We Can’t Even Contain a Non-Nuclear Iran
It appears that the United States foreign policy community has now successfully moved through all five-stages of grief, when it comes to the Islamic Republic of Iran and its nuclear weapons ambitions.
First was Denial, of which the 2007 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) was the best example, proclaiming that Iran “halted its nuclear weapons program,” despite ample evidence to the contrary. The wholly politicized almost farcical nature of the report became clearly revealed after the Iranians announced a second, previously unreported nuclear enrichment site at Qom. The Bargaining stage, as the U.S and E.U attempted to secure Iranian agreement on a nuclear fuel swap, only to be rebuffed by the Iranians. Anger took hold as the Iranian Green Movement arose vibrantly on the scene only to have been followed rapidly by the stage of Depression as its hopes and aspirations dragged into the dumps by U.S Policy-makers, as the White House could summon up the enthusiasm for only a very late and “tepid” response.
And so now that we have passed through the other four stages, it is time, Glenn Kessler of the Washington Post tells us, for Acceptance.
That stalemate, in the view of many analysts, means that a strategy of containing Iran is inevitable — diplomatic isolation backed by defense systems supplied to Persian Gulf allies.
“I think we are in for a long cold war with Iran. It will be containment and deterrence,” said Mark Fitzpatrick, a former top State Department official who is now a senior fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London. “Iran will muddle along building its stockpile but never making a nuclear bomb because it knows that crossing that line would provoke an immediate military attack.”
With irony, the piece then proceeds to say that the Obama Administration has all but eliminated the military option, thus making it clear that there does not appear to be any line which Iran might cross which would provoke an “immediate military attack.” This coincides with the recently released 2009 Memo from Secretary of Defense Robert Gates which warns that the U.S lacks any long-term strategy for dealing with a nuclear Iran, which isn’t true actually, as long as to do nothing but sit back and accept it is considered “a strategy.”
There is one single overwhelming problem with a containment strategy for a nuclear Iran, which makes all other arguments in favor of it irrelevant. It will not work. And the reason we know definitively that it will not work is because at this very moment we are failing to contain a non-nuclear Iran.
How else do you interpret the recent DOD report, which warns that the Iranian elite Al-Quds force has increased its presence in Latin America, and in particular Venezuela, where Iran maintains a close operational alliance with Hugo Chavez’s regime? That cooperation is increasing on all levels including arms and drug trafficking, transport of personnel, oil exploration and sanctions busting, and ideological support. It is no longer necessary to go as far as Syria to find a fierce Iranian ally which facilitates terrorists like Hezbollah. They are in our own backyard. And while the Defense Department report suggesting that Iran could potential produce Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles capable of reaching the United States as early as 2015 is of deep concern, the reality is that, with their South American operations, the Iranians already have a delivery system in place.
If we cannot contain Iranian activity in our own hemisphere, how do we expect to respond to Iranian activity in Afghanistan, where it continues to arm the Taliban in an effort to hamper U.S interests and kill American soldiers according to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff? Can we successfully respond to Iran’s covert campaigns of voting buying and subversion in Iraq? And while the Obama administration “stops short of confirming” the Syrian transfer of Scud missiles to an Iranian proxy, Hezbollah had no qualms about admitting it.
Far from contained, the Iranians are active, to the detriment of American interests, in every possible theater of engagement from Ecuador to Sudan, Mexico to Afghanistan.
Nor do the Iranians merely seek to contain us, in a “live and let live” situation where the world might be divided into spheres of influence. They have instead initiated a “Rollback” strategy. Where once the pro-democratic forces of the Cedar Revolution held the streets of Lebanon, now the Lebanese government acts as another subsidiary of Iran, held in check by the violent power of Hezbollah, demonstrated by its May 2008 Beirut takeover. And they will seek to undermine Western, and especially U.S, influence elsewhere as well.
Whether Iran indeed makes the decision to maintain itself as a “virtual” weapon state, with a uranium stockpile which can be quickly converted into weapons, or whether it simply decides to test a nuclear weapon and announce its power to the world, such a capability will not suddenly make the Iranians easier to contain.
And even this assumes that we do not take Mahmoud Ahmadinejad at his word, that Iran will wipe Israel “off the map,” as soon as the opportunity becomes available.
For Israel this is an unacceptable risk. The question may become whether or not Israel will notify the United States if it makes the decision that it must strike, and if so, how the U.S will respond. This question weighs not just on the mind of Israel policy wonks either. In Morgantown, West Virginia, a ROTC cadet asked Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Mike Mullen, to respond to the “rumor” that the U.S would fire on Israeli jets traversing Iraqi airspace in order to strike Iran. From Wired.com:
Mullen tried to sidestep the question. “We have an exceptionally strong relationship with Israel. I’ve spent a lot of time with my counterpart in Israel. So we also have a very clear understanding of where we are. And beyond that, I just wouldn’t get into the speculation of what might happen and who might do what. I don’t think it serves a purpose, frankly,” he said. “I am hopeful that this will be resolved in a way where we never have to answer a question like that.”
Many pundits were less than reassured by Mullen’s response and rightfully so, since one would hope that if a military option is “off the table” with an adversary like Iran, it is not even in the realm of possibility against an ally like Israel. But Mullen’s equivocation is probably for the best, as any answer risks misinterpretation by any number of players in the Middle East. It seems unlikely that the Israelis would put the United States in that position if forced to strike, by choosing instead to pass through Saudi airspace, which some sources have said the Saudis have tacitly agreed to tolerate, although the Saudis deny it.
An Israeli strike is perhaps not the most desirable of options, and there may yet be others, either crippling sanctions (not watered down China and Russian-approved sanctions), or perhaps the Green Movement may yet pull off its color revolution, but one thing on which we should all agree, is that containment is NOT an option.
Containment has already failed.