Ignoring Reality
Iran is a case in point: Wishing to show flexibility, Obama put Iran’s demand for uranium enrichment on the table, effectively reversing three unanimous or near unanimous Security Council resolutions reaffirming the illegality of the Islamic Republic’s program. Tehran promptly rejected Obama’s deal but claimed victory because Obama had inadvertently affirmed Tehran’s right to enrichment. ~Anna Borshchevskaya
This is why our debate on Iran policy is so poor. Iran policy hawks falsely claim that Iran does not have a guaranteed right to enrichment under the Non-Proliferation Treaty, and the rest of us are supposed to pretend that these people have some credibility discussing these matters. In fact, the NPT requires that Iran follow IAEA guidelines while it is enriching uranium. The resolutions in question have ordered suspension of enrichment on account of those technical violations. They do not claim that Iran’s program is itself illegal, nor do they claim that Iran does not have a right to enrichment, but that Iran has violated certain safeguards. In other words, it is no great concession to accept that Iran has a right to enrichment.
The relevant issue as far as the administration has been concerned is whether Iran will abuse that right to build nuclear weapons. To insist that Iran should not even have the right to enrichment for peaceful purposes is not only to be extremely unreasonable, but it also requires ignoring what the NPT permits. Little wonder that the Iranian government has threatened to leave the confines of the NPT. Iran sees that states that are not bound by the treaty can acquire quite large nuclear arsenals and proliferate as much as they like, and it also sees that there is an excessive opposition even to Iran’s right to enrichment, so it may not be much longer before Iran takes the perfectly predictable and self-interested step of abandoning the treaty and thereby circumventing the only legal framework there is to compel Iranian compliance.
The rest of Borshchevskaya’s article isn’t much better. She stresses the importance of the Lebanese elections earlier this year, which basically endorsed the status quo of a closely divided country in which the March 8 forces actually represented a majority of Lebanese voters. Jumblatt’s party was part of the winning March 14 coalition, and almost immediately he was talking about bringing Hizbullah in as part of a unity government. The triumphant narrative reported in the Western press of some sort of electoral “victory” over Hizbullah was simply wrong. Hizbullah has become increasingly influential in Lebanese politics, especially since the war in 2006, and Suleiman is in no more position to oppose this than were his predecessors. Suleiman became president because he was an acceptable unity candidate, and he has the difficult task of preventing the country from slipping back into civil war. Borshchevskaya would have the administration ignore the political and military realities of Lebanon, pretend that the March 14 forces represent a majority view of Lebanese and believe that the only thing keeping them down is Syrian influence. As it is, the administration seems to be trying to help the Lebanese president keep his country from descending into renewed civil strife, and somehow this is counted as a “failure” of Obama’s foreign policy.
It is no doubt true, as Mr. Larison points out, that the various pundits, political leaders, NGOs and government spokesmen consistently point out that the Islamic Republic has no right to enrichment under the NPT, a stance starkly at odds with reality and even the barest glance of the actual treaty itself. When I read or hear such pronouncements, I immediately discount them; one is not likely to hear wisdom from a person who starts from a false basic, underlying premise.
This deception is particularly galling coming from Israeli officials, or even run-of-the-mill Jewish commentators, since such dissembling strongly implies that treaties containing the same text mean one thing for Muslim signatories and quite another for Jewish ones.
However, the fact that the anti-Iran crowd and the usual suspects have resorted to an outright lie to advance their cause does not necessarily mean that the real issue at stake here may be ignored. For the bottom line is this: should the United States of America allow the Islamic Republic to obtain nuclear enrichment technology and capability which could lead to the production of an atomic bomb, the NPT be damned?
At the risk of sounding like a raging neo-con war-mongering chicken-hawk running dog, to me the answer to that question is astoundingly clear. In fact, it doesn’t really take much reasoning to get to the right answer, even if the boring and increasingly irrelevant mainstream conservative crowd is lying about the Islamic Republic’s established rights under the NPT.
For here we have a country which: 1) is openly and publicly committed to the destruction of the United States, to the point where “Death to America” is daubed on the walls of the Foreign Ministry and is the sign-off tag line of its leaders in much the same way “God Bless America” is of American ones; 2) has a long track record of actively supporting international terrorist groups in carrying out that policy; and, to my mind most importantly, 3) despite its violation of international law, support for terrorist groups, violation of the most basic tenets of diplomatic law and procedure, the Islamic Republic has never faced any serious adverse consequences as a result of its actions.
The result is a fanatically anti-American regime, with a demonstrated will to attack America and Americans wherever it can, and which now has a 30-year history of never paying any serious costs for doing so.
The question of how this regime came to be fanatically anti-American and what to do about it is a separate issue. The question that must be now, or soon, will go a lot like this:
“Well, Mr. President, out best estimate is that Iran is about 3-6 months from producing its first bomb. What? Well, yes, we were wrong about Iraq, that’s true. But we don’t think we’re wrong this time. Here’s the evidence we have. Here’s the assessment of our French, German and British allies. Here also is the assessment of Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. Not as reliable, but just so you have the complete picture. And, as you know, the Iranian government has quite openly supported terrorist groups that have attacked Americans to deadly effect many times in the past and, hell, who knows if they are serious, but their stated policy is the famous ‘Death to America.’ That’s the best we got, Mr. President. What is your order, sir?”
I submit that no matter who is in that chair, nor how much lying the anti-Iran crowd has engaged in about the provisions of the NPT to that point, the answer to that question is abundantly clear.
KevinV12000, it looks like you’re willing to believe the worst about a people or the government of those people in order to justify another preventive war or attack.
Have you considered what it is like to be surrounded on two sides by forces of a hostile power that is quite belligerent and often threatening in its behavior towards your nation?
I don’t particularly fault Iran for wanting to build a nuclear deterrent. At the same time paranoia obviously drives much of that desire.
I don’t particularly fault them for wanting to build a nuclear detererrent either. If I were a leader of the Islamic Republic, this is the course I would be taking.
One does not have to believe the worst in people to take from Iran’s track record what it is. It has directly armed, trained and funded groups with the specific goal of killing Americans.
We *could* take the chance that they wouldn’t do that with nuclear weapons, but that’s one hell of a chance.
And, MAD doesn’t work here. The Iranians aren’t going to launch some big Made In Iran missle. Some shawdowy new, previously unknown group will take credit, and where will that leave us.
There are a number of ways out of the current situation short of war with the Islamic Republic. And, in any case, the current USG is incapable of waging such a war sucessfully.
The point is that when you strip the political arguments aside and merely look at this as a threat assessment, given the track record there is not much question as to which way a prudent leader would lean.
Yes, I can remember all those times during the past 30 years when Iran has carried out an attack in the United States, such as…actually, I can’t think of any at all. I guess they’re just amazingly lazy & incompetent.