most likely to upset such a reality: Regime Change. As elaborated countless times before, this requires no invasion or air-strikes. Tangibly support the internal Iranian opposition against a regime that is widely unpopular.
Short of that, we are destined to confront the foremost state sponsor of international terrorism armed with nuclear weapons. And, if our past is any indication of the future, we will do so in a reactionary manner - meaning after a first catastrophc strike has been made, whether upon the West or upon Israel.
The entire question of a nuclear armed Iran comes down to an assessment of their intentions and rationality. George Friedman, et al, believe that Iran can be contained; Steve Schippert disagrees.
A similar question arises on a regular basis for Psychiatrists. We frequently are faced with determining the dangerousness of patients. The most difficult question pertains to the paranoid patient. Paranoids believe that they are in danger and under constant threat of attack. A small percentage of paranoids will arm themselves and preemptively attack their imagined assailants. This is rare; determining when to be concerned enough to involuntarily commit such a patient can be difficult, especially because many paranoids resist taking medication. (Among other reasons, they have little insight into their condition and most anti-psychotic medications are sedating; the Paranoid is poorly tolerant of sedation because it diminishes his ability to be hypervigilant for danger.) If we guess wrong, innocent people can be hurt or killed. There are two signs I look for in making such a determination.
1) The presence of agitation increases the risk of violence significantly.
2) The presence of an ego syntonic, narcissistically invested delusion, likewise increases the risk of violence significantly.
Iran's elites are roiled by the current unrest, but it is not clear that they feel their grip on power to be in overt danger. As George Friedman points out, they are perfectly willing and capable of killing enough of their subjects to maintain their rule. Should their grip on power begin to flag, their level of agitation would rise, and the use of a ready nuclear weapon to protect their regime would be considerable.
The second sign is more complex. "An ego syntonic, narcissistically invested delusion" is a fixed, false belief that does not create any internal conflict (ie, ego syntonic) and serves to support the fragile self esteem (ie, it is narcissistically invested) of the paranoid. Iran's version of Islam has as a core tenet that the Jews/Israel (the Little Satan) and the Untied States as the exemplar of Christianity (the Great Satan) must be destroyed for Islam to triumph. A Jewish state, especially a Jewish state that is more successful than the surrounding Arab states, is an anathema; its continued existence is an affront to Islam. A very good case can be made that Israel represents an existential threat to Iranian Islam. A religion that preaches and believes that its followers are superior to all other peoples is a religion that cannot tolerate defeat. (Defeats mean either that the followers have not been adhering to Islam correctly or their religion is false.)
In 1979, President Jimmy Carter facilitated the ouster of the Shah of Iran and his replacement by Ayatollah Khomeini. President Carter assumed that Khomeini was a reasonable man with whom we could work through normal diplomacy to have normalized state to state relations. Every administration since Carter has attempted to develop normal relations with the Iranians. The results speak for themselves.
Assuming the Iranians will behave rationally (as defined by Western norms) has been a losing bet for more than 30 years. Should the Iranians gain a nuclear capacity the world will become a much more dangerous place.
[NB: A possible military attack on Iran may well be more dangerous than the status quo. See War game shows how attacking Iran could backfire; such an attack may fail and the Iranian reaction would be unpredictably dangerous; miscalculatiosn and escalation would be likely. If President Obama is paying attention, and it is not so clear that he is, this should be keeping him up at night.]
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