Today John McCain outlined his path forward on Iran. He started by mocking Barack Obama's proposals for engagement claiming that they've been tried before and failed. He completely mischaracterized Obama's position which is about tough and direct negotiations. He instead argued for continuing the failed policies of the Bush Administration, calling for more sanctions and international pressure and refusing to engage with Iran. The problem with this approach is that for the past eight years it has yielded no results: Iran has gotten stronger, its uranium enrichment program has continued unabated, and it now possesses 3,000 nuclear centrifuges as opposed to zero. The course that McCain is proposing has yielded nothing. Continuing on this path ensures that at some time in the future whether it be three, five or ten years, Iran will be in a position to attain a nuclear weapon. At that point the President's options will be limited to either striking Iran militarily - a costly endeavor that in the long run is unlikely to slow down Iran's nuclear program - or allowing Iran to go nuclear. Direct diplomacy won't necessarily solve all of our problems but it is surely better than the current failed course, and it is worth trying.
McCain argues that the Clinton Administration already tried engaging in 1998 and that the entreaties were rebuffed. He's right. Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei vetoed any talks at that time. But McCain is selectively cherry picking history. The story of the last 15 years between Iran and the U.S. is one of missed opportunities on both sides. The best example is from 2003, where right after the start of the Iraq War senior officials in the Iranian Foreign Ministry sent the "Grand Bargain fax" to the Bush Administration outlining what a deal between the U.S. and Iran might look like. The Bush Administration decided not to respond because of its position of strength at the time and the belief that Iranian reformists couldn't deliver on their promises. In the late 1980s and early 1990s Iran worked to have Hezbollah release all of the American hostages in Lebanon and in exchange expected greater engagement from the United States. But while the first Bush Administration had signaled that it would in fact engage after the 1992 U.S. Presidential elections, when they lost, the Clinton Administration decided instead opt for a dual containment policy. Elements in the Iranian government who had supported engagement with the U.S. ended up feeling spurned. The story is much more complicated than: "the U.S. has tried talking and Iran has refused."
McCain also portrays Ahmadinejad as the man to negotiate with in Iran. First of all, Obama is not proposing sitting down for direct talks with Ahmadinejad but with the Iranian government. Second, as Joe Klein has pointed out - and McCain has refused to acknowledge - Khameini - not Ahmadinejad - runs Iran's foreign policy.
McCain also claims that Iran has a comprehensive offer on the table from the Europeans and since it has not accepted, it would never accept an offer from the United States. But the Europeans don't have massive armies on both of Iran's borders. They are not perceived as being the security threat to Iran. Iran is concerned about the United States and is afraid that if it came to an agreement with the Europeans, it would then have to renegotiate the entire deal with the United States. Direct talks with the United States would in fact be meaningfully different.
McCain argues that talking with the Iranian regime would empower
extremists instead of moderates. But as Matt Duss points out
As for "increasing the prestige" of Ahmadinejad, as Iran analysts Vali Nasr and Ray Takeyh pointed out last December, Ahmadinejad's prestige has benefited from the bellicose rhetoric coming from American conservatives, allowing him "to suppress dissent and divert attention from domestic woes to international crises he is only too happy to fuel."
McCain also claims that he will support for comprehensive sanctions, but those sanctions will be ineffective if they are not agreed to by countries such as China and Russia, who are significant trading partners with Iran and to this point have stopped the Bush Administration from imposing tougher UN sanctions. These sanctions are nice in theory but McCain won't be able to implement them. In fact, the only way that they could be implemented was if the United States made a genuine effort to engage Iran and its entreaties were rebuffed. Under that scenario the international community would likely be much more willing to go along with sanctions, if it was perceived that Iran was wholly in the wrong and all good faith efforts had been made to resolve the situation.
In the end, McCain's plan is basically the Bush plan. If we continue down this track then Iran will simply continue to enrich uranium and at some point whether it be three, five or ten years from now an American President will be faced with the choice of having to either bomb Iran or let it go nuclear. Instead, what is needed a comprehensive rethink of America's strategy.
