- 14 June 2011
- 0 Comments
- Diplomacy, Events in Iran, Human Rights in Iran, Nuclear file, US-Iran War
We’re slowly reaching a critical point in the nuclear impasse with Iran.
If you listen to Iran hawks on the right, Iran is hell bent on getting a nuclear weapon. They just know that’s what Iran wants, despite, as Roger Cohen suggests, no evidence or logical basis supporting their conclusion.
Unfortunately, there’s been little to no push back against what sounds eerily familiar to the rhetoric coming out of neo-cons in 2002, pre-Iraq invasion.
Keeping quiet could lead us beyond the point of no return, where no matter what we do or say or what calculus we use, the end result is a strike on Iranian nuclear facilities. Of course, many Iran-hawks will portray this as a “limited strike” sortie, where only nuclear facilities are attacked. But if “limited strike” doesn’t sound a whole lot like “slam dunk” or “cake walk,” you might not be listening closely enough.
For us to assume Iran would not respond to “limited strikes”, that Iran would slow or end its enrichment of uranium, that Iran would somehow become more pliant in its reporting, and that the rest of the Middle East would remain quiet, is recklessly naive at best.
I want to be clear before I go forward. I don’t support an Iranian pursuit of nuclear weapons. But the fact is Iran has not decided to actually begin a nuclear weapons program. The only conclusion we can draw from a new IAEA report is that they are still in the investigations phase, despite attempts to suggest otherwise. And Iran still hasn’t decided if they actually want a program, and, if they do, what will it look like. As I’ve written previously, all major intelligence analysis points to this conclusion as well.
Unfortunately, some have decided, despite the fact Iran is within boundaries of international law circumscribing uranium enrichment and despite the fact Iran remains operating within the framework of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, the US needs to threaten Iran for its transgressions—as Senator Lieberman’s questioning of Leon Panetta at his recent confirmation hearings would suggest. What we have to understand is that, in many ways, the policy coming out of Tehran is in large part a response to such threats. (Disclaimer, this doesn’t mean that Iran is helping its cause by being evasive regarding their program.)
This means that they could decide they are safer with nuclear weapons, or with people thinking they have nuclear weapons. We have to refrain, however, from accelerating any decision by Iran to seek nuclear weapons. Far worse, however, would be a self-fulfilling prophecy–an attack on Iran that drives them to decide to weaponize. As my former professor Dr. Robert Farley, at the University of Kentucky’s Patterson School of Diplomacy and Commerce says, “Angels weep when we mistake pre-emptive strikes with preventative strikes.”