Richard Grenell takes to the e-pages of HuffingtonPost to say the following:
One year later Obama has single-handedly allowed the Iranians more than a year of unfettered progress toward a nuclear weapon with less pressure and inquiry from the international community. Even the slow-moving, state-the-obvious International Atomic Energy Agency announced this week that it fears Iran is working toward a nuclear warhead to go along with its undisclosed uranium enrichment activities. While Obama experimented with his classroom thesis of talking dictators out of their nuclear pursuits, many in the international community celebrated the fact that they weren’t being confronted by the United States with the lingering Iran problem. From Cairo to Berlin, the world celebrated Obama’s perceived world peace and even gave him the Nobel Prize. The Iranians, meanwhile, continued to build a nuclear weapon. While Obama did his world-wide victory lap, the Iranian Government celebrated their freedom. And although the United States has been negotiating with Iran for more than 30 years, Obama has been acting like this nation has never tried diplomacy. It is dangerous for a President to believe that his personality is so different from previous leaders’ that people will change their course of action just because of who is asking.
Since this sounds awfully John McCain-esque…
My friends, the Iranians are going to get a nuclear weapon. Either that or they will reach a state like Canada and Japan where they have acquired de facto nuclear deterrence without actually building the bomb. They just have to turn on the ol’ uranium coffee pot one morning and hit brew.
It doesn’t matter if Hillary Clinton or John McCain had won and pushed for tougher sanctions or whether “Professor” Obama talks with them. The world is not a genie which submits to every wish the US makes. I would call this reminder the foreign policy equivalent of The Secret.
My guess is that the Iranian regime has already reached a de facto state of ‘soft’ deterrence in the region. If the Israelis or US do indeed strike, it may well knock back their progress (which still appears to be quite far off from a bomb, but who knows?) towards a nuclear weapon, but it won’t stop it. And if we do strike, the Iranians have multiple and very deadly ways of retaliating: e.g. cutting off the Straits of Hormuz; oil price spikes; asymmetric attacks on US forces in neighboring Iraq and Afghanistan; proxy attacks on Israel via Hezbollah and/or Hamas; potentially even terror attacks on Saudi Arabia via proxies in Yemen or through disaffected Shia elements in Saudi Arabia itself. Not to mention the Chinese and Russian reactions in the event of a US/Israeli strike. Both countries could respond by making life very difficult for the US/NATO in Afghanistan.
The only chance (and I mean chance, not guarantee) the US ever had of derailing Iranian proliferation came early in the Bush administration. At the tail-end of President Khatami’s regime, the Reformer camp was apparently given the green light from Khamenei to make an offer for full negotiations: collaboration on terrorism, mutual recognition, nuclear disarmament, support for the invasion and aftermath of Iraq, etc. The Bush administration completely ignored these overtures. Opinions will vary as to whether this was a good faith offer or not and whether the US was right to ignore it, but either way the course of events after the Iranian offer was rejected seems basically inevitable: at that point, the Iranian regime had to acquire nuclear deterrence for the sake of self-preservation.
After which point, the Reformers were sidelined by Khamenei, forcing him (after some initial colddness) into the camp of Ahmadinejad and his allies.
If you want a much more knowledgeable and articulate piece on this topic, read this one from Robert Baer.
On Monday, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton finally got around to acknowledging what a lot of people have known since Iran’s contested election last June — there’s been a military takeover in that country, with the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) grabbing every important lever of power. As Clinton put it during a televised town-hall meeting, “The Supreme Leader, the President [and] the parliament is being supplanted, and Iran is moving toward a military dictatorship.”
So instead of focusing, as too much US foreign policy coverage does (like Grenell’s schlock above), on what the president’s rhetoric is, we should examine the actual state of play in the other country. In this case I agree substantially with Baer that what occurred since the botched (illegitimate) re-election of Ahmadinejad is that Khamenei and other clerics in the old guard have basically been forced to acquiesce to a soft military coup. The Praetorian Revolutionary Guards are now the real power in Iran.
And either the sanctions or the strike option is very ill-suited to a Revolutionary Guard regime as they thrive on being targeted and under attack, particularly from the West. The military option will only destroy whatever is left of the Iranian opposition movement.