At NSN we have written a paper on such an approach. It involves direct and tough negotiations with Iran's government, without preconditions, on all issues including Iraq, terrorism and the nuclear question. It's absolutely critical that these talks take place so that at the very least the Iranians are actually clear about American position and vice versa and to open up a channel for communication. Our strategy is also not opposed to economic sanctions and incentives as long as they are used responsibly as part of an actual strategy to get the Iranian government to change its behavior. Sanctions without a broader strategy are useless and only further alienate the Iranians. The strategy also argues that while we are strongly opposed to a bombing campaign against Iran and see tremendous costs for such actions, threats of force can sometimes be useful. But they have to be credible and they again have to be part of a comprehensive strategy to change behavior. What we have right now from John McCain and the Bush Administration is simply needless saber rattling that inflames nationalist passions on both sides.
No one is actually proposing the straw man position that John McCain posited this morning. No one thinks that we can simply wish this problem away through direct talks. But many, including the bi-partisan Iraq Study Group, believe that there is some benefit to careful, direct and tough diplomacy. It sure beats McCain's status quo proposal, which is essentially to do nothing.
Neither does the World War II model but that hasn't stopped you from screaming "Neville Chamberlain!!!!" all day long.
The same could happen with Obama. He meets with Iran, they sense he is weak (they will be right). Afterwards, they annex part of Iraq, and Obama then has to give them something to get them to leave. Once again, our enemy will gain while we lose because of the naivete of our leader. Those who do not learn from the past are doomed to repeat it.
Regime change should be our goal in Iran. We should continue to squeeze them until they either break down and decide to join the civilized world, or their regime falls and is hopefully replaced with a regime that does want to live in the civilized world.
Kruschev also feared that if we were to find out just how weak the Soviet Union really that we would attack THEM.
Our policy toward Iran is one of the most hypocritical jokes in history ... except that we'll probably get more people killed with the same bungling incompetence demonstrated in Iraq if we keep it up, and that's not a particularly funny joke.
In this day and age when gas prices are souring and those resources will soon be depleted, we should not interfere with their goals of higher technology.
Israel is the only country in that region to have and UNDECLARED Nuclear Arsenal. Lest we forget our own NIE report that stated Iran has nothing.
We rattle the sabre at the country where most people love Americans and women get to vote, drive, and hold elective office.
Something is wrong with that picture.
Earth to neocons idiots. Historically, diplomacy has not been used as a 'reward' to other nations for doing all we demand. Its *supposed* to be a tool to convince other nations of the wisdom of doing what we'd like.
First of all, there's the assumption that it's really a good idea to stir up the hornet's-nest of war just so that you can sell weaponry to both sides ... as the United States does throughout the Middle East to the tune of billions of dollars per year.
Second, there's the assumption that "nuclear weapons" are really as important to other nations as our military-industrial complex would like for them to be. There is nothing that a conventional-military mind likes more than "a bigger, badder explosion." But international relations are not made out of explosives of any kind.
Finally, and related to the second, there's the assumption that any interest whatsoever that any nation might possibly have in nuclear material must be related to weapons production. How about electric power? Oil's going to run out very soon, and the producers know it best.
When you are in the business of war, everything looks like a war, and everything else looks like a weapon. Sure, I acknowledge that there are some REALLY BAD people out there, but, as (Five-Star!) General "Ike" Eisenhower aptly observed, every dollar spent on war is a hungry mouth and an un-clothed child.
Most of the Arab world is of the same opinion.
You know it is so funny that we have all these experts telling Obama why he is wrong, but not one of them has an idea of why he wrong and what is a better course of action. They just offer assumptions. Arrogant ones at that.
What harm can opening dialogue cause? Either it works, or we have a better understanding of why it did not. Either way we come out ahead in our understanding of Iran.
It has become relatively fashionable for some members of the Israeli lobby to deny any involvement in the build-up towards the war on Iraq. But few remember what AIPAC executive director Howard Kohr told the New York Sun in January 2003: "Quietly lobbying Congress to approve the use of force in Iraq was one of AIPAC's successes over the past year."
