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September 4, 2006
What To Do About Iran
In a post last week I told you what I think will happen with regard to Iran and it's nuclear weapons program if present trends continue. None of my three possible scenarios were good ones.
Now I'm going to tell you what I think we ought to do about Iran. Note that it does not involve immediate air strikes.
The Current Situation
The Administration seems intent on using the offices of the United Nations and the International Atomic Energy Agency(IAEA) as a basis for the legitimacy of negotiations and for consequences that may follow. The advantage is a perceived moral and legal authority. If "everyone" is for (or against) something, it must be right. Because for so long wed and others have accepted the legality of UN and IAEA decisions, they have a certain authority. Lastly, there is the hope that if negotiations go nowhere and we must impose sanctions, we can make them binding on all nations through the appropriate UN resolution.
The disadvantage is that is ties us to their decisions. If negotiations fail, and the Security Council does not approve meaningful sanctions, it would be difficult for us to unilaterally impose a blockade. And if it looks as if Iran is on the verge of obtaining nuclear weapons, and the UN refuses to give us authority to use air strikes, we look as if we have defied the very body that we demanded Iran obey.
Recent news headlines such as "Iranian President Says Pursuit of Nuclear Technology is Irreversible" and "Iran Questions Veto Right at U.N. Security Council" are hardly encouraging. In past months Iran has tested an "underwater missile" and a submarine-launched anti-ship missile as shows of strentgh. What is most disturbing about these tests is not so much that they were conducted, as the political statements by Iranian leaders that accompanied them. They spoke of "superweapons" in a way that reminds one of Adolf Hitler's belief that his V-1 and V-2 "superweapons" would save him from defeat.
I do no think that these strong statements by Iran are simply a negotiating position. American and European liberals hyperventalate at the thought of using air strikes or any sort of military force. Russia and China have "ruled out" sanctions. Given that negotiations without either sanctions or the threat of military force are useless, our current approach is unlikely to succeed.
What To Do
Here, point-by-point, is what I think we ought to do about Iran
Regime Change must be our number one priority It is impossible to know exactly what we are currently doing in this regard, but one suspects we are not putting nearly enough effort into this effort.
Regime change is easy to say, hard to do, and as we've seen in Iraq, it is very difficult to control what happens after the existing regime is gone. The big questions are these: Are the Iranians developing nuclear weapons, and is this acceptable. The answer to the first is clearly yes, and the second to me, no. I outlined what I thought would likely happen if Iran gets nuclear weapons here, and none of my scenarios were pleasant. Therefore, it is worth the risk.
Some steps we ought to be taking to change the government in Iran are:
Exposure - That the government of Iran oppresses it's people is not news to informed people. However, unless you seek out this information you will not know the details. Most people don't read blogs and human rights reports. They read their newspaper and watch the news on TV. It is critical that our government put forth maximum effort to publicize human rights abuses in Iran. Cabinet-level officials and the president himself must include Iranian human rights abuses in their speeches. Government reports detailing abuses should be distributed at all press conferences. And so on down the line.
We did this with the Soviet Union and apartheit South Africa, and it worked. It is a measure of how much progress was made in the 19tha nd 20th centuries that most dictatorships today seek to hide their abuses. Even the Nazis, it will be recalled, felt obliged to hide their "final solution".
Public Disorder - Encouraging, forment, and fund public protests and demonstrations against the government. This should go father than just people running around carrying signs. We should infiltrate a labor union and encourage strikes and work stoppages.
Encourage Democratic Elements - Fund and train those anti-regime parties and organizations who themselves are reasonabley pro-democracy and pro-secular. We must avoid working with communist, criminal, terrorist, or extremist religious groups.
During the 1980s Western governemts and organizations such as labor unions funded and supplied the Polish Solidarity movement. If we are not doing this in Iran now, we should be
Recruitment of Assets - Use covert operations to identify and recruit anti-regime government people, including those in the military. If it looks like we can stage a coup, it will be necessary to have people already in positions of power.
Start an Insurgency - This could be done along the "contra" model; recruit, fund, and train anti-regime guerilla forces. This worked against the Sandanistas in the 1980s, and it might work again against Iran. We would be essentially starting an insurgency against Iran. It is risky, as we might find ourselves supporting unsavory characters if we are not careful. But it would have the additional belefit of diverting Iranian attention from Iraq and "giving them a taste of their own medicine". It runs the risk of backfiring, but I think that taking down parts of Teheran's power grid, for example, would cause the Iranian government to have to divert a serious amount of resources.
Flood Them With Propaganda - Again, one suspects that the US government is not doing hearly enough in this regard. We are currently broadcasting Voice of America radio and TV into Iran, which is fine as far as it goes. But we must use our imagination, for example by conducting campaigns whereby we temporarily flood their airwaves with radio broadcasts on all channels. During the run-up to the war in Iraq we got the cell phone numbers of Iraqi government and military officials, and made numerout phone calls to them. If nothing else, this woulde serve to demoralize them as it would show that we "have their number."
Military Pressure - There is much we can do militarily short of all-out air strikes. Coupled with the above measures, we might even seek to repeat Operation Praying Mantis, where in 1988 we got into a shooting match with the Iranian Navy, sinking a frigate, a smaller ship, and six speedboats, as well as damaging several more against no losses for us. Praying Mantis was retaliation for Iranian mining operations in the Gulf which damaged a US warship.
As the Iranians may not make the mistake of laying mines along likely paths of US warships again, such a direct opportunity may not arise. However, if we adopt the actions I specify above, