Stop the Russians from spreading south. This was a primary objective of the Great Game of the 19th century that centered on Central Asia and particularly Afghanistan. The empires of the time – British, Russian, French, Chinese, Ottoman – expended much wealth and endured considerable human suffering during the course of the game. No empire ultimately got the upper hand, and they all collapsed in due course, as empires inevitably do.
Much later, in 1979, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan and appeared to be within reach of achieving that chimerical goal of a warm-water port a little further south. Of course, by the late 1970s, the Kremlin had other, more pressing reasons for launching its foolhardy intervention. Whatever the motivation, though, the Russians lost badly. And it spelled the beginning of the end for the Soviet empire. Game over. At least until Washington picked up the fumble and started to run with it – in the wrong direction.
Afghanistan remains a contested battlefield. But a much higher-stakes “great game” has emerged in the Eurasian heartland. The geopolitical playmakers are back at the blackboard, plotting positions and drawing arrows all over the place. And unfortunately, at least one team is seriously considering the Hail Mary play – a long bomb deep into enemy territory.
This current game, of course, centers on Iran and the efforts particularly of the United States and Israel to prevent the country from going nuclear. The 19th-century battle over turf and influence in Central Asia lasted decades and sent armies slogging their way across high mountains and unforgiving plains. The current standoff, by contrast, could escalate in a matter of hours, if Israel launches a preemptive strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities and Iran retaliates directly or through proxies.
Aside from wild card Ron Paul, the Republican candidates for president are united in supporting the use of force against Iran. Romney, Santorum, and Gingrich all fault President Obama for appeasing the country, even though the president has said repeatedly, and most recently in his State of the Union address, that he “will take no option off the table.” Gingrich and Santorum also like the ghastly idea of assassinating Iran’s nuclear scientists. Foreign Affairs recently gave space to Council on Foreign Relations “nuclear security fellow” Matthew Kroenig to argue that containment isn’t working with Iran, so the Pentagon should go ahead and take out the uranium-conversion plant at Isfahan, the reactor at Arak, and centrifuge manufacturing sites around Natanz and Tehran. It’s conventional conflict now, he argues, or nuclear war later. With “nuclear security” fellows like these, who needs Dr. Strangelove?
Niall Ferguson, the economic historian who never met an empire he didn’t like, has also jumped into the fray with a plea for “some creative destruction.” He dismisses all the arguments against an Israeli attack and concludes that “sometimes a preventive war can be a lesser evil than a policy of appeasement. The people who don’t yet know that are the ones still in denial about what a nuclear-armed Iran would end up costing us all.” Sounds like Iraq 2003 all over again.
Before presenting the counter-arguments, I want to take a closer look at Iran’s nuclear program. Of course, a lot of people would like to take a closer look at Iran’s nuclear program, including the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which has been monitoring the facilities for many years. In 2003, the IAEA accused Iran of hiding nuclear activities from its inspectors for 18 years (though the program is even older than that, stretching back to the days of the Shah and explicit U.S. assistance). The nature of these activities is at the heart of the dispute between Iran and its accusers. The Iranian government says it is simply enriching uranium for its civilian nuclear power plants, an activity permitted under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). The Israeli government, on the other hand, has argued that Iran is on the fast track to joining the nuclear club (and, they might well add sotto voce, it takes one to know one).
The United States is somewhere in the middle between Iran and Israel. According to the last two National Intelligence Estimates, the collective wisdom of the U.S. intelligence community, Iran hasn’t made any effort to build a nuclear weapon since 2003. An IAEA report back in November seemed to contradict these intelligence estimates by suggesting that Iran has tested components of a nuclear device, but a former IAEA inspector has challenged this conclusion. The Obama administration, meanwhile, seems to be playing the middleman’s meta-game: leaking information about Israel’s war-gaming plans in an effort to put pressure on Iran to make concessions.
The problem resides not in the level of enrichment or the number of centrifuges or whether Iranian nuclear scientists possess the right blueprints. The problem resides in the perceptions – that Iran is on an irrevocable path toward the Bomb and that the United States and Israel are on an irrevocable path toward regime change in Tehran. The putative middle position that has emerged has been the application of economic sanctions to prod Iran toward greater transparency. Unfortunately, these sanctions have been a substitute for negotiations rather than a means toward that end.
“The United States has shown no interest in negotiating with Iran, and that will probably not change in this political season as the Obama administration seeks to outflank the right in pressuring Iran,” writes Foreign Policy In Focus (FPIF) contributor David Cortright in Failed Sanctions on Iran. “Some in the administration no doubt believe that tougher sanctions will stay the hand of those urging military strikes. This is a dangerous game, for it maintains and deepens the isolation of Iran and increases the risk of miscalculation.”
