Mitt Romney reminds us that there are no substantive differencs between administration policy on Iran and his own:

And if I am president, I will begin by imposing a new round of far tougher economic sanctions on Iran. I will do this together with the world if we can, unilaterally if we must. I will speak out forcefully on behalf of Iranian dissidents. I will back up American diplomacy with a very real and very credible military option. I will restore the regular presence of aircraft carrier groups in the Mediterranean and the Persian Gulf region simultaneously. I will increase military assistance to Israel and coordination with all of our allies in the region.

If you run through this list of proposals, there is nothing that the administration has not already done or proposed doing, except perhaps for the all-important difference of “speaking out forcefully.” Increased military assistance to Israel and Arab allies has been forthcoming. Unfortunately, there is an only too-credible military option behind current Iran policy, as we have all been discussing for the last week. The administation has hardly shied away from imposing unilateral sanctions on Iran.

Three-quarters of Romney’s op-ed is made up of recycled complaints that he and other hawks have been making for the last two and a half years, and the amazing thing is that all of these complaints are extremely weak and have been answered already. I won’t rehearse why scrapping the pointless missile defense plan for Poland and the Czech Republic didn’t matter, and the advantages to the U.S. of keeping track of the Russian nuclear arsenal with inspections are obvious. There is no point in going over yet again that the Green movement didn’t want foreign help. There was nothing practical that the U.S. could have done that it didn’t do to help them, but such is Romney’s famous “pragmatism” that he doesn’t care.

Greg Scoblete offers some possible reasons why the U.S. will not attack Iran, but I think he overestimates the importance of fiscal constraints, multilateralism, the need to “lead from behind,” and the desire to support the Iranian opposition. The final reason, the danger an Iranian war would pose to the U.S. and global economies, is so compelling that it would probably be enough by itself to stop any attack, but let’s consider the other four.

While an Iranian war would be fairly expensive, and could become even more so if it escalated, there are far fewer fiscal hawks than there are foreign policy hawks. The latter would point to the war with Iran and say, “We can’t possibly reduce military spending in the middle of a major war,” and they would probably insist that the military spending needed to be increased instead. The administration has hardly been eager to make real cuts in military spending as it is, and they will be even less interested in that if they started a new war. Fiscal constraints are not as binding on U.S. action as opponents of an attack would like to think.

It’s true that the Obama administration seems to care more about working through multilateral institutions than its predecessor did, and members of the administration were very interested to make sure that they had U.N. authorization for the war against Libya, but when it comes to countering perceived national security threats they have been perfectly happy to bypass the U.N. and even allied governments to do what was deemed necessary. Supporters of an attack on Iran incredibly believe that it would be an act of anticipatory self-defense, so they would assume that the U.S. needs no one else’s approval to act.

On a related point, “leading from behind” was an unfortunate quote given by an anonymous official that the administration has been trying to bury for months. Putting European governments at the forefront of the Libyan war was practical because the U.S. had nothing at stake there, but according to the administration the U.S. supposedly has a great deal at stake where Iran’s nuclear program is concerned. Opponents of an attack don’t really accept that the U.S. has a vital interest in delaying or disabling Iran’s nuclear program, so it’s easy to forget that the administration and Iran hawks consider it to be a problem that requires U.S. “leadership.” Unlike in Libya, there is no capable military alliance for the U.S. to use as political cover, and America’s local allies are neither willing nor capable to carry out a sustained military campaign against their larger neighbor. In any case, “leading from behind” was a rationalization after the fact for a war that the U.S. facilitated and helped to start. Future wars that are not primarily “humanitarian” in their justification will probably not be fought this way.

Greg is absolutely right that an attack on Iran would make it impossible for the U.S. to lend support to the Iranian opposition, and it would stoke anti-American feelings among even the most sympathetic dissidents. It would be politically devastating for the Iranian opposition. Political dissent would be even more difficult when the country is under attack, the vast majority of the Green movement would naturally resent a foreign attack on their country. There would be intense pressure to support the government for as long the war went on, and it would unite the opposition in support of Iran’s nuclear program as a matter of national pride and defiance of the attackers. A war with Iran would give the Iranian regime a new lease on life, and it would allow the regime to exploit patriotic and nationalist sentiments to consolidate its position at home. No credible Iranian dissident would dare associate with a foreign government engaged in military action against his country, and any dissident foolish enough to do so would help to discredit opposition forces. All of this is true, but I doubt that it would discourage the administration from attacking if it deemed it necessary.

Remember that some of the most vocal proponents of a war with Iran here in the U.S., including many prominent Democrats, have been happy to flack for the MEK, which they pretend is the most important Iranian opposition group despite its complete lack of support inside Iran. The Green movement abhors the MEK, and they see American support for the MEK as a disaster for their movement, but this doesn’t matter to MEK advocates, because helping a legitimate Iranian opposition isn’t what interests them. There was a time when the fortunes of the Green movement seemed to matter to Iran hawks here in the U.S., but that was when American hawks thought that the Green movement might be a useful mechanism for subverting the Iranian regime. Once it became clear that this wasn’t going to happen and wasn’t even their goal, interest in the Green movement fizzled and disappeared.

I should make clear that I believe that three of these four are perfectly good reasons why the U.S. should not attack Iran, but I doubt they will have much impact on the final decision. We can hope that the administration will opt for containment rather than war. Greg is probably right that this is what Obama will decide, but if so it will be because Iran can be contained and deterred, and because it does not pose the threat that Iran hawks claim that it does.

At the end of another bad column, Bret Stephens writes this:

A final thought: What would a strike on Iran do for President Obama’s re-election chances? Improve them, I should think. At least it would be one inarguable accomplishment on which to run.

Yes, Stephens would think this, because he thinks starting another unnecessary, unjustified war is an accomplishment rather than a massive policy failure. It is almost certain that the U.S. would suffer significant costs in the aftermath of an attack on Iran, and the damage to the global economy would probably be enough to guarantee defeat for the incumbent next year. Attacking Iran would worsen all of the negative factors working against Obama’s re-election. More to the point, it wouldn’t accomplish anything, except to kill many Iranians and precipitate a conflict that would kill many Americans and Israelis. What would Obama be running on exactly? That he blundered into an avoidable war? I can just imagine Obama’s campaign pitch if he made the horrible mistake of launching the attack: “I embarked on a war that had no chance of achieving its objectives, and which will guarantee an accelerated Iranian drive for a nuclear arsenal. Despite no immediate or real threat to the United States or our allies, I have committed U.S. forces to yet another war. In doing so, I have exposed American soldiers and sailors and many allied states to retaliation that will drag the entire region into a larger conflict.”

Sounds like a winning message!

Update: Robert Farley doesn’t think Obama would benefit very much politically from ordering an attack:

Third, while Rothkopf seems to think that Obama will enjoy a significant domestic bump from the attack, I’m not at all certain. It’s true that Presidents tend to get a temporary bump during foreign policy crises, but it’s just as well known that this bump fades. In this case, I suspect that Obama would enjoy temporary support from “independents” while permanently losing a small but crucial portion of his base. I also doubt that the international uncertainty surrounding an attack will have any benefits for the US economy. It is by no means clear, however, that Obama and his advisors share this view of the domestic consequences of an attack.

Like Rothkopf, I have thought that Obama might be willing to follow through on his Iran rhetoric. He has always held a completely conventional position on Iran’s nuclear program, and he has trapped himself by insisting repeatedly that an Iranian bomb would be “unacceptable.” In this case, we have to hope that he is not as foolish as his policy statements to date would suggest.

Second Update: As part of his discussion of the IAEA report and Iran’s nuclear program, Richard Weitz explains why airstrikes on Iranian facilities will not succeed:

Due to the configuration of the Iranian program, a surgical airstrike is no longer a viable option for stopping Iran’s nuclear progress. The only way to accomplish that would be for the United States to repeat the strategy it misapplied against Iraq in 2003: invade the country, establish a pliant government, and spend months if not years identifying and destroying all possible nuclear weapons sites. And Iran today is a much more powerful adversary than Iraq was in 2003.

This should drive home just how crazy the idea of starting a war with Iran is.

Benny Morris describes the Israeli debate over attacking Iran:

The past fortnight has witnessed an unprecedented, open public debate in the Israeli media about whether, and when, to attack Iran’s nuclear installations. While in the past six decades, Israel’s wars have often been followed by debates about this or that political or military aspect, or even the justice of a given war (vide Israel’s Sinai Campaign in 1956 and Israel’s invasion of southern Lebanon in 1982), none have ever been preceded by major, principled, open discussion.

It’s remarkable that no other major Israeli war was preceded by such a debate, but as far as I can tell Morris is right. This should underscore just how wrong Beinart was in his enthusiasm for the “functioning” of the Israeli political and military system. Leaving that aside, what is more remarkable is that the speculation about an Israei and/or U.S. attack on Iran has been a staple of American discourse for most of the last ten years, and Western politicians and pundits have been proclaiming their willingness to start a war with Iran for all that time, yet somehow we continue to pretend that it would be a preventive and defensive measure rather than a completely unjustified and unnecessary attack. It’s interesting that there is a major debate in Israel about whether to launch such an attack, but it’s depressing to think that so many people actually believe it to be necessary and justfied.

Morris doesn’t gloss over the many dangers that would accompany an attack, which Aaron David Miller also describes at length here, but like Miller he overstates the significance of Iran’s acquisition of nuclear weapons. When Miller describes Israel as “a tiny nation living on the knife’s edge,” are we meant to take him seriously, or is this a rhetorical concession he is making to Iran hawks so that his article will receive a hearing? When Morris writes that almost all Israeli Jews believe a nuclear-armed Iran “represents a mortal threat to Israel’s existence,” does it not occur to him that common sense tells us that they are wrong?

Walter Russell Mead makes an odd remark:

One reason that nationalist groups all over Europe and the Middle East demanded states of their own is that the multinational states worked so poorly. The Ottoman Empire, the Austro-Hungarian monarchy (the best of the bunch, but still slow, corrupt and incompetent at many things), the Russian Empire: all were overwhelmed by the tasks of governing diverse populations in an age of rapid development and social change.

No, what they were overwhelmed by was the task of competing with more modernized states in the largest international conflict up to that point in history. Had they made different choices before and during 1914, all three of these empires could have avoided the conflagration that consumed them, and it is more than likely that they could have survived for quite a while had they not plunged into that war. Russian and Ottoman policies leading to their involvement in WWI contributed to the destruction of both empires, as Michael Reynolds has detailed very well in his Shattering Empires. As Reynolds says, the CUP “gambled and lost everything.” He then writes of Russian policy in this period:

Although it is impossible to know with certainty whether a less aggressive policy toward the Ottoman empire before the war would have caused Istanbul to maintain neutrality or whether Russia later might have induced Istanbul to leave the war, the outcome of tsarist foreign policy could not have been worse.

As for the claim that these states “worked so poorly,” I suppose it depends on what one means by “working.” Certainly, they were designed to “work” for the benefit of the empire’s institutions, their respective monarchies, and the maintenance of the government’s control over large territories. The far more significant reason for nationalist separatist movements in these empires was the nationalist conviction that each people should naturally have its own independent state. Once multinational dynastic states came to be seen as something merely imposed on subject peoples, and national independence was equated with liberation, it didn’t matter very much whether they “worked” well or not.

Like Joshua Keating, I’m skeptical that “identity wars” are something all that new in Africa and Asia. The persistence of politicizing ethnicity is worrisome, it can be very disruptive, and it’s certainly true that Kyrgyzstan is riven by some serious divisions, which Bakiyev and his former allies opportunistically stoked when he was overthrown. One sure way to encourage more of this phenomenon is to promote self-determination and separatist causes around the world. Unfortunately, that tends to be the default American response to many conflicts inside other states.

Rick Santorum has an active imagination:

Imagine if Honduras has been making noise about trying to destroy the United States and that they were developing a nuclear weapon, and we had a report saying they were in a few months of developing a nuclear weapon. Would we just sit there knowing that they had made comments that they would destroy our country and they were about to get a nuclear weapon? Would we sit there and allow them do that? I don’t think any Americans would let that happen. In fact, the president would be impeached for letting that happen.

Alarmist rhetoric about foreign threats is nothing new for Santorum, but it is unusual when Santorum’s rhetoric has the effect of making the threat he’s describing (i.e., the Iranian threat to Israel) seem smaller than it really is. I suppose he picked Honduras because it is not that far away from the United States, but otherwise the comparison is baffling. Honduras is an extremely poor country, and it wouldn’t have the resources to develop such a weapon even if it wanted one. If the Honduran government inexplicably started threatening the U.S. with annihilation, our government would have to assume that they were engaging in meaningless bluster.

Someone will object that Santorum isn’t really talking about Honduras, but wants to make a point that a nuclear threat from a regional neighbor is so intolerable that it would demand preventive war. Even so, Santorum isn’t making any sense. If there were a Honduran nuclear threat, the U.S. nuclear arsenal would be more than enough to deter Honduras (or indeed any nuclear-armed state in existence). The idea that a country so much weaker and more vulnerable to attack would make such direct threats is hard to take seriously, and it’s even more ridiculous that Santorum would think that any presidential response short of preventive war would be deserving of impeachment. The standard argument for preventive war against Iran is that the current Iranian regime is fundamentally irrational, and because of this it cannot be deterred. All of that hinges on an extremely tendentious, unfounded mythology of the Iranian regime as a “martyr state,” and it’s complete nonsense, but at least it tries to account for why traditional deterrence is not possible with Iran. As Santorum tells it here, he seems to think traditional deterrence is completely useless, and he evidently believes that preventive war is the only appropriate way to respond to a nuclear threat. Why anyone would take policy recommendations from someone with such a dangerously militaristic view is beyond me.

