Nothing But Words

Over the past few weeks the news channels have been filled with a lot of half-baked, belligerent commentary on Iran’s nuclear ambitions – the same sort of talk that got us into Iraq. More coherent and thoughtful analysis appeared in the Nelson Report a few weeks ago, and I thought I’d provide some excerpts. The article consists of long quotes from the Carnegie Endowment’s Joe Cirincione, and Arms Control Wonk Jeffrey Lewis.

Joe Cirincione:

“…The same neoconservative pundits who championed the invasion of Iraq are now beating the drums on Iran. They all got the same talking points this week. On Monday, urging us to keep military options open, William Kristol claims Iran’s ‘nuclear program could well be getting close to the point of no return.’ Wednesday, Charles Krauthammer said, ‘Instead of being years away from the point of no return for an Iranian bomb. . .Iran is probably just months away.

“This is complete nonsense. There is no need for military strikes against Iran. The country is five to ten years away from the ability to enrich uranium for fuel or bombs. Even that estimate, shared by the Defense Intelligence Agency and experts at IISS, ISIS, and Carnegie assumes Iran goes full-speed ahead and does not encounter any of the technical problems that typically plague such programs. In the next few months, they will be lucky to get a test centrifuge cascade up and running. Hardly a “point of no return.”

“This is not a nuclear bomb crisis, it is a nuclear regime crisis. US Ambassador John Bolton has correctly pointed out that this is a key test for the Security Council. If Iran is not stopped the entire nonproliferation regime will be weakened, and with it the UN system.

“But it will have to be diplomats, not F-15s that stop the mullahs. An air strike against a soft target, such as the uranium conversion facility at Isfahan would inflame Muslim anger, rally the Iranian public around an otherwise unpopular government and jeopardize further the US position in Iraq. Finally, the strike would not, as is often said, delay the Iranian program. It would almost certainly speed it up. That is what happened when the Israelis struck at the Iraq program in 1981. Israel knocked out the Osirik reactor, but Saddam went underground, expanding from 500 to 7000 workers on a more ambitious program that escaped detection until 1991. By then he was closer to producing a bomb than he ever would have been with Osirik. It went from a side project to an obsession.

“Your other Loyal Reader is correct that we could not destroy it in 1991 war. Even 43 days of coalition bombing failed to destroy the program, which ended only when U.N. disarmament teams methodically destroyed the equipment on the ground. This is the lesson to keep in mind as simplistic ‘solutions’ to the Iran program come churning out of the neocon machine.”

Jeff Lewis:

“Joe is dead-on correct. I have one comment — I don’t like saying this is a crisis. As Joe noted, we have lots of time. More important, we are so focused on the question of when Iran could have a bomb, we underestimate the real depth of our interests here. The current situation, where Iran does not have a bomb — but gives everyone the impression it is moving in that direction — is almost as bad as an Iranian deterrent — the day in, day out haggling creates a slow, steady erosion of confidence in the Nonproliferation Regime…My advice, not fashionable these days, is to take a page from LBJ after the Chinese nuclear test. We need to act confident that the acquisition of Iranian nuclear weapons does nothing to enhance their security and everything to further isolate and weaken them. But our political system tends to reward the hysterical at the expense of the calm.”

After the Neloson Report excerpt, Steve Clemons adds:

In my own view, Iran’s nuclear pretensions are a direct result of America removing Iran’s chief antagonist in the region, Iraq under secular (and yes, fascist) rule — as well as from the sad fact that America’s mystique of power and capability has been greatly damaged by bogging down in the Iraq quagmire. When the perception of American power declines, allies are prompted not to count on the US as much and enemies have an incentive to move their agendas…

The only presidential candidate who has been talking semi-sensibly about the “realities” in the Middle East as they are and not in some fictionalized sketch is Wesley Clark.

While Clark believes that we need a great deal more diplomatic effort to redirect Iran from its current nuclear course, he also knows that one can’t deal with either Iran or Iraq in a bubble unto themselves. General Clark has stated publicly that America needs to do a deal with Iran. He believes we cannot manage Iraq and potential explosive realities in the region without buy-in from Iran. In that, there may be opportunities to appeal to Iran’s desire to be less isolated on the international stage and dealt with in a more dignified way given its size and importance in the region.

This is no proposal to appease Iran — and no call for America and Europe to “bless” Iran’s nuclear activities. The truth is that American military power, allied with our allies’ military capacity — properly and lethally constructed — should be in our “last resort tool kit” if Iran shows no interest in negotiating on any front… But the James Woolsey types of this era want such military options much higher on the list, without much regard for consequences to America’s overall security or the viability of its military and foreign policy objectives.

A strong, visionary U.S. president would go to Iran and do a deal akin to what Kissinger and Nixon accomplished with China… what is extremely important for US policy makers to know is that a replay of the mistakes that America made running up to our Iraq mess may finally be the punctuation point that ends America’s role as a globally powerful, mostly benign hegemon.

UPDATE: Wednesday’s CS Monitor had a good article that explains in non-technical terms how uranium is enriched, and why it’s difficult and time-consuming to build a facility that can do it.