Why not tell them that if we decide to hit them, the target will be the Mullahs and Military Leaders?
Iran and Nuclear Checkmate
INFORMATION DISSEMINATION BLOG
Thomas Barnett tackles the tough topic of the Iranian nuclear issue. We find these kind of discussions fascinating because essentially it is the process where people come to acceptance of Iran as a nuclear power.
Considering Iran's past, we haven't observed enough responsibility on their part for us to be comfortable with them as a nuclear power, because we believe they will do what they appear to do with all of their weapons.... give them to someone else to exploit.
What would Iran do with nuclear weapons? We believe they would use them, if not literally than as a proxy weapon for blackmail. Barnett doesn't agree, and has found a place he can live with on the issue. He takes the logical next step once acceptance of a nuclear Iran is rationalized, he explores containment.
All Tel Aviv's WMD monopoly generates is diplomatic opportunity: as soon as somebody else in the region gets a few nukes to challenge Israel's roughly 200 warheads, the world's great powers will collectively force direct negotiations leading to - at least - a bilateral strategic arms treaty between the two states.
Why? We'll all find the resulting situation too much to bear, not just in the West but far more in the East, which relies on Persian Gulf energy too much to suffer such strategic uncertainty.
What does that get us? It gets us Iran having to recognize Israel to achieve its primary goal in pursuing a nuclear capacity - namely, America's promise not to engage in forcible regime change in Tehran.
Since that goal will effectively be achieved by Teheran's looming nuclear capacity, anyway, then we're heading into a different dynamic: simultaneously creating a stable nuclear stand-off between Israel and Iran, a dyad that quickly becomes a triad if Saudi Arabia decides that Arab Sunnis need their own nuclear champion to balance the Persian Shia.
For many regional and nuclear experts, such developments would constitute an almost unthinkably unstable strategic situation, but again, the only way to stabilize such a situation would be to force a trilateral or even regional security scheme that acknowledges each state's nuclear weapons explicitly and links those capabilities to one another through the condition of mutually assured destruction.
I'm still in the camp that sees a nuclear Iran as an unthinkable, unstable strategic situation. My reasons for this include the vast sponsorship of criminal activity throughout the Gulf, the open support of terrorism in Lebanon, the intentional disruptions in Iraq, and the clearly stated open threats to bring about extinction to both the United States and Israel that nuclear weapons enable. I understand the criminal activity, the support for Hezbollah, and the interference in Iraq, all of which I can make a good case for in regards to a rational protection of national interest for Iran. However, I can't make a rational case for the threats, the advocacy and political propaganda that desires total death to me as the enemy is not exactly the words of a responsible party, and requires a great deal of denial of belief in order to ignore.
We do not believe military action is the best coarse of action, in fact we think it might be the least productive over the long haul, but we are not against it. We honestly don't know what should be done, if anything. Barnett offers an interesting alternative for discussion, the 'rational actors in the Middle East' scenario. Unfortunately the number of rational actors in the Middle East does not remain static, and the United States has demonstrated a number of times over the last few years that we do not always play that role.
We keep thinking we are on the cusp of a major war, not one the United States will start or wants to be involved in, but will be forced to deal with due to the demands of being the worlds only remaining superpower, but also one of the few countries with the military capability and politics that allows for forcible intervention to protect economic interests.
In other words, we think Barnett may be close to the mark with this sentence:
Yes, Israel might strike preemptively with nukes. That remains the big wild card.
Many don't believe that will happen, and we don't actually believe Israel will go nuclear, but the possibility of unilateral Israeli action is the key to the various opinions on the subject, it basically comes down to what you believe is possible within the context of the unfolding scenarios. In the Middle East, never underestimate the capacity for absolute violence, history argues against such tendencies. In our opinion, this will not end peacefully, regardless of desire or intention.
informationdissemination.blogspot.com |
