Iran... what's next?

The issues are extremely complex: what to do about Iran and its reported nuclear ambitions?

Given the mess in Iraq, it's easy to assume that we'd never get ourselves involved in another Middle East war so quickly. But... assumptions are great for getting one in trouble.

I myself have mixed feelings about the path forward with respect to Iran and its refusal to stop enriching nuclear fuel (the UN deadline was Wednesday; see the latest New York Times and Washington Post stories).

On the one hand, a nuclear-armed Iran seems too dangerous to accept. Not only are they positioned to threaten many of our allies, nukes would give them the ability to control access to oil in the region. And whatever your feelings are about our dependence on oil, the simple fact is that our way of life could change drastically if any nation had the ability to turn off the Middle East spigot.

And on the other hand, it's extremely difficult to imagine a scenario in which we could successfully pull of the complicated military operation necessary to eliminate Iran's nuclear facilities... and even harder to imagine our doing it in a way that didn't further inflame anti-American sentiment in the region and amongst Muslims worldwide.

So while a second American aircraft carrier group begins to patrol waters off Iran, the Bush adminstration still refuses talks with their government. How very junior high of us.

Harper's ran a three part series last week featuring various perspectives on whether we're likely to go to war with Iraq: opinions from independent analysts, former CIA officials, and think-tank scholars.

(There's also a great article, "Parties of God: The Bush Doctrine and the rise of Islamic democracy," in the March issue of Harper's. It discusses our options in the Middle East with respect to Islamic political parties: encourage reform in the autocratic regimes we currently support and engage the moderate Islamists, or continue down the path of simply labeling these parties as terrorists and assuming that they are incapable of rational behavior. An interesting comparison was made to how the Irish Republican Army eventually renounced violence and it's political wing became a legitimate political party. The article isn't online yet, but check back in a couple of weeks if you don't want to pick up a copy. The article is now online here.)

I don't know what the future holds, but some of the options are ominous. On the other hand, we finally may have made some progress in nuclear talks with North Korea. From Andrew Grotto's Washington Post column today:

The ideologues' strategy of confrontation failed because it strengthened the determination of North Korea (and Iran) to acquire nuclear weapons in order to deter military action by the United States without offering countervailing incentives and disincentives.

The credibility of a U.S. threat to overthrow offending regimes, however, dissipated as the insurgency in Iraq began to metastasize. And while the United States can squeeze regimes, it cannot suffocate them without the help of partners, such as China. China, however, rejects the regime change strategy and opposes measures that could end the Kim dynasty in North Korea.

In contrast, pragmatists in the Bush administration view negotiation more practically. As former Secretary of State Colin Powell put it, "You can't negotiate when you tell the other side, 'Give us what a negotiation would produce before the negotiations start'." This means offering a country both incentives and disincentives for renouncing nuclear arms.

He is right. Countries must be backed into a corner, but they must also be offered an attractive way out. That's what happened with Libya, the Bush administration's lone success at convincing a country to renounce nuclear weapons. Years of sanctions and isolation had backed the Gaddafi regime into a corner, and the United States and its allies offered it an attractive way out -- a grand bargain whereby Libya verifiably renounces nuclear weapons and terrorism in exchange for normalized relations with the United States and Europe.

So get informed about Iran and our options there. Voice an opinion. And listen to others.

Talking... what a concept!