It’s time to open an office pool on how many failed resolutions the UN will produce before Iran, on an industrial scale, gets the bomb. We’ve already had a UN resolution with an August 31 deadline — utterly ignored — for Iran to stop enriching uranium (according to Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Kofi Annan himself told the Iranians not to worry about it). This past weekend we got UN sanctions-lite, watered down to please Russia and China even before they are further filtered through an opaque and corrupt UN system. Iran responded by promising to fire up a whole new set of centrifuges and run them at top speed. Iran’s rulers have learned that the UN is, in effect, on their side — providing a Security Council stacked with their business partners and pals, a stage to dignify their propaganda, and a forum that protects them from surprise attack by requiring months, even years of debate, before even the weakest decisions can be reached.
If the UN were serious about stopping Iran’s nuclear-bomb program, then Iran’s swaggering abuses of recent times would have had members of the UN Security Council, seconded by Annan, calling, pleading, begging for the U.S., with its precision capabilities, to lead a bombing raid on Iranian targets dear to the hearts of the terrorist-spawning totalitarian ayatollahs and their globe-trotting totem, Ahmadinejad. Even if it’s impossible to track down every iota of Iran’s sprawling nuclear program, it ought to be at least feasible to target the known nuclear-related installations, assorted crucial ministries, and enough in the way of Iran’s oil-export and gasoline-import facilities to give Ahmadinejad & Co. a deadly serious message of disapproval, backed by a large repair bill — costing not only money, but the precious element of time. That would be far more fool-proof, not to mention bribe-proof, than anything that goes under the name of UN sanctions. As a by-product, it would introduce a note of sobriety in Tehran, and neighboring Damascus, that would do more than all the Iraq Study Groups in creation to help quell the Syrian- and Iranian-backed violence in Iraq. It would cut down on the available resources now flowing from Iran to assist Hezbollah’s terrorist takeover of Lebanon. And watching Ahmadinejad and his cohorts pick through a Bushehr reactor reduced to rubble might even inspire North Korea’s Kim Jong Il to re-think the wisdom of acting as the nuclear pace-setter of rogue regimes.
Instead, the UN is now providing our own administration with an excuse and an avenue to delay and dither while terrorist-sponsoring Iran, one of the world’s most dangerous regimes, arms itself — to borrow President Bush’s phrase — with the world’s deadliest weapons. My colleague at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, Andy McCarthy, has an excellent piece about this on NRO.
A few months ago, I wrote an opinion piece for The Wall Street Journal, arguing that UN sanctions will not stop Iran. A UN resolution or so later, one can update minor details. The basic case remains the same. Here’s the conclusion:
It is quite possible that–after years of delay and dithering by the U.N.’s International Atomic Energy Agency, the European Union and the U.S. itself–there is no initiative that will by now stop Iran short of direct military force. But whatever the solution, it is clearly the U.S. that will have to do the bulk of the cajoling, prodding and backroom bargaining to put together any coalition both able and willing, in whatever way necessary, to get the job done. That is a challenge urgent and daunting enough, without trying to drag along the entire baggage of the U.N.
The entire article is here.
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merkur:Leaving aside discussions about the worth of UN resolutions, can somebody explain to me how a surprise attack on Iran will do anything other than a) turn every Shia in the entire world entirely against the United States for the rest of history, b) massively increase the instability of the region, driving oil prices up for everybody, c) drive the global development of non-state nuclear capacity further underground, and d) convince anybody that was thinking about developing nuclear capacity that their worries about American interventionism are entirely correct, and that the best approach will be to move to nuclear terrorism as quickly as possible?
Dec 28, 2006 - 4:25 am gringoman:merkur :
Leaving aside discussions about the worth of UN resolutions, can somebody explain to me how a surprise attack on Iran will do anything other than a) turn every Shia in the entire world entirely against the United States for the rest of history, b) massively increase the instability of the region, driving oil prices up for everybody, c) drive the global development of non-state nuclear capacity further underground, and d) convince anybody that was thinking about developing nuclear capacity that their worries about American interventionism are entirely correct, and that the best approach will be to move to nuclear terrorism as quickly as possible?
Dec 28,:25 AM
Good questions. Not bad. Now here’s one for you. How do you propose to live with atomic ayatollahs?
