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06/22/2006
Containing Iran
Some recent poll #s on American attitudes and Iran.
--86% have an unfavorable opinion of Iran.
[Gallup poll, 2/06]
--65% view Iran’s nuclear program as a major threat.
[Pew Research Center, 2/06]
--Which country, if any, presents the greatest danger?
Iran 27%
China 20%
Iraq 17%
North Korea 11%
[Pew Research Center, 2/06]
--Which comes closer to your opinion?
Iran is a threat to the U.S. that requires military action
now 11%
Iran is a threat that can be contained with diplomacy now 58%
Iran is not a threat 17%
[CBS / New York Times, 5/06]
--59% of Americans are not confident in the United Nations’
ability to handle the situation with Iran.
[Fox News / Opinion Dynamics, 4/06]
--62% agree with the current U.S. position to try to find
diplomatic solutions, but to keep military action as an option.
[Fox News / Opinion Dynamics, 4/06]
Source for all the above: The American Enterprise, July / August
2006
Following are excerpts from a piece written by Jonathan Rauch
in the July / August edition of The Atlantic Monthly. Titled
“Containing Iran: Cold War strategies might help us handle
Tehran’s nuclear ambitions,” it’s a little different take on what
I’ve been writing for the most part in my “Week in Review”
commentaries.
“A uranium-enriched (Iranian President) Ahmadinejad is a
prospect the United States should seek strenuously to avoid, even
if the cost is high. But if resignation is the wrong attitude, so is
panic. If Iran emerges as a nuclear state, one country in the
world will be providentially equipped with decades of applicable
experience and a proven strategic template. The country is the
United States, the experience is the Cold War, and the template is
containment.
“Here are some things we have seen before: a nuclear-armed
country with a brittle and aggressive ideology, world-
revolutionary aspirations, and a belief in the historic inevitability
of its triumph against a decadent and ultimately hollow West. In
that country, an unpopular and divided regime, with hard-liners
and relative pragmatists squabbling for influence. A crumbling,
resource-dependent economy. A paranoid worldview in which
America is an omnipresent military and ideological threat. A
tactical predilection for supporting and manipulating insurgent
proxies around the world, instead of engaging in direct
confrontations. Above all, a belief that nuclear weapons are
strategically essential to deter the United States and maintain
national prestige.
“Yes – but the Soviet Union was deterrable. Would the same be
true of a nuclear Iran? No one knows, and no one wants to find
out, and Ahmadinejad’s trash-talking is alarming. Still, that Iran
will be ‘a suicide bomber with a radioactive waist’ (as one
commentator put it recently) is not a given .Iran has been
aggressively anti-American ‘but not reckless.’ [According to
Kenneth M. Pollack of the Brookings Institution.] ‘These guys
try to press the edge of the envelope, but if they find they’ve
pressed too far, they pull back.’ .
Jonathan Rauch continues:
“Iran is, if anything, more vulnerable to long-term pressure than
the USSR was. It is smaller and weaker in every dimension. Its
economy is a mess. Its oil weapon fires backward as well as
forward, because oil sales keep Iran’s economy afloat. And,
unlike the Soviet Union, Iran has no conceivable hope of
disarming or crippling America with a first strike; America’s
deterrent against Iran is massive, credible, and impregnable.
“During the Cold War, once a credible deterrent was in place,
containment meant both hemming in the Soviets (between
NATO and the Pacific alliances) and drawing them into arms-
control talks and security arrangements and grain deals that made
trigger fingers less twitchy. The two approaches, though often in
tension, were not mutually exclusive, nor would they be in the
case of Iran. One can envision a regional consortium aimed at
containing Iran – what Pollack calls a NATO for the Persian
Gulf. The Gulf Cooperation Council, along with Iraq, Turkey,
Jordan, and others in the region, might join with the United
States (and maybe Europe) to agree on countermeasures to be
used if Iran invaded one of them, proliferated nukes, or
destabilized its neighbors. At the same time, the consortium
might also negotiate a pact in which Tehran agreed not to cross
any of those red lines, in exchange for security guarantees.
“Americans would see such an agreement as a deal with the
devil, and they’d be right. But the United States dealt with the
Soviets, who were at least as murderous as the mullahs and far
mightier, and the end result was regime change. It took a while,
but containment is a long game, and it’s a game on which the
United States wrote the book.”
Hott Spotts will return next week.
Brian Trumbore
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