Hence Baer’s conclusion:
The Obama Administration is talking about putting more sanctions on the IRGC, with hopes that a reluctant China might be willing to sign on to a more targeted effort. But this is a silly and hollow gesture — the IRGC is the best sanctions buster in the world. What Washington should be thinking about, now that crazy mullahs have been replaced by cunning generals, is how you negotiate with a military dictatorship. Unlike faith-based regimes, military ones have objectives, ones they are willing to negotiate and compromise on. We’ve certainly been through it before. The question is whether this Administration understands that punitive strikes don’t intimidate beasts like the IRGC.
I think the distinction between a faith-based regime and a military one is unhelpful here. In many ways, you could argue that the Revolutionary Guards crew is the last vestige of “faithful” Islamic revolutionaries from the 1970s. Though once revolutionaries take power (like, say, the Iranian clerics), they tend to become conservatives immediately, if only for the sake of self-preservation. But otherwise, this analysis is spot-on.
The sickening and inevitable US “blame game” of self-laceration, finger-pointing and all the rest will occur, but at some point, someone (and I hope it’s President Obama) will have to do the actual work of crafting a response to the existing state of affairs in the region and the prospect of a nuclear-armed Iran.
Sounds plausible Chris. So far I’d say Obama has been pretty much on-key with regards to Iranian foreign policy. He’s mouthed the appropriate platitudes and ignored the hawks and pretty much left the Persian pot to boil on its own. Considering the limits of our ability to project force into Iran and the consequences of trying to do so I think this has been the correct choice. Note that even the Israelis, no doves there, haven’t actually tried to strike either.
It’s generally considered advisable to speak softly and carry a big stick. When the big stick isn’t available the soft speaking becomes even more helpful.Report
What If?
Now, of course, we all know that the people who hold the government in Iran are (as all people are) totally down with the whole enlightened self-interest thing. They don’t want the bomb to blow up Israel. They don’t want the bomb to blow up anybody. They want it for deterrence and deterrence alone (as all countries do).
Any noises that the powers that be over there make regarding religion are usually buffoonish and, where not buffoonish, are perfectly analogous to stuff said at CPAC over the weekend.
That said.
What if they bomb somebody?
I mean, yeah, we bombed Japan, not once but twice. We arguably shouldn’t have dropped the first bomb and everybody with any moral fiber at all knows that we shouldn’t have dropped the second one and so we have absolutely no ground upon which to stand and judge Iran if they bomb somebody unless we live in Canada but it’s not like Canada didn’t benefit from Japan being bombed too.
Sure.
But what if Iran bombs somebody?Report
Officially and in most left wing circles the line is that if Iran bombed someone (and lets call a spade a spade, if they bombed anyone it’d be Israel) then we’d turn them into glass. It’s a good line. Nice deterrent effect; simple.
Now sadly I don’t know that we’d actually do what we say we would do. I mean imagine if Iran bombed Israel, or imagine if they smuggled a bomb to Israel via Hezbollah or some other group so they could wave their hands and say “No, no by Allah’s beard it wasn’t us!” I could very easily imagine a lot of leftists wringing their hands. An eye for an eye and the whole world goes blind platitudes would be platituted. Perfectly apt observations about the number of innocents that would die would be observed. I’d like to think we’d bomb them if they bombed someone else. It’d be very much in our interests; deterrent is pretty much all ya got when it comes to The Bomb. MAD served the world well during the cold war. But with radioactive ash raining down on Tel Aviv would we actually vaporize millions of Persians in retaliation? I don’t know for sure that we would.
Now the surviving Israelis would say “Let Allah sort em out” and nuke them with everything they had. They’d be promptly condemned by Europe and the UN Human Rights tribunal too.
Such is the nature of the further left. Though I prefer it to the “lets nuke em just in case” nature of the further right.Report
in answer to jay’s question, there’s a question before the question. In this hypothetical what happened before the bombing? If we are playing what if games, my guess is that Iran only bombs in a case where they are either A)attacked or B)perceived to be under attack.
B would occur when they are not recognized as the great regional power they want to be if and when they get said bomb. [as this is a hypothetical, I’m speculating of course.]
Basically the deal that I think will have to be struck whenever that pass some threshold will be basically the deal Pakistan got. We’re not happy about it, we aren’t officially going to recognize it, but we always realize what the implication is. You are now a member of the nuclear power club, here’s how to live in that.
Rule #1: You don’t use this thing ever. You don’t give it away to some nutter who would.
If Rule #1 is violated, Rule #2 comes into play–The “D” in MAD is invoked. Destruction.
