I recently wrote about seeing Ray Takeyh, Senior Fellow on the Council on Foreign Relations, speak about the nuclear threat from Iran. At the time, he mentioned that he would be publishing a piece with Ken Pollack on the subject. I see, via Belgravia Dispatch, that it’s out.
The authors argue that the West cannot force Iran to stop their weapons program; they rule out a full-scale invasion, targeted bombing, or wishful thinking about a coup. But a combination of incentives and sanctions that provide Iran with significant economic benefits for nuclear compliance can make butter more appealing than guns. It’s a serious and detailed piece, well worth printing out and reading.
How likely is it that the Bush administration will pursue this path? I doubt that anyone has any better ideas, but after their pointed rejection of the comparable North Korean framework, it’d cause a bit of whiplash.
Thanks Ted, looks like a good read. But I wouldn’t be quite so cynical about this Administration’s ability to manage this near-crisis. For one thing, I don’t know of anyone (neocon or not) who really advocates the use of force against Iran. As these authors say, both all-out invasion and something more targeted carry more risks than potential benefits. And as demonstrated in both Pakistan and Libya, the Bushies are willing to strike a deal with a less-than-perfect regime if there are no better alternatives. The key difference between those two cases and North Korea (and Saddam’s Iraq, and Iran up till now) is trust: if your adversary can’t be trusted to follow through, even the best deal is DOA.
Ken Pollock NOT advocating invading a Middle Eastern Country whose first three letters are I-R-A?
What has this world come to? :-)
(No, I won’t let him live that down, ever.)
Perhaps I should say at least one thing in light of my snark towards Ken.
You are no longer credible as an “expert” when you have to go around with “sucker” written on your forehead. I’m no expert and even I saw throught that gambit Mr. Pollock.
That was a good article, but I don’t why the mullahs wouldn’t do exactly what N. Korea did.
This sums it up.
“Although the mullahs are not as stubborn as North Korean leader Kim Jong Il continues to be—they would not knowingly allow three million fellow citizens to die of starvation just to preserve their nuclear program—they unquestionably are willing to tolerate considerable hardship to keep their nuclear hopes alive.”
How do we know they aren’t as crazy? N. Korea wouldn’t have had near the resources to devote to bomb building if it weren’t for the 1990’s world aid. It would still be a big gamble with Iran as we might just help enable them to speed a covert N. Korean type operation under the noses of any framework.
But I don’t see any better alternatives to Ray Takeyh’s plan. If you have to gamble, might as well gamble betting on human good.
Absent the lion lying down with the lamb, or a coup in Iran that eliminates not only the mullaocracy but also the strong nationalist feelings of more moderate Iranians, I don’t think it’s going to be possible to bribe or threaten Iran into giving up its weapons. An anti-mullah coup which left any shred of the strong nationalist feeling in Iran intact would still leave a regime likely to pursue nuclear weapons.
I think it is nearly inevitable that Iran will become a nuclear power. What we should aim for then is graceful accommodation of that, combined with reducing the harm of it as much as possible.
I think the time is ripe for a Grand Deal.
Iran gets a blind eye turned to its nuclear ambitions and the US restores normal diplomatic and economic relations with it.
Iran must drop its support for Hezbullah and other terrorist groups and become a constructive partner in a two-state solution in the IP conflict.
It may very well be unlikely that Bush would pursue the path, but I don’t see why you think consistency should enter into calculations of the likelihood. This administration has never shown concern for consistency.
“I think the time is ripe for a Grand Deal.
Iran gets a blind eye turned to its nuclear ambitions and the US restores normal diplomatic and economic relations with it.
Iran must drop its support for Hezbullah and other terrorist groups and become a constructive partner in a two-state solution in the IP conflict.”
Why in the world would Iran do this? They can easily get all of the above without dropping its support for terrorist groups or becoming a constructive party in the Israel conflict.
You have already concluded they are going to be a nuclear power. Europe has signalled its disinterest in long term sanctions, hell they want to engage in high-tech military trade with China, what are we bargaining with? Under this scheme they have almost no incentive to do anything but pursue nuclear power, continue supporting terrorism, and continue pretending that nothing is happening.
Nuclear weapons proliferation is a technological issue; not a political issue.
It will be hard to convince the Iranians that it is not in their interest to develop nuclear weapons for the obvioius reason that it probably is in their interest. Which is why both the reformers and the Mullahs want the bomb. They understand that only nuclear weapons will preserve their sovereignty in the face of American unilateralism.
>they unquestionably are willing to tolerate considerable hardship to keep their nuclear hopes alive
Man that line makes me sick. I AM questioning that. It stinks of Muslims-are-less-than-human elitism. Un-freaking-believable.
Now, I would believe that of the ChiComs, for sure, the Great Leap Foward wasn’t that long ago.
In fact, looking at the very, very sorry record of humanity over the last millenium, who really would like to bet against Islam when it comes to humane treatment of, if not their fellow man in general at least their fellow Muslim?
You got the Judeo-Christian West, kicking off an almost constant bloodbath with the Spanish Inquisition and nicely bookending it with the meatgrinders of WWI and WWII, producing Hitler and the Holocaust, Stalin and the Soviet Union. Persuing the middle we find France and England fighting a 100 Years War over what, I still haven’t really figured out, Napolean freezing his soldiers to death in Russia, again for what serious purpose I really can’t ascertain, and the US Civil War, a horror of men dying slowly from Mini-ball and bayonet induced gut-wounds. At least I know why they did that.
Meanwhile turning our History Channel to the Far East we find the Chinese fighting each other to keep a country of people with apparently little in common together (yes, they all look alike to us but they ain’t) culminating with both the aforementioned Mao and a bloody clash with the Japanese. Said Japanese deciding, like a favored David E. Kelley actor, to show up in both Far East and West ensembles by happily becoming a major player in WWII at the same time.
And the Middle East, er…, well they had their tribal spats. But sad suicide bombers and knocking down a couple of really poorly-protected skyscrapers - hell, they’re pretty late to the party I’d say.
Props to Jim Harrison. Did it ever occur to people that, when you look at the evidence, Islam quite likely isn’t so much antagonistic to the West on differences of societial structure but quite logically scared to fucking death of us? You can’t exactly go out to the troops and say “Hey, they gutted everybody else they came across like fish and here they come for us” so you tell them we’re evil and unclean and Allah
will help them overcome us, and even get yourself to believe it on most concious levels.
That would be a pretty human thing to do. Oh, but they’re not really human, sorry. Good thing I don’t have to physically report to a Re-education camp, LGF and Powerline can brainwash me at the flick of a URL.
Scott Ritter’s going around saying Bush has already signed off on a June aerial invasion/bombing of Iran.
“Nuclear weapons proliferation is a technological issue; not a political issue.”
“Darren, What do you mean?”
Well I won’t venture to speak for Darren, but we are now 60 years after the first nuclear explosion and the technology is no longer a mystery. Everyone knows the basics of how to build a nuclear weapon. Anyone with the capital and sufficient motiviation will get one, sooner or later.
Sanctions would be counterproductive in the case of Iran and George Bush would not be willing to give economic incentives to a regime he is intent on changing, regardless of nuclear ambitions.
It doesn’t seem all that surprising to me that Iran is unwilling to give up its nuclear ambitions when asked to by a country with 10,000+ warheads. Plus there’s Israel not too far away - if I were an Iranian leader, I’d be testing my nukes right now. The US will not be able to convince anyone to renounce violence unless it makes concrete steps to do so itself, and persuade its allies to do likewise.
I wonder about the hardships. The Iranians just signed a sweet oil deal with the Chinese that might well go into a 100 billion over the next ten years, and India is knocking on the door. Fortune Mag had a big story about this. You know, you can sell your oil and natural gas to other clients than the U.S. and the Europeans, nowadays.
Sy Hersh’s last article is also very relevant and scary.
Sebastian,
Here are the options as I see them.
Pick the one you like…
A) we bomb them, miss nuclear facilities & our port facilities in Kuwait & Iraq go up in smoke, more weapons & training go the Iraqi insergency.
B) We invade (with what army), they resist & the Chinese & Russians start supplying them with all the goodies necessary to make Iraq look like a beautiful day at the Beach.
C) We do nothing, they get Nukes. They use them, we turn the country into an inhabitable Nuclear Wasteland, we try to invade they turn our invasion force into radioactive dust. We are back we started, a stalemate.
How about D. Since the Iranians aren’t nuts, they don’t nuke anybody. Meanwhile, an America with a rational foreign policy begins to treat the Iranians as a self-governing people and negotiates with them in good faith.
Meanwhile, an America with a rational foreign policy begins to treat the Iranians as a self-governing people and negotiates with them in good faith.
And Santa Claus comes down my chimney next Chrismas and leaves a very large bag full of large Euro bills…
It should occur to everyone that the Israelis aren’t notorious for listening to either Republican or Democrat administrations when it comes to serious national security concerns. And Iran with a single nuke is a serious Israeli security concern (duh), especially in light of the Syrian pact. Israel already made it clear during the Iraq invasion that it’d view the use of ANY WMD attacks as grounds for wholesale reprisals, and I don’t think anyone doubts that they’re serious. I think you all have forgotten that it’s the Israelis, not the GOP, that are in a zero sum situation if Iran get its nukes.
So before you all start plotting a US invasion of Iran for the GOP, maybe it’s worth considering that the last thing the Bushies want is Israel playing MAD with Islam. The Israelis don’t care about what the Europeans or UN think, nor do they trust either the EU or UN to do them any favors. And were they to pay attention to EU and US intellectuals, they might even suspect that more of you would cheer than weep upon hearing they’d been nuked to dust (yeah, yeah, we all know hating zionism isn’t the same as hating Jews; don’t thou protest too much).
The ideal Israeli policy is to blackmail the Europeans. It’s one thing for Israel to destroy Mecca, Medina, Demascus, Cairo, and etc., which might seem a fair trade to some in the EU. But were Paris, Berlin, Vienna, Brussels, and London to be included in an Israeli MAD final solution… who knows.
The ideal Israeli policy is to blackmail the Europeans. It’s one thing for Israel to destroy Mecca, Medina, Demascus, Cairo, and etc., which might seem a fair trade to some in the EU. But were Paris, Berlin, Vienna, Brussels, and London to be included in an Israeli MAD final solution… who knows.
Maybe the EU should take their cue from the Bush Administration and preemptively Nuke all sites suspected of having nuclear materials.
jet: ‘they unquestionably are willing to tolerate considerable hardship to keep their nuclear hopes alive’
A different Chris: ‘Man that line makes me sick. I AM questioning that. It stinks of Muslims-are-less-than-human elitism. Un-freaking-believable.’
ChrisPer:
Friend you are missing something important. You speak in the rest of your comment as though Islam is monolithic. In fact a power elite in Islam is different to the ordinary people, and the Iranian one is different to any other. Iran is a different country and a different people to Saudi et al.
It is not slandering the Iranian power elite there to assume they have the capability for mutually assured destruction; their religious attitudes make it quite likely. They are historically shown to be quite ready to ally the assured destruction of others, including their own citizens, on matters of principle.
Very unlikely that the Israelis would really be terrified of a few Iranian nukes, given now many they have themselves.
However, a bit of MAD might make the Middle East a more stable place.
However, Iran is not, so far as I know, best buddies with any Arab states (despite a bit of footsie-footsie with some of the Iraqi Shiites).
By the way, remind me again — why the hell are the Americans making any kind of a fuss about this at all?
A bit of historical perspective might be in order. This is the same government who created special units of suicide human wave units (roping together the scared to the brave) meant to disorganize and confuse Iraqi units so that the next wave of regular Iranian infantry and armor would meet less resistance. And it worked.
The Iranians sent hundreds of thousands of their people to charge tanks, machine gun nests, and mine fields in WWI human wave style. Wouldn’t they accept the loss of a few million of their own if the gains were that much greater? And wouldn’t the destruction of Israel be much greater than the mere regaining of a few miles of desert from Iraq?
Hell, Kruschev was relatively sane, and he almost ended the world over Cuba. The Iranian mullahs are both less sane than Kruschev and more fired up over Israel.
