Iran will reach for the bomb when it's damn well ready!
■"Nuclear Weapon Is Years Off For Iran, Research Panel Says," by Alan Cowell, New York Times, 7 September 2005, p. A11.
Iran, if it really wanted to throw caution to the wind, says a group of international experts, could have a nuclear weapon by 2010, otherwise it would take much longer. Of course, since we know so little of what goes on in Iran on this subject, this estimate could be off by a ways.
So let's just say Iran is within negotiating range of being a nuclear power and that it's measured pace reflects a leadership that knows nukes are for having, not using. Because, after all, if they really wanted a nuke bad so they could use it pronto, they'd probably have it by now. But just buying a hot nuke isn't the same as being recognized as a nuclear power (the capacity to build your own), which means being recognized as a major security player, which is really Iran's goal in all of this (plus, obviously, taking them off the "to do" list in the Pentagon).
It has been said that Gorbachev chose political reform before economic reform in the old USSR, whereas Deng chose economic reform before political reform in China. This is why the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) is still ruling in China and the CPSU (Communist Party of the Soviet Union) is defunct in a technical sense (although a weak successor party lives on in Russia). What the mullahs are doing in Iran, in my estimation, is this: they want to "re-form" the country's security profile before engaging in any serious economic change, so fearful are they that any economic liberalization will put the ruling elite at risk both politically at home and externally in terms of security. They hope that if they can lock in their rule from the possibility of foreign military intervention (meaning us), they should be able to balance some economic liberalization without sacrificing too much in their political control. In effect, the mullahs want a security guarantee up front on no regime change, and they believe nukes will get it for them.
You know what? Given the size of the population and the regime's growing energy ties to China and India, nukes will most definitely put them over the top. This is something we need to understand: we will not negotiate this capability away, the mullahs simply want it too much. If we want to get to the economic opening-up part, we need to help Iran "reform" its security profile first. Since that effort should logically get us what we need from Iran (quid pro quo) in Baghdad, Beirut and Jerusalem, we should send "Nixon" to Tehran sooner than later. Because, after a while, Iran will get far enough along in that process that the hard-liners will increasingly begin defining that sense of sufficient security in terms of what the East (China, India, Asia in general) can offer them, not the West (U.S.-dominated NATO, from which Tehran would logically assume it could break off the Europeans-or at least Germany and France).
My point is this: all these calculations regarding nuclear end games really speaks to the cessation of our diplomatic freedom as much or more than Tehran's. In other words, their situation improves over time, ours does not, and they are in control of the progression, we are not.
Our intransigence on this is very odd to me, because it effectively kills the ability of the Bush Administration to both lock in existing gains from the Big Bang and to propel its advance. Move on Iran diplomatically now and the Big Bang lives. Dig in your heels solely over nukes and the Middle East will look largely unchanged 20 years from now.
I know, I know, many would look at my argument and say that, if pursued, we'd be making a mockery of the sacrifices already rendered in Iraq. But my argument is the exact opposite: do this now so as to make those sacrifices worthwhile. Otherwise, we're simply pissing them away slowly over time.
The Middle East isn't our Petri dish alone to mess with. Asia won't stand still over the next twenty years. Either we connect the Middle East to the world or the regimes there will cut their separate deal with Asia, and Osama's dream of civilizational apartheid will be achieved.