Robert Merry considers modern Turkey in light of Samuel Huntington’s “Clash of Civilizations” thesis:

In fact, there is little danger that Turkey, a relatively stable democracy for nearly a century, will turn into an Islamist dictatorship. And the country’s recent moves away from the strong secularism of its modern founder, Kemal Ataturk, far from a cause of concern, should be greeted in the West as a healthy development. And Huntington explains why, although he died in 2008 and wrote before the emergence of Turkey’s prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, architect of the strategic changes in Turkish policy that so rankle some Americans.

We can debate just how democratic Turkey has been for much of the last century, but Merry’s larger point is valid. Indeed, Turkey’s political development since the death of Ataturk has been one of gradual democratization, which has accelerated in the last two decades. We shouldn’t panic if Turkey did become less secular, but we also shouldn’t exaggerate how far Turkey has moved away from Kemalist secularism. For all of the hyperventilating about the AKP, Turkey is still under a secular constitution. Whether or not decreasing secularism would be a healthy development for Turkey is for Turkish citizens to decide, but there is no real reason for the U.S. to fear it.

There is a danger that Turkey is turning back into a one-party state thanks to the successes of the AKP and the hopeless state of the Kemalist opposition, but most of the concerns we hear about the AKP in the West center on the substance of Turkish foreign policy rather than its domestic abuses of power. The nostalgia for a more activist Turkish military that some Westerners seem to feel is mostly an expression of anxiety that Turkey no longer falls in line as it once did. As Merry writes:

This is difficult to accept for those who want America to hold sway wherever in the world it may wish to hold sway at any given time. They want Turkey to play the same role vis-à-vis America that it played during the Cold War. But the Cold War is over, and Turkey is playing a role now much more in keeping with its true heritage. As Huntington predicted, “At some point, Turkey could be ready to give up its frustrating and humiliating role as a beggar pleading for membership in the West and to resume its much more impressive and elevated historical role as the principal Islamic interlocutor.”

P.S. Read Lewis McCrary’s profile of Robert Merry and his editorial role at The National Interest from the current issue of TAC.

Peter Beinart makes the case for why conservatives should be satisfied with Romney:

It’s true that Romney could, if he really cared, derail this process, and choose someone with a passion for say, mine safety. But if he did, the decision would produce ripples of discontent: An angry phone call from a Republican member of Congress or large campaign donor. Negative chatter on the conservative blogs. And who would rise in Romney’s defense as he alienated the conservatives who run today’s GOP? The moderate Republican caucus in Congress? Washington’s influential moderate Republican think tanks? The moderate Republican talking heads you keep seeing on Fox? If anyone rose to his defense, it would be the Sierra Club or the New York Times editorial page, which in conservative eyes would compound the offense. A few high-profile decisions like that and the Wall Street Journal would start muttering about the ghost of George H.W. Bush, who lost reelection after a conservative challenged him in the Republican primary.

Assuming Romney can win the general election, this underestimates the incentives Romney will have to ignore conservative discontent once he is in office, and it overestimates conservative willingness to oppose a Republican President. George W. Bush was probably the least conservative President in the substance of his policies since Nixon, but a combination of partisan tribal loyalty, post-9/11 solidarity, and traditional deference to presidential leadership kept most conservatives’ complaints to a minimum or prevented them from being voiced at all. Bush drove through significant expansion of the federal role in education, he pushed through the largest expansion of the welfare state since the 1960s, and he actively defied the party base on immigration during both terms. There were some criticisms and objections to this, but apart from some honorable exceptions there was remarkably little resistance and even less alienation prior to the 2006 midterms. After 2006, conservatives began abandoning the sinking ship, but the immigration debate in 2007 was the only time that Bush faced a large-scale revolt.

Bush assumed that he could take conservatives for granted, and he could, which is what he proceeded to do. Bush presented himself as a conservative while arguably governing farther to the left than anyone, including his father, in the previous thirty years. Most conservatives accepted the act, and largely ignored the substance. If there’s one thing we know about Romney, it is that he is quite capable of pretending to be conservative without being one. He may govern that way for as long as he believes it is advantageous, but there is nothing to stop him from keeping up the pretense of conservatism while enacting policies that are nothing of the kind.

My column on Greece and Europe for The Week is now online.