Dec 28, 2006 - 11:28 am joan:Claudia’s ideologically rosy analysis reminds me of Cheney’s ” They will be cheering and greeting us with flowers in Iraq” analysis of the Iraq invasion.
To think that bombing iran would just make the iranians stop interfering in Iraq is bizarre. As another poster has mentioned, bombing Iran would a) increase price of oil to 100$ a barrel b) create further chaos in Iraq as Iran would increase their activities there c) given the chaos caused by a & b above, ensure that the republicans lose the white house in 2008.
Which begs the question, is Claudia ,afterall, a closet Democrat:)
Dec 28, 2006 - 9:54 pm merkur:I don’t know. Maybe by not reducing our entire foreign policy to an inane soundbite?
I’ll make a deal with you, Gringoman. You answer my question, and I’ll do my best to answer your question.
Dec 29, 2006 - 3:38 am merkur:Actually, forget that deal - I don’t really expect you to answer it.
How would I deal with “atomic ayatollahs?”
1. Support moderate politicians inside Iran, ensuring that they are the primary interlocuters with US and EU diplomats and giving them more leverage over externally provided resources (primarily trade and aid).
2. Support civil society inside Iran, particularly student movements, trade unions and womens’ groups, creating more internal pressure for democratic change.
3. Strengthen links with countries immediately surrounding Iran, particularly funding improvements in governance but also ensuring tighter border control and customs regimes to secure the Iranian border. (This of course is pretty much impossible given our standing in both Iraq and Afghanistan.)
4. Get agreement from the diplomatic backsliders on the Security Council that, while they won’t actively oppose any diplomatic or economic initiative, they will passively accept them in return for guarantees regarding trade and political influence.
5. Work hard to diminish the influence of Iranian proxies in Lebanon and Iraq, again by supporting moderate polticians and civil society, but also by more aggressively pursuing offenders through neutral third-party institutions (for example, by expanding and giving more teeth to the UN investigations into the assassinations in Lebanon).
6. Stop fixating on Ahmenijad, a demagogue whose political base of support appears to have rapidly dwindled and who is not the real power in Iran.
So that’s how I’d start. I’m fully aware of what a tall order some of the points above will be, but I don’t labour under the delusion that foreign policy is ever going to be easy. I’d love to hear your ideas, but I’m guessing that they mainly involve guns, bombs and really big airplanes that go “whoosh”.
Dec 29, 2006 - 4:04 am spynverzyon:The responses from merkur and joan show a basic disregard for economic principles: when you make something more expensive, people will indulge in it less. The point of bombing Iran’s nuclear and petroleum facilities is to make their political and military aggression expensive, thereby giving them incentive to do less of it. Ms. Rosett’s proposal applies this principle both to the cost and the revenue sides of the Iranian nuclear project: building reactors is more expensive when they periodically get reduced to rubble; paying for reactors takes a larger share of national revenue when production of the main national export is degraded.
Would the Shiites hate us forever? Probably not any more than the Japanese do. The Shiites can afford to hate us now because it costs them little to do so - indeed, it is often profitable for them. And, of course, plenty of them hate us already, even though we have not yet bombed them. Better that these ones should never have nuclear weapons.
Would disruption of the oil supply raise the worldwide price of oil? Undoubtedly, but not nearly as much as the price would rise if a nuclear Iran gained hegemony over its Gulf neighbors. Moreover, it’s a cost we seem prepared to bear, at least at the consumer level: while oil prices have spiked over the last year, there has been no significant reduction in consumption - a sign that people like to whine about gas prices, but will pay significantly more for it without a substantial loss in social utility. The cost of an Iranian (or Iranian-sponsored) nuke landing in Manhattan would be far higher. And anyway, since when does the anti-Bush crowd think the price of oil should dictate our foreign policy and military strategy?
Would the Iranians become more secretive about their nuclear research? It’s equally plausible that they would take a page from Libya’s playbook and decide that nuclear development is a low-return project, to be abandoned entirely. But even if they went underground, the costs of doing so would, again, make their nuclear activity more expensive - meaning they would do less of it.
