Wednesday, September 20, 2006
On dealing with Iran
Michael Rubin walks his readers, step by step, through the Islamic Republic's history of contempt for diplomacy from the embassy seizure forward. Some of his examples are the normal, workaday lies that all diplomats tell, but the strong overall impression is that Iran does not negotiate in good faith. The troubling conclusion is that diplomacy that is long on incentives and short on verification and coercion will not secure the region or the West against the development of nuclear weapons. The question is, will the West's reluctance to coerce Iran push it into wishfully thinking that diplomacy with the Islamic Republic will be different this time?
3 Comments:
By 
Shochu John, at
Wed Sep 20, 09:02:00 AM:
The better question is, how can the West effectively coerece Iran? All the aletrnatives I see are either impossible or result in them simply telling the lot of us to sod off.
By skipsailing, at
Wed Sep 20, 11:11:00 AM:
Once again the President is attempting to seperate the people from the regime that oppresses them. I recall the statements concerning the differences between the Iraqis and Saddam.
This is an important step. He made it clear that the Iranians aren't the problem but that their government is.
If I were an iranian bureaucrat I'd look at the similarities in these speeches and become gravely concerned.
We won't hear flowery talk about being welcomed as liberators this time. This time, if push comes to shove, we'll level the locations that we believe are involved in weapons production, probably take out some of the conventional military sites that are the source of shaped charges and militants and then hunker down to deal with the inevitable reaction.
Will we pre emptively strike? I firmly believe that we will. I supsect that such a strike will occur shortly after the november elections.
I'm watching the Mahdi army in Iraq carefully. The Iranians IMHO were banking on their ability to create a cascade of crisis simultaneously as either a deterent or a response. Sadr and Nasrallah and who knows what else all rising up at the same time.
Well we see this now. Nasrallah's role in this is now exposed. If we hear of a frontal assault on Sadr's militants look for a US strike shortly thereafter. Neutralizing Irans ability to use proxies to engender crisis is part of the plan.
This is really the last thing I'd like to witness. I really don't want a war with Iran, but the stakes are too high and it seems quite clear to me that Iran wants a war with us.
By Tresho, at
Wed Sep 20, 05:45:00 PM:
The stakes are very high. I don't believe the US will launch a pre-emptive strike against Iran. The US has too much to lose by its over-extension in Iraq and Afghanistan. US interests there are very vulnerable to a counterattack/uprising by Shiites in Iraq and by Taliban/Pakistanis in Afghanistan. Perhaps Iran is already in possession of usable nuclear weapons, perhaps some have already been placed in western countries as bargaining chips. The US has neglected its own defense by its overdependence on global commerce, its unrestricted immigration policies, its open borders and its failure of domestic readiness (e.g., the inadequate response to Hurricane Katrina.) The mullahs of Iran have been at war with the US ever since seizing the US embassy in Tehran and have continued their attacks by numerous terrorist murders ever since.
If a US led strike does occur, I think it will be against the industrial capacity of Iran: its electrical generation, communications, air traffic and petroleum importing and refining capability. The US has very little way of knowing where Iran's nuclear weapons capability is, almost certainly these are buried far underground and connected by subways so that personnel and equipment can be moved frequently. I doubt very much that any significant Iranian nuclear weapons capability is even above ground where it might "be leveled." However, I understand nuclear weapons development needs a huge amount of electrical capacity which is difficult to put deep underground. The only US ground forces into Iran would be as a form of armed reconnaissance. The blowback of any US actions against Iraq would most likely be a massive contraction of global oil supply followed by global economic depression, by a wide variety of mechanisms. An act of nuclear terrorism could be a partial response to action against Iraq, we have no way of knowing if this is possible or not until it happens, and maybe not even then. I get very anxious whenever there is a power failure at my house, should one occur the first thing I do is turn on a battery powered radio to see if I can still receive local and interstate broadcasts.