When this (hypothetical?) day of Iran’s recognition comes, then it shifts the playing field of the Middle East significantly. Israel will no longer be the lone superpower/nuclear power in the region. That opens up a whole new wrinkle to the Palestinian issue.
My hope would be the good that could come out of this would be a Palestinian state. That’s the best case scenario. The worst case scenario is apocalyptic levels of violence and bloodshed.
An in between scenario is something like, Iran is still quasi-contained though not really, still stirs up s–t in the neighborhood, has a bomb or a bomb-like deterrence capacity, but is kept still pretty isolated economically. But basically a deal is struck to keep the Revolutionary Guard in power. Where the ferment then goes in Iran is anybody’s guess.Report
iow, I see it heading towards a Pakistan-India situation. Tense, at times possibly very tense (a la ’99 with Pak-India), but (hopefully?) cooler heads prevailing. Pakistan/Iran likely still funding some baddies in the region. Iran (like Pakistan?) having a strong civil society ruled? jostled with by an unelected military junta. India/Israel having to hold some higher ground, not have the nationalist grievance the other country has, and able to stay forward looking.
But I’m not sure Palestine is quite the same thing as Kashmir. That adds a whole other (potentially very detrimental) addition to the Israel-Iran situation.Report
I should say Iran (even ruled by the Revolutionary Guard) is far less scary to me than NoKo.Report
I agree in general with all of the above Chris. Heck, I’ll go a step further and say I’m inclined to find Junta ruled Iran less scary than Mullah ruled Iran. But I’m hopeful that Junta ruled Iran is even less acceptable to the Iranians. The ideal turn out is that the green revolution actually tips the government over. Forget Iraq, the Iranians really have most of the ingredients to put together a nice modern democratic country.Report
You seem to be assuming that the Iranians agree to and will play by the same rules that we in the West do. Clearly they don’t in other areas so why would you assume it in this area?
I find the Iranians more scary that NoKorea b/c the Iranians are religious nutters while Kim is not.Report
“In this hypothetical what happened before the bombing?”
Let’s say something akin to the status quo.
Maybe Israel kills a Hamas dude in a hotel, maybe Israel doesn’t. Hostilities are, for the most part, at a low level… as have they been since the Six Day (SIX DAYS, BITCHES!!!) War.
I’m wondering if Iran comes out and says “we got one!” and a bomb then goes off in… oh, let’s pick a country out of a hat… Israel what will then likely happen?
You think apocalyptic?Report
I think if Iran used a nuclear weapon it would be responded to in kind and in fact probably by orders of magnitude worse. You can call that apocalyptic or not or whatever word is preferred, but it would be unimaginably horrible.Report
That’s not what I was saying (I mean, I totally understand what you were saying).
The main thing I’m wondering is what will happen if Iran uses a bomb. Mostly… how will the rest of the world respond? Israel bombing the crap out of Iran qualifies as apocalyptic in my book (will someone be able to say “they talked about this in Revelation” and it will make sense? Then we’ve got legit apocalyptica there).
The questions I have were more in the vein of:
What will Israel do?
What will Saudi Arabia do?
What will Egypt do?
What will France do?
What will England do?
What will we do?
I suppose that if Israel responds in kind, the answers to the next questions become a lot less relevant.Report
Israel: Destroys everyone else in the region.
Saudi Arabia: Nothing. They’re dead.
Egypt: Ibid.
The last three? God knows…but I hope there’s a secret cache of oil somewhere that we don’t know about.Report
Hrm. This scenario makes sense to me, I guess.
As a measure of my cynicism, I see it as the most likely scenario… but, hey. I was wrong about the aftermath of the attack on the school in Belsen. I’m probably wrong about this too.Report
With Israel’s Samson Policy on nuclear deterrence (which is: if they get nuked, they take everyone in the region down with them) no Iranian regime that wasn’t suicidal would risk giving a non-state actor like Hezbollah a nuclear weapon.
I mean really, of all the possible scenarios…
If anything the likelihood is that Iran becomes incredibly sensitive to fissile material moving around non-state actors like that and moves to crack down on them.Report
How can you compare the US bombing Japan and with what the Iranians might do? We nuked the Japs as part of a war they started, and anyway Curtis LeMay’s firebombing killed more people.Report
Won’t someone think of the children?Report
At least one could say that Hiroshima and Nagasaki had some strategic value as targets, whereas firebombing Tokyo only served to (gulp) terrorize the Japanese people while trying to get Hirohito to wise up to the fact that he wasn’t going to win. Also, the second bomb was as much for Stalin as it was for defeating the Japanese.Report
The only two such attacks took place when a single nation had a monopoly on nuclear weapons.
I’m not counting on it.Report
Israel steals Palestinian lands, Kills their children and women and bombed them with white phosphorus bombs–and the world says nothing. A palestinian man straps a bomb on himself and kills Israelis, and the whole world shout TERRORIST. Did we say we are God’s children who are religious and impartial? Satan may be laughing his lungs out!Report
Not exactly accurate. You left out the unprovoked invasions of annihilation against Israel, the pogroms of the Jews in all the other Arab nations, the wanton and in many cases intentional targeting of Israeli civilians and the blatant use of Palestinian civilians as human shields. The Palestinians are not angels in this sorry story either.
Goodness knows though that there’s blame enough to spread around. And there’s no arguing that the Israelis have to either man up and drag their fruitcake right wingers out of the West Bank just like they did in Gaza or else enfranchise the Palestnians and cease to be a Jewish nation.Report
Bravo North, I love it when you tell the truth. You are one articulate dude.Report
The idea that Iran might acquire a nuclear bomb, or a few of them, or even a quite a few of them, is not the main issue, scary though it is. The worse and most dangerous aspect of the whole thing is that it would undoubtedly lead to other nations in the region seeking to acquire their own nuclear bombs. Saudi Arabia, maybe Egypt, possibly Jordan, Turkey, maybe even somewhere down the road, Iraq. And of course, Syria. It could turn into the world series of nuclear programs. And sooner or later, somebody is going to use them. Or a bunch of them. And there’s really not a hell of a lot we can do about it, except make sure we keep up to speed and get set to respond when, not if, we eventually have to. When you consider the degree of corruption that plagues some of these countries, you have to wonder how long it will take before some religious fanatical group bribes somebody, or prevails on someone with similar sentiments, to sell them some of their materials, or even worse, grants them access to an actual missile site, complete with the codes necessary to fire one off.Report
This may be a a coup supporting Ahmadinejad; that’s what one well-connected opinion thought a few months ago. Or maybe they’re a secondary coup replacing him with the Revolutionary Guards’ leader. There’s just not enough evidence on the ground to be sure of much.
Military dictatorship’s ‘s somewhat more dangerous than the old Iranian constitution replaced. Though the fact was a little hard to understand from American media, Iran used to have checks and balances keeping theocrats from getting too stupid. Consider Fascism’s longevity vs Communism’s, despite hopeless economics; that’s because Communist states have checks and balances as well. They’re also, of course, like Communist states in being authoritarian (note – Pakistan’s nothing like as authoritarian as Iran).
Still, Ahmadinejad didn’t hack his constitution by being stupid enough to want to replace power with life in fear in a hole in the ground, so I’m not too worried. Remember, propaganda by the ton’s been printed about impending American military defeat since Hiroshima while the real world’s stayed deterred. I’m guessing Iranian anti-Israeli talk’s more of the same.
I think the US and NATO would most likely respond to an Iranian nuclear attack by trying to organize a coalition for regime change like for their to their neighbors we wrongly suspected of WMD ownership. After all, the launch’d hardly be the idea of the Iranian people. Israel might beat us out with nuclear retaliation on innocent parties, though.Report
Personally, if I lived in a postage stamp sized country and someone dropped a nuke on me I’d definitly nuke them back if I had the ability to.Report
“Deal with it.” “There’s not much we can do about it.”
Spineless irresponsibility masking itself as adult realism. Once again, our grandchildren will curse us.Report
Ah so! So what do you think should be done about the Iranian bomb?Report
Clearly nuking Iran back to the stone age must be the manly, responsible answer.Report
I’m afraid the last thing civilization wants is for Muslims to have nukes. I’m afraid Mr. Scott is correct.Report
So what should we do about Pakistan?Report
Ask the Indians.Report
There’s nothing we can do about it. They have them, and I can promise you they aren’t giving them up. They have every reason in the world to keep them, they’re the greatest bargaining chips imaginable. As long as they have them, they can play off our fears of them falling into the hands of Al-Queda or Taliban agents or sympathizers, and that translates into pretty much whatever they want, within reason, in the way of aid. All they have to do is promise to at least make a concerted effort to keep things on a pretty even keel in regards their relations with India and in reining in their insurgents. It’s not an accident that there hasn’t been any full-blown hostilities with India since they established their on-going nuclear production capabilities.Report