Would other nuclear terrorist wannabes take Iran as an object lesson? We must certainly hope so! As it stands now, the lesson they’re taking is, “Sponsor terrorism, threaten your neighbors, and defy civilized nations, and you can achieve all your totalitarian goals at little cost.” The message we want to convey is, “Be more civilized, or the revenue that supports your totalitarian power will dry up and your military ambitions will be reduced to a slow, costly underground nuke project.”
As for joan’s perspective, the Iraqis did greet us with cheers (if not flowers) at first - until the concerted efforts of the American left, for whom winning the war would have meant political disaster, so constrained our will that our overall strategic plan lost credence. Likewise, Iran will continue to meddle in Iraq as long as they think we’re not serious about stopping them. A methodical, sustained, and determined campaign to eliminate Iranian military and industrial assets would both reduce the turmoil in Iraq and put the brakes on Iran’s nuke plans.
Finally, while I cannot prove beyond doubt that Ms. Rosett is not a closet Democrat, I would observe that joan is, at the very least, a Democrat in spirit. Here’s how I can tell: Democrats think about foreign policy and military strategy in terms of winning elections; Republicans think about these issues in terms of ensuring long-term national security and prosperity. Most Republicans would willingly hand over the White House to the Dems for a while if that’s what it took to implement a policy that ended Iran’s nuke program. Churchill got thrown out after V-E Day, but history seems to have treated him well enough. Democrats who, like the incoming Congressional class, play politics with national security might want to ponder why their party has garnered a genuine majority (as opposed to a plurality or razor-thin majority) in a presidential election only once since the end of World War II. Hint: it’s not because they were excessively vigilant about national security.
Dec 29, 2006 - 8:39 pm Terry Crane:The fear that every US action “a) turn every Shia in the entire world entirely against the United States for the rest of history” presumes Shia as a timeless and uncontested identity. However, the history shows that defeated Japanese and Germans attributed the defeat to their own militarists/fascists, and embraced new identities that are not really affected by their defeat.
Yes, the people thinking of themselves as Shia ahead of everything else will hate US, however a very significant number may choose to think of themselves as Persian, Lebanese, American, Australian or Israeli. That would be a very positive step, well outweighting the hate of already hateful and derange morons.
Jan 1, 2007 - 12:07 am Bill Bradley:Melodramatic.
Jan 1, 2007 - 3:49 am Chip:Claudia, I think you’re making the same prestigious and popular mistake nearly every expert makes on this topic. Iran’s nuclear program is shrouded in secrecy. After Iraq, the last thing the United States can afford is a strike on what might turn out to be a mostly civilian nuclear program. Sometimes I get the feeling Iran is begging for a strike on their program, which does not suggest a belief there will be evidence of military intent.
I’m not saying the regime isn’t building nuclear weapons, but they seem to believe there’s no way we’d be able to prove it. And who could disagree? Air strikes won’t turn up any evidence the Iranians don’t want made public.
But that’s far from the end of the story. Ahmadinejad, the Guardian Council, Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, and the Basij Militia are all avowed and fanatical enemies of the United States, and mostly loathed by a large segment of the Iranian people.
There’s something called a “decapitation strike” which would be less risky and more useful in the case of Iran. Our enemy is not the Iranian people or nuclear scientists, but those who employ them for nefarous purposes. Hitting the people and institutions I mentioned above would not make enemies of the Iranian people and is completely justified by their genocidal rhetoric and incessant declarations of (not to mention acts of) war against the United States.
Jan 1, 2007 - 11:32 am ChristianLS:Our ships are there because we are attempting to deal with Iran regarding Iran’s influence over oil-rich Shiite Southern Iraq, their nucular program, Hezbollah, etc… The US needed SOME show of power to remind Iran that we remain a significant military power. Unfortunately, invading Iraq has become counter-productive to our interests and now, with the death of Saddam, you will see the US slowly back away and trying to save face.
Jan 1, 2007 - 11:49 am C-Low:Merkur
You and the Dems along with many Repubs just don’t understand that we cannot make the Arabs hate US becuase they already DO. I hate to be the bearer of bad news but since 47′ when we chose a side gave weapons and support to the Jews in Isreal and by such robbing the Muslims of their goal of decemating the 5million or so Jews there it was done. Since that time we have and are known as Big Satan with Isreal being Little Satan.
It is well past time we faced reality and instead of trying to make them love US we make them Fear and Respect US. Fear our wrath if they try US or our freinds and Respect our word when we tell them something.