I’m thinking Iran’s nuke plant is going to be bombed. Especially since the damned Russians gave them one that can run on well over 30% enriched Uranium/recycled plutonium, making it an “experimental” or “weapons production” plant. And anyone who still believes this plant is only for power should ask themselves why Iran won’t agree to return spent fuel to Russia.
By the way, remind me again — why the hell are the Americans making any kind of a fuss about this at all?
That’s an easy one. Because without endless sabre-rattling, paranoia, and ominous warnings of looming “threats,” the American people might actually start to pay attention to the catastrophic incompetence and brazen mendacity of their leaders.
À Gauche
Jeremy Alder
Amaravati
Anggarrgoon
Audhumlan Conspiracy
H.E. Baber
Philip Blosser
Paul Broderick
Matt Brown
Diana Buccafurni
Brandon Butler
Keith Burgess-Jackson
Certain Doubts
David Chalmers
Noam Chomsky
The Conservative Philosopher
Desert Landscapes
Denis Dutton
David Efird
Karl Elliott
David Estlund
Experimental Philosophy
Fake Barn County
Kai von Fintel
Russell Arben Fox
Garden of Forking Paths
Roger Gathman
Michael Green
Scott Hagaman
Helen Habermann
David Hildebrand
John Holbo
Christopher Grau
Jonathan Ichikawa
Tom Irish
Michelle Jenkins
Adam Kotsko
Barry Lam
Language Hat
Language Log
Christian Lee
Brian Leiter
Stephen Lenhart
Clayton Littlejohn
Roderick T. Long
Joshua Macy
Mad Grad
Jonathan Martin
Matthew McGrattan
Marc Moffett
Geoffrey Nunberg
Orange Philosophy
Philosophy Carnival
Philosophy, et cetera
Philosophy of Art
Douglas Portmore
Philosophy from the 617 (moribund)
Jeremy Pierce
Punishment Theory
Geoff Pynn
Timothy Quigley (moribund?)
Conor Roddy
Sappho's Breathing
Anders Schoubye
Wolfgang Schwartz
Scribo
Michael Sevel
Tom Stoneham (moribund)
Adam Swenson
Peter Suber
Eddie Thomas
Joe Ulatowski
Bruce Umbaugh
What is the name ...
Matt Weiner
Will Wilkinson
Jessica Wilson
Young Hegelian
Richard Zach
Psychology
Donyell Coleman
Deborah Frisch
Milt Rosenberg
Tom Stafford
Law
Ann Althouse
Stephen Bainbridge
Jack Balkin
Douglass A. Berman
Francesca Bignami
BlunkettWatch
Jack Bogdanski
Paul L. Caron
Conglomerate
Jeff Cooper
Disability Law
Displacement of Concepts
Wayne Eastman
Eric Fink
Victor Fleischer (on hiatus)
Peter Friedman
Michael Froomkin
Bernard Hibbitts
Walter Hutchens
InstaPundit
Andis Kaulins
Lawmeme
Edward Lee
Karl-Friedrich Lenz
Larry Lessig
Mirror of Justice
Eric Muller
Nathan Oman
Opinio Juris
John Palfrey
Ken Parish
Punishment Theory
Larry Ribstein
The Right Coast
D. Gordon Smith
Lawrence Solum
Peter Tillers
Transatlantic Assembly
Lawrence Velvel
David Wagner
Kim Weatherall
Yale Constitution Society
Tun Yin
History
Blogenspiel
Timothy Burke
Rebunk
Naomi Chana
Chapati Mystery
Cliopatria
Juan Cole
Cranky Professor
Greg Daly
James Davila
Sherman Dorn
Michael Drout
Frog in a Well
Frogs and Ravens
Early Modern Notes
Evan Garcia
George Mason History bloggers
Ghost in the Machine
Rebecca Goetz
Invisible Adjunct (inactive)
Jason Kuznicki
Konrad Mitchell Lawson
Danny Loss
Liberty and Power
Danny Loss
Ether MacAllum Stewart
Pam Mack
Heather Mathews
James Meadway
Medieval Studies
H.D. Miller
Caleb McDaniel
Marc Mulholland
Received Ideas
Renaissance Weblog
Nathaniel Robinson
Jacob Remes (moribund?)
