@@ Michael Rubin - Learn about Jews who care about Iran!!! @@
Arash
December 10, 2004
Tapping the hornets' nest
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By Michael Rubin
mailto:mru...@aei.org
During the U.S. presidential campaign, debate over Iran policy received
unprecedented attention. The reasons are multifold. With Iran on the verge
of developing both nuclear and intercontinental ballistic missile
capability, Washington policymakers can no longer ignore the Iranian threat,
especially when confidants of Supreme Leader Ali Khomenei lead televised
chants of "America will be annihilated," as Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati did last
June.
American concern over a nuclear Iran is multifold. The danger is not
necessarily that Iran would conduct a nuclear first strike, although former
president Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani threatened to do exactly that on
December 14, 2001. Rather, Washington fears that a nuclear Iran would feel
itself immune from retaliation and so less obligated to international norms.
An anti-Western ideology remains at the core of the Islamic republic, even
as the majority of Iranian citizens long to join the West. The Islamic
Republic founded Palestinian Islamic Jihad, bankrolls Hezbollah and supplies
other Palestinian factions with weapons.
According to the Arabic daily Asharq al-Awsat, Iran shelters several hundred
Al-Qaida members at Revolutionary Guard facilities near the Caspian town of
Chalus and Lavizan, on the outskirts of Tehran. Iranian diplomats know that
Washington would consider it a casus belli if Al-Qaida were to plan a
terrorist attack from Iranian soil. But if Tehran felt a nuclear deterrent
would prevent American or Israeli retaliation, it would have less incentive
to rein in its proxy groups.
A nuclear Iran would also have profound impact upon ordinary Iranians. While
the Islamic republic uses nationalism to justify its nuclear program, once
sympathetic citizens have second thoughts. Students I met in Tehran during
the 1999 democracy protests question whether after getting the bomb, the
country's ideological guardians might engage in a crackdown "10 times worse
than [China's 1989 assault on] Tiananmen Square." And, as the first
anniversary of the Bam earthquake approaches, some environmentalists also
voice concern about the wisdom of a Russian-built reactor in an earthquake
zone.
Despite the growing challenge, U.S. policy remains confused. The Bush
administration has yet to reach a consensus on a national security
presidential directive for Iran. Bureaucrats continue to stumble over arcane
questions about whether Jimmy Carter's non-interference pledges - made under
duress during the 1979-1981 hostage crisis - prohibit funding of Iranian
opposition radio and television broadcasts. Also unresolved is whether the
dichotomy within Iran is between hard-liners and reformers, as the State
Department maintains, or between the government and democrats. The result
has been muddle. While Bush included the Islamic Republic of Iran in the
"axis of evil," outgoing Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage labeled
Iran a "democracy."
Before assuming her post, a senior director at the National Security Council
criticized U.S. sanctions on Iran and the "rogue regime" label. She
suggested Washington engage Tehran, and dismissed opponents as the "Israel
Amen" crowd. Her predecessor, upon leaving government service, met with
former Revolutionary Guard commander Mohsen Rezai, an encounter the Iranian
press suggested had White House sanction. National Security Council
compromises brokered between the state and defense departments were often
worse than either's proposal. When faced with a hornet's nest, the choice to
destroy it or leave it alone is better than the compromise of lightly
tapping it with a stick.
The clock is ticking for Iran. The insincerity of Iranian pledges regarding
its nuclear program and its activities in Afghanistan and Iraq undercut
proponents of engagement. The Bush administration no longer has the luxury
of indecision. The fundamental question facing Bush now is not whether
Washington can live with a nuclear Iran, but whether it can live with a
nuclear Islamic republic. Some policymakers argue that the White House may
have no choice. On November 26, 2004, the State Department, without
administration sanction, posted a statement on its Web site labeling as
"unwise, the possible use of military force by the United States or Israel
to eliminate Iran's nuclear installations."
The statement went on to argue that a strike on Iran's dispersed nuclear
facilities would not only fail to eliminate the program, but might spark a
nationalist reaction and cause the Iranian leadership to unleash terrorist
proxies against U.S. interests in the Middle East and Israel.
Such concerns are valid, but terrorist blackmail should never determine
foreign policy. The Islamic republic does not seek nuclear weapons for
security. On September 22, 2003, Iran paraded a Shihab-3 missile bearing the
slogan, "Israel must be uprooted and erased from history." Proponents of
security do not threaten to annihilate neighbors. Any concern about
Iranian-backed terror now would only increase if the Islamic republic goes
nuclear.
Should engagement and diplomacy fail, Bush may have no choice but to order a
strike against Iran's nuclear facilities. Should he do so, then he should
also target Iran's apparatus of repression, be it Revolutionary Guard
facilities or the guard towers at Evin Prison, where the Islamic republic
imprisons its dissidents.
Regardless, the second Bush administration cannot afford to replicate the
indecision of the first. The challenge is too serious and the stakes too
high. Diplomacy can only work when both sides are sincere. Let us hope that
the Islamic Republic of Iran is, because time is running out.
* Michael Rubin, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, is editor
of Middle East Quarterly. Until April 2004, he was an Iran and Iraq adviser
in the Pentagon.
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