The only way we can make them love US is give them Isreal and allow them to slaughter the 5million or so Jews who wont just cut roots and move so you and your LLL buddies can get some short lived love from the Radicals.
I think it is pretty obvious at this point that the war of attrition we are engaged in Iraq/Afghanistan against Iran/Syria is unwinnable since the US nation/people don’t have the heart fortitude to fight the long fight. Internal unchallenged Sedition from the LLL’s and the scars of Vietnam stop that.
That leaves two options Surrender or expand the fight into bombing and strikes on Iran definatley maybe also Syria forcing them at least to spread their resources out, at best pull thier limited resources back in to protect thier homeland first. Either way Iraq/Afghanistan will flare up then will drop back depending. Our Air Force and Navy is pretty much untapped and can force Iran to spend huge resources protecting the homeland and rebuilding the damage, fighting internal rebellion instead of supporting Iraq/Afghan insurgencies. In WW2 if we had not bombed Germany proper but instead just went with a rolling war of attrition in N Africa hell France wonder how that would have faired for US? Why don’t you look up how many German soldgiers 88mil guns not to mention fighters gas radar resources the Germans had to pour into defending their airspace over the homeland.
Jan 1, 2007 - 5:50 pm Econ-Scott:Both John Boyd and Sun Tzu have much to say about endless merkur-ial “strengthening relationships with surrounding governments” Let’s see now there is: Putins dictatorship, Saudi’s Wahhabi dictaorship, and Afgahnistan and Iraq, and the Tribal Provinces of Pahkistahn. Well 2 out of 5, for now, ain’t bad for starters.
Action and Inaction. Both will have consequences.
Making enemies of every Shia on earth by a bombing campaign, conventional of course, against Iranian Nuclear Assets. This would be something new ?
Do we need to rerun the film here of Jimmy Carter getting burned in effigy daily on the streets of Tehran starting in November 1974 ? What exactly do they mean by “Death to America” at every mass ralley since ? I wonder ? This IS a hard one to understand. Perhaps if we just hold hands with them and sing “Kumbayah”.
They’ve been bombing us (Kobar Towers) and sponsoring terrorism (Hezbollah Inc. Syria & Lebanon) since that time.
And setting up Hezbo cells in the U.S. Mexico and South America.
So what new here is Mekur afraid of ? They can “reach out and touch him” or his child’s school, right now by activating a U.S. cell.
1) Economics –
Iran has a crumbling oil-producing infrastructure, oil just doesn’t ooze itself out of the ground and walk onto a tanker, even if Hugo Chavez and his buddy Ahmadinjad command it to be so. Iran needs to make $3 bill a year investment in their oil infrastructure just to stay even let alone modernize, their not doing it. Neglected Oil reserviors don’t just go to sleep, they degrade to the point of nonrecovery of oil resources. Iran may see that happening in the coming years. A coalition of the willing and final ultimatum followed by a bombing campaign will do two things. Demonstrate to “Take over the world” theocracies, that you can only play some of the people for suckers some of the time. And force them to deal with an economic calamity for a long long time diverting their national energy & resources to rebuild their revenue capacity rather than nuke weapons materials.
This ought to be followed up with some kind of renewal of cold war brinksmanship with Russia who has been Schooling Iran’s Atom Squad for 30 years. The U.S. Political class thinks the Cold War is over, The Russians think the Cold War is Just different now. They’ve already re-nationalized their cash flow engine Oil&Gas Industry i.e. stolen assets Knowhow and technology after billions of western investment.
2) Iran’s SS –
Iran’s ayatollah’s has something like the Nazi SS, the Pasdaran, an Iranian Revolutionary Guard Force of 150,000+ to keep the Iranian Military, Iranian students, and Iranian democratic forces, under control, under constant surveillance and as needed under arrest. Lot’s of “extrajudicial killings” just to send home the message. The Pasdaran answers only to the Ayatollahs.
I’m not betting on an “Orange Revolution” to democratize Iran.
3) Whether it is a first strike on Iran or wait for Israel to get nuked then let their three submarines try to start the 2nd strike is irrelevant. Russia was completely under authoritarianism for 100 years. Iran is just a youngster at it and will be under authoritarian rule for a long time.