And in a New Yorker profile of Steven Rosen, AIPAC's policy director during the run-up to the war on Iraqi, it was stated that "AIPAC lobbied Congress in favor of the Iraqi war".
Compare it with a 2007 Gallup study based on 13 different polls, according to which 77% of American Jews were opposed to the Iraq war, compared to 52% of Americans.
Walt and Mearsheimer contend "the war was due in large part to the lobby's influence, and especially its neo-con wing. The lobby is not always representative of the larger community for which it often claims to speak."
Missed opportunities to make peace with Iran? Where? A "grand bargain fax" from a powerless foreign minister is a worthless piece of paper, worthless like Khatami's "dialogue of civilizations" which fooled Bill Clinton and was just a ruse to get economic concessions from the gullible West. What is so useless about a US President engaging in direct talks with Iran is that he cannot meet with his Iranian counterpart: Iran's Supreme Leader.
The Supreme Leader does not meet with non-Moslem leaders. In fact, I defy anyone to show me where Khamenie or his predecessor ever met with a leader of a non-Moslem state . In other words, leader to leader negotiations are impossible with the mullahs unless you are a Moslem. The non-Moslem Obama would be forced to meet with the nut ball Ahmadenijad who he admits is not the man to talk to in Iran.
Apparently Obama is ignorant of the Supreme Leader's iron rule. This is just one in dozens of examples showing how foolish, inept and unprepared Obama is to be Commander and Chief. Obama's claim of being a foreign policy genius excelling in his knowledge Clinton and McCain combined is pretentious nonsense.
Putin Meets Ali Khamenie Face-to-Face
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/IJ26Ak06.html
Apparently you are ignorant of the Supreme Leader's activities; just an example showing how foolish, inept and unprepared you were just to write a response to a blog entry.
Obambi's stance on Iran talks, as with other main issues, reveals an adept tap dancin' routine to squirm away from his dumb thoughts when they get revealed -- by him. Saying he will sit down for talks with Iran, as if talks haven't been ongoing for years, indicates the fool can't process confrontational problems.
Civilian Casualties
===============
WWI -------10%
WWII ------ 50%
Vietnam -- 70%
Iraq -------- 90%
Iran -------- ???
I think we have more than enough of the blood of children on our hands, thanks very much. Let's try to talk.
Achmadinejad never threatened to "wipe Israel off the map"-this myth continues to be repeated and perpetuated by the MSM. What Achmadinejad said was actually something like,"...the regime occupying Jerusalem (al qu'dsh?) would dissapear from the pages of time..." or something very similar, not too different from what Reagan said about the "evil empire...going into the (dustbin?) of history..."
Iran has no record of belligerence against other nations for at least the last two centuries. Yes, the revolutionary government took the embassy personnell hostage, yet...as Chalmers Johnson would say, this was "blowback" for America and Britain's coup d' etat against Mossadegh and their installation of the Pahlavi tyrants. Iran was attacked by Saddam at the behest of the Reagan administration, which furnished him his WMD's.
All this "gathering storm" talk about Iran is really about achieving two objectives: U.S. hegemony over the middle east and central Asia, and Israeli dominance of the Levant.
Admiral Fallon on war with Iran - "These guys are ants. When the time comes, you crush them."
Maybe we need to listen for awhile instead of talk. You may be surprised what your "enemies" will tell you under a banner of truce. They could tell you how to diffuse the situation with everyone keeping their egos intact, or they could let slip the exact way to take them down. It's called diplomacy and its worked wonders in the past.
1) If they were involved in a plot to overthrow the President, would that be grounds for war against them?
2) If they supplied an enemy of ours with weapons and support for an extended time that caused high casualties, would that be grounds for war against them?
We'll make up something if we have to. We can always arrange for some incident that would "leave us no choice" but to retaliate.
The question is: is it a good idea to go to war or would it create more problems than it solves? Can our objectives be quantified? Can they be achieved? If so, within acceptable cost? Is it likely to escalate into something much larger than we planned? Remember that the enemy has a tendency not to go along with your plans. That's why they're called the enemy.