The risk of miscalculation is particularly high in the Persian Gulf, where the two sides are brushing up against each other in a way that could easily spark a wider conflict. “Say, for instance, that Iranian speedboats operated by the Revolutionary Guards are shadowing and harassing U.S. warships in the Persian Gulf, speeding toward them yet keeping a safe distance (a scenario that occurs regularly and was recently widely publicized),” writes FPIF contributor Navid Hassibi in Avoiding a War in the Gulf. “Say, then, that one of the speedboats malfunctions and gets too close for comfort to the U.S. warship, which fires on the boat in response. How could this accident be prevented from escalating into a wider military confrontation?”
What’s different, of course, between Iraq 2003 and Iran 2012 are the countervailing pressures within Israel and the United States. In Israel, the previous two heads of the Israeli secret service have warned against attacking Iran. Far from being doves, they simply acknowledge the overwhelming consequences of the attack. “For Israel,” writes Steve Coll in The New Yorker, “those costs would certainly include heavy retaliatory rocket and missile strikes by Hezbollah and Hamas against Israeli civilians, a wave of popular anti-Israeli upheaval in Egypt, and the prolonged inflammation of Iran’s nuclear nationalism. A regional war involving Lebanon, Syria, and oil-producing Gulf emirates would also be a possibility.”
In the United States, as Jim Lobe writes in Right Web, the key swing constituency of liberal hawks has generally viewed an attack on Iran as adventurism, a position that likely has strong currency within the administration itself. “Indeed, the confluence of threatening developments has provoked a number of influential members of the foreign policy establishment—including several prominent liberal interventionists who supported the Iraq war—to warn against further escalation by the United States or Israel.” Peter Beinart, who went public with his Iraq War mea culpa in The Icarus Syndrome, has continued along his current trajectory to appeal to American Jews to embrace caution.
Also militating against military action is Iraq, which Israel would have to fly over to attack Iranian targets. “Iraq has also emerged as a major Iranian partner in regional affairs,” writes FPIF contributor Richard Javad Heydarian in Iran and Post-Withdrawal Iraq. “Baghdad has been among the most vociferous opponents of any sort of sanctions, diplomatic censure, or military intervention against Iran. It has expressed its support for Iran’s purportedly peaceful nuclear program and continuously encouraged a diplomatic resolution to outstanding issues between Iran and the West.”
This analysis of Iran’s nuclear program and the responses to it essentially hews to the rules of this not-so-great game. During the 19th century, all the players assumed that Russian foreign policy was defined in essence by an eternal push to the south. This assumption held true into the Soviet era, even when the playing field had changed considerably and the Kremlin had other games to play. Likewise, the international community assumes that Iran will pursue a nuclear weapon no matter what, that this quest is somehow encoded in the Islamic Republic’s DNA when in fact there are good geopolitical and even theological reasons for not pursuing the Bomb.
Let’s for the moment think outside the game and assume the worst-case scenario: Iran covertly manufactures and tests a nuclear device. Then what? North Korea’s acquisition of the Bomb has not substantially altered the security situation in Northeast Asia. Japan and South Korea are not happy about the situation, but they haven’t attempted to join the nuclear club themselves. Pyongyang, meanwhile, remains as isolated as before and has discovered that an actual nuclear device is no more powerful than the much-feared aspirational one. Iran’s acquisition of a minimal nuclear deterrent would not give it any greater leverage over Israel or its neighbors, because the use of such a weapon would initiate massive retaliation.
I’m certainly not in favor of any country joining the nuclear club. Indeed, the charter members should be following through on their NPT pledge to draw down their own arsenals far more speedily and eventually abolish the nuclear club altogether. But, as was the case with Afghanistan and both the Soviet and American invasions, the ultimate attainment of the goal did not turn out as expected for the initial victors. Nuclear breakout would not suddenly improve Iran’s standing in the West; economic sanctions would grow more stifling, and even some of Iran’s friends – Russia, China, Turkey – might turn against it. Officially testing a nuclear device, Iran might find itself ahead after the first half only to collapse in the quagmire of the second.
At the end of their history of the Great Game, Karl Meyer and Shareen Blair Brysac interview Harry Hodson, an elderly player from the British side. “In the light of history, I think the Game really was a game,” Hodson concludes, “with scores but no substantive prizes.” We might score points against Iran; they might score points against us. But neither a nuclear weapon nor a war with Iran constitutes anything like a substantive prize. It’s time to stop playing games with Iran and negotiate in earnest.
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Trita Parsi: Are We on the Brink of War With Iran?
Elizabeth Holtzman: Impunity For The Bush Administration Won't Last
With that said, we should not consider it to let information go like we did in the twin tower attack. But actually act on what we do know. We have been talking about war with Iran since I was an Army PFC in 2005. We were talking about it then, and we are talking about it now. To me this post is just more talk, which is right where it needs to be.
1) Beyond the well publicized threat by the iranian president to "wipe israel off the map" (despite the great efforts of the pro-theocracy forces in america, that was the translation favored by ahmadinejad's own translators), past iranian presidents have spoken of how israel could be destroyed using nukes. More than that, a website connected to the supreme leader has stated that destroying israel is a religious obligation (and illuminated the targets most likely to kill jews while sparing muslims)
and you want to draw moral equivalence between these two states? between aggressor and the counry which wants peace but refuses to compromise whatsoever.
Iran issues threats after the USA and Israel commits actual acts of war against it. Sanctions aimed at destroying Iran's economy, murdering it's scientists, cypernet warfare against it. So far Iran has only threatened while the US and Israel are committing actual acts of aggression against it.
As Obama said a year ago when Brazil and Turkey came up with the same solution that the US and Israel were persuing on Iran and Iran was in full agreement " We simply
No, iran has a annhiliationist view of israel because of their religion. Shiite islam has always viewed the jews with disgust, and the extremist clerics who run the country are against zionism as an ideology. There is no arguing with such beliefs. No negotiation. israel would LOVE to have iran as an ally, or even not as an enemy. This hatred is COMPLETELY one sided. But iran's attitude towards israel is based on religious extremism, not logic, and therefore cannot be amended while the current leadership exists.
As for your contention that israel wants to "wipe iran off the map", that is laughable. Iran is a huge country. They only want to get rid of iran's leadership, which has made genocidal statements about them.
Bottom line: this is a regime that is unstable and under no circumstance must be allowed to possess nuclear weapons. Of course, this would immediately start a nuclear arms race in the region and away from that, this would enable the regime to increase their stranglehold on the Iranian people. In addition, this is a regime that is guided by fanatical Islam through their apocalyptic vision of bringing the return of the “hidden imam” in which as a prerequisite not only must Jerusalem be “reconquered” but 2/3rd of humanity “will perish” through war, havoc, chaos, and famine.
Those of us who oppose bombing Iran fully support Iranians choosing new leadership though.
And when they do choose new leadership yet continue to desire to produce energy using nuclear reactors, we will still oppose bombing them to get them to change their minds, just as we do not want to be bombed for using nuclear energy while having the actual ability to destroy the planet several times over with our nuclear arsenal.
BTW if a new Iranian leadership came to power with the same genocidal goals, nothing will have changed.
We have invaded bombed, caused coups in more than fifty countries since WWII including getting rid of the democratically elected government of Iran in 1953.
All those familiar with human history are well aware that the events going on in the Mideast have been repeated thoughout human history ad nauseam; super powers playing they cynical, cruel, deadly games with weaker nations by selling them weapons, giving them bribe money and empty promises for their resources and control of their government's policies.
A few recent historic games would be when Hitler and Mussolini decided to try out their weapons and armies on the side of Franco and his fascists, when Stalin said he'd help the Polish people if they rose up against the German army and then didn't, when the U.S. Government overthrew republics and installed vicious tyrannical dictators.
There is an ancient saying; "Beware of Greeks bearing gifts" and a more modern saying could be; "Beware of super powers bearing weapons, bribe money and empty promises."
Since our kind refuses to give up their cynical, cruel, destructive games where millions of innocent human beings are slaughtered and maimed there is an added incentive for them to do so in our time; nuclear weapons but all indications today is that all governments in the Mideast have a death wish.
The problem is that the Iranians mistakenly believe that a small nuclear arsenal will serve as a deterrent to a conventional force invasion by Israel or the West, thereby allowing them to continue to export terrorism and regime change throughout the region. But they are mistaken because a small deterrent force is incapable of deterring. Also, instability would prevail in the region in crisis situations as Iran would face a situation of using them (its small arsenal of nukes and missiles) or losing them to a first strike by Israel or the U.S. A nuclear Iran, with its toxic brew of official anti-Semitism, Persian nationalism, and ruled by a hateful theocratic autocracy, would likely destabilize the region further and heighten the potential for miscalculation by all parties, given the compressed geography of the area.
A nuclear device, very small by superpower standards, would, if detonated, lay waste a goodly portion of a nation very very small by superpower standards...
After all our military adventurism in the world, which shows no sign of abating in principle, even if now, there is a bit less on view, makes the possession of a nuclear weapon indispensable for any nation which wishes to be in charge of itself.
Israel is fully aware of this, not as applied to our own doings, but as applied to doings, or lack of same, on the part of its neighbors, none of whom have been inspired to attack at least since Israel's nuclear arsenal became common knowledge in the region.
Iran merely wishes for itself the same freedom of action, and the same freedom from invasion, that Israel presently enjoys.
Checkmate!
That wouldn't be what you want, would it?
Link:
http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/02/how_israel_keeps_us_safe.html
Let them fight their own wars.
nI either event, there is hell to pay all over the world as a result.
The last sentence says it all. Excellent article. The USA must stop trying to dominate the world and take the lead in negotiating a cooperative, sustainable economy. Solidarity for Peace and Prosperity.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L5pgrKSwFJ
http://www.justicepartyusa.net/