I’m not sure I totally agree with you, but I think you gave a reasonable and logical answer to this important question. You could very well be right.
If Iran successfully tests a nuclear weapon and continues using its death to Israel and death to U.S. rhetoric, does this change your opinion at all?
Blessings,
JB
FWIW, I certainly do not see the situation as simple. Iran appears to be a ‘gangster regime’ to me, largely at odds with its own people and even conceding horrific corruption itself.
The thought of a nuclear Iran is very unsettling to me indeed. That said, I think it is a mistake to get caught up in rhetoric and lose site of the larger picture.
Look at Iraq. The original arguments for preemptive invasion (WMDs and WMD programs, involvement in 9/11, etc.) have proven to be false. But even when there was some reasonable doubt, I was very concerned about removing a Sunni, secular strongman without a lot of active support in the region.
The Shia majority very predictably wanted a form of government closer to a shia theocracy than a secular democracy. This inevitably invited external support to Sunni militias from the Saudi’s, and external support to Shia militias from Iran. Without pre-emptive negotiation prior to the invasion, both are concerned with the shift in power in the region.
The thinking appears to have been that at least Iraq would be anchored by ‘friendlies’. But instead of Turkey and Pakistan helping to anchor a new Iraq, both appear to be having stability problems of their own as a result. Turkey because of Kurdish nationalism and Pakistan because Christian occupation of Iraq has greatly empowered the countries own Islamic extremists. Leaving us in the very difficult position of being entangled in a mutually dependant alliance with a country that also appears to be providing safe haven to the people who attacked us on 9/11 and also sharing nuclear secrets with other enemies.
I believe that Iran’s primary objectives are not global domination (we’re talking about a country with a GDP about the size of a small, eastern, US state and military spending not quite on par with Sweden). I think that the regime is principally motivated by self preservation. That is, continuation of power.
Viewed that way, current US policy does not make much sense. Sanctions are symbolic at best. The regime only buys US goods on the black market now, and has something like $6B to spend that way annually. Similarly, strong rhetoric appears to strengthen the regime, not weaken it. For example, their president was hugely unpopular at home because of his failure to follow up on a promise of small reforms, but his popularity has soared since we began demonizing him.
I am also still of a mind that Rumsfeld is wrong. You cannot win a military conflict on air power alone, short of nuking a nation back to the stone age. A pre-emptive strike of that side would quite likely trigger WW-III, and I am not sure that most of the world would not band against us. That would seem to leave strategic precision air strikes.
The only possible military outcome from such an attack is to setback, or delay a weapons program. This could be a very important strategic goal if a successful program outcome is imminent. But we also have to look at our longer term strategic interest. That means that the political outcome of such an attack needs to be considered. Bombs will kill lots of civilians, but they will not force a regime change. Look at Isreal’s recent bombing in Lebanon. It ended up strengthening Hezbolah, not weakening it.
So, without a truly imminet threat, our best result would come from first forging an alliance with players like China and Russia as well as Iran’s neighbors. This would both maximize the pressure behind the threat, and minimize the long term geo political damage should the threat actually have to be acted on. Unfortunately, our relationships with both China and Russia (which had previously been helpful in containing Iran) have soured of late. Similarly, we missed a good opportunity for more direct negotiations in 2001. Iran was actually quite helpful in our post 9/11 campaign against AQ and OBL in Afghanistan, but we did not really reciprocate, and actually turned up our own anti Iran rhetoric (axis of evil, etc.).
Again, it isn’t simple and I find it quite troubling. But I don’t think that our current knee jerk reaction of seeing every problem in the world as a ‘nail’ we can fix with our military ‘hammer’ has been particularly successful. If nothing else, it has been awfully hard on the hammer.
