Dealing with Iran
■"Taking on Tehran," by Kenneth Pollack and Roy Takeyh, Foreign Affairs, March/April 2005, pulled off the web at foreignaffairs.org.■"Iran Says It Won't Give Up Program to Enrich Uranium: U.S. suggests it will help Europe find incentives for Tehran," by Nazila Fathi, New York Times, 6 March 2005, p. A13.
Iran keeps sending signals that it won't be denied as a nuclear power, no matter what the economic carrots we offer. No, Tehran seems to be angling for something larger that just trade and investment. It wants to be recognized as THE security pillar in the region now that Saddam is gone and Israel seems ready to make peace.
Why no one sees this reality is beyond me. We keep thinking that we're going to give them some economic carrots that Iranians will munch on, and voila! All their security desires for acquiring the bomb will disappear. This only works when regimes don't want the bomb and simply want to get credit for walking away from that decision, but when they do want the bomb (either for security or prestige or diplomatic bargaining) these carrots are simply accepted and the quest continues. Meanwhile, we get played like dummies and the other side simply plays for time. In the end, they get the bomb and we get bupkis in the process.
And this is considered "realism" . . ..
Here's the summary on the FA piece by Pollack and Takeyh:
If Washington wants to derail Iran's nuclear program, it must take advantage of a split in Tehran between hard-liners, who care mostly about security, and pragmatists, who want to fix Iran's ailing economy. By promising strong rewards for compliance and severe penalties for defiance, Washington can strengthen the pragmatists' case that Tehran should choose butter over bombs.
Does that seem realistic to you? The hard-liners give up their guns because the pragmatists win more butter from a regime that's just demolished regimes to the country's east and west? "Oh well! If you give us some investment, then I guess we won't have to worry about huge numbers of your combat troops on both sides of our borders!"
What we have with Iran right now is a failure to communicate: the mullahs fear for their security and we keep acting like economic reform is the answer. We need to answer the security issues with security answers, and THEN we'll kill the mullahocracy with economic connectivity-not before.
Can we live with a nuclear Iran?
Hmmm. Even war-mongering Pollack (he of "let's-invade-Iraq-now-before-it-gets-the-bomb" CNN fame) seems to be wondering if this might not be the worst outcome:
It is an open question whether the United States could learn to coexist with a nuclear Iran. Since the death of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in 1989, Tehran's behavior has conveyed some very mixed messages to Washington. The mullahs have continued to define their foreign policy in opposition to the United States and have often resorted to belligerent methods to achieve their aims. They have tried to undermine the governments of Saudi Arabia and other U.S. allies in the Middle East; they have waged a relentless terrorist campaign against the U.S.-brokered Israeli-Palestinian peace process; and they have even sponsored at least one direct attack against the United States, bombing the Khobar Towers--a housing complex filled with U.S. troops--in Saudi Arabia in 1996. Although Tehran has been aggressive, anti-American, and murderous, its behavior has been neither irrational nor reckless. It has calibrated its actions carefully, showed restraint when the risks were high, and pulled back when threatened with painful consequences. Such calculations suggest that the United States could probably deter Iran even after it crossed the nuclear threshold. There is no question, however, that the United States, the Middle East, and probably the rest of the world would be better off if they did not have to deal with a nuclear Iran. The hard part, of course, is making sure that Tehran never gets to that point.
Hmmmm, an "open question" according to the hardest of the hard-core Gulf experts.
But rather than explore that concept, the rest of the article is just so much blah-blah-blah on economic carrots and diplomatic sticks.