Christopher Sheil
Red Ted
Time Travelling Is Easy
Brian Ulrich
Shana Worthen
Computers/media/communication
Lauren Andreacchi (moribund)
Eric Behrens
Joseph Bosco
Danah Boyd
David Brake
Collin Brooke
Maximilian Dornseif (moribund)
Jeff Erickson
Ed Felten
Lance Fortnow
Louise Ferguson
Anne Galloway
Jason Gallo
Josh Greenberg
Alex Halavais
Sariel Har-Peled
Tracy Kennedy
Tim Lambert
Liz Lawley
Michael O'Foghlu
Jose Luis Orihuela (moribund)
Alex Pang
Sebastian Paquet
Fernando Pereira
Pink Bunny of Battle
Ranting Professors
Jay Rosen
Ken Rufo
Douglas Rushkoff
Vika Safrin
Rob Schaap (Blogorrhoea)
Frank Schaap
Robert A. Stewart
Suresh Venkatasubramanian
Ray Trygstad
Jill Walker
Phil Windley
Siva Vaidahyanathan
Anthropology
Kerim Friedman
Alex Golub
Martijn de Koning
Nicholas Packwood
Geography
Stentor Danielson
Benjamin Heumann
Scott Whitlock
Education
Edward Bilodeau
Jenny D.
Richard Kahn
Progressive Teachers
Kelvin Thompson (defunct?)
Mark Byron
Business administration
Michael Watkins (moribund)
Literature, language, culture
Mike Arnzen
Brandon Barr
Michael Berube
The Blogora
Colin Brayton
John Bruce
Miriam Burstein
Chris Cagle
Jean Chu
Hans Coppens
Tyler Curtain
Cultural Revolution
Terry Dean
Joseph Duemer
Flaschenpost
Kathleen Fitzpatrick
Jonathan Goodwin
Rachael Groner
Alison Hale
Household Opera
Dennis Jerz
Jason Jones
Miriam Jones
Matthew Kirschenbaum
Steven Krause
Lilliputian Lilith
Catherine Liu
John Lovas
Gerald Lucas
Making Contact
Barry Mauer
Erin O'Connor
Print Culture
Clancy Ratcliff
Matthias Rip
A.G. Rud
Amardeep Singh
Steve Shaviro
Thanks ... Zombie
Vera Tobin
Chuck Tryon
University Diaries
Classics
Michael Hendry
David Meadows
Religion
AKM Adam
Ryan Overbey
Telford Work (moribund)
Library Science
Norma Bruce
Music
Kyle Gann
ionarts
Tim Rutherford-Johnson
Greg Sandow
Scott Spiegelberg
Biology/Medicine
Pradeep Atluri
Bloviator
Anthony Cox
Susan Ferrari (moribund)
Amy Greenwood
La Di Da
John M. Lynch
Charles Murtaugh (moribund)
Paul Z. Myers
Respectful of Otters
Josh Rosenau
Universal Acid
Amity Wilczek (moribund)
Theodore Wong (moribund)
Physics/Applied Physics
Trish Amuntrud
Sean Carroll
Jacques Distler
Stephen Hsu
Irascible Professor
Andrew Jaffe
Michael Nielsen
Chad Orzel
String Coffee Table
Math/Statistics
Dead Parrots
Andrew Gelman
Christopher Genovese
Moment, Linger on
Jason Rosenhouse
Vlorbik
Peter Woit
Complex Systems
Petter Holme
Luis Rocha
Cosma Shalizi
Bill Tozier
Chemistry
"Keneth Miles"
Engineering
Zack Amjal
Chris Hall
University Administration
Frank Admissions (moribund?)
Architecture/Urban development
City Comforts (urban planning)
Unfolio
Panchromatica
Earth Sciences
Our Take
Who Knows?
Bitch Ph.D.
Just Tenured
Playing School
Professor Goose
This Academic Life
Other sources of information
Arts and Letters Daily
Boston Review
Imprints
Political Theory Daily Review
Science and Technology Daily Review