Iran is on it’s way to a bomb. Less than five years. Either they get bombed first or will be bombed second, it’s just a question of strategy and how many Israelis, European, and U.S. citizens we choose to sacrifice first before responding.
Jan 1, 2007 - 7:46 pm merkur:Spynverzyon:
As the war on terror has become more expensive (in terms of financial and human cost), does that mean that the US has “indulged” in it less? I would say no, that the commitment remains in place (at least in the executive branch) despite the rising costs. Clearly there are factors other than financial expense at play; and I would guess the same applies in Iran’s commitment to nuclear capability.
That’s a glib and facetious comparison; “the Shiites” aren’t “the Japanese”, and this isn’t World War Two. I don’t even understand what you mean by the “Shiites can afford to hate us now because it costs them little to do so,” as if hate is determined on a cost-benefit basis.
A fair point, but your thinking appears to be either that we bomb Iran or they become the hegemonic power in the region; I’d suggest that the situation is probably a bit more nuanced than that.
See my point above. This is not just about financial cost for Iran, a country that fought an eight year war against Iraq at a cost of 1 million casualties and over $300 billion. Do you really think that they’re going to throw their hands up and go, hey, this costs too much?
Incidentally Iran is one of the few countries in the world to actually have had WMD used against its armed forces and civilian populations in a war, but of course we don’t hear much about that these days.
Can you present any evidence at all that the “American left” had anything to do with constraining “our” will? And any evidence that the “credence” of the overall strategic plan was of any interest whatsoever to people in Iraq?
Jan 2, 2007 - 3:28 am merkur:I arrived in Baghdad four weeks after the deposal of Saddam. The first question I asked my driver was, “What do people think about America?” His answer – repeated many times over the next few weeks in my conversations with other Iraqis – was “We are very happy that they have removed Saddam, but we hope they leave very soon.”
C-Low:
From this, I’m guessing that you don’t actually know any Arabs. I’ve worked in Syria, Jordan and Iraq (pre- and post-war), and visited Tunisia, Lebanon, Dubai and Oman, and I’m here to tell you – not all Arabs hate “you”! Some of them quite like you; in fact, some of them admire and respect America, to the extent that they move there, do business there and study there. Unbelievable, I know, but it’s a crazy world we live in.
Incidentally, I hate to be the bearer of bad news as well, but the original post was about Iran, and the Iranians aren’t Arab. And yes, I’ve also worked in Iran, and no, not all of them hate “you”, either.
I couldn’t give a damn about “the Radicals”, if I even knew what you were talking about. I’m more interested in the lives of my friends – both Israeli and Arab – because they’re the ones that are going to have to live with the results of these decisions. At no point have I suggested that we allow 5 million people to be slaughtered; your implication that I would allow this is offensive.
Really? Just two options? And let me guess – one of them’s right and one of them’s wrong. I used to think the world was a complicated place, and that foreign policy decisions needed to be carefully thought out, but apparently not. It’s all just black and white!
Ah, the ghost of World War Two again. Can we stop talking about it now? The US military doesn’t think that World War Two provides a good basis for prosecuting this war, so why do you?
Jan 2, 2007 - 3:38 am merkur:Econ-Scott:
Can you explain what Boyd and Sun Tzu have to say about it? And also explain what “2 out of 5” means, since it seems to imply that we should invade every country in the region.
I’m assuming that to you, anything other than military force equals Inaction.
Apart from Iran, can you name one other “take over the world theocracy”?
If a “coalition of the willing and final ultimatum followed by a bombing campaign” didn’t work in Afghanistan and then Iraq, why do you think it’ll work over Iran? Theocracies all over the world will be saying, “wow, we didn’t believe it the first two times, but with this third thing…”
What is it with you people? This isn’t World War Two, and Iran is neither Germany or Japan. Stop fighting the last war, for god’s sake.
Hold on, I’m starting to see a pattern… So either “they get bombed first” or “will be bombed second.” I’ve got to stop thinking that the world is a complicated place, and realize that in the end, it’s just about either/or decisions, with no room for any kind of nuance. God, I’ve been a fool.
Jan 2, 2007 - 3:54 amPersonally, I’d like to avoid any loss of life, whether in Iran, Israel or the US, but clearly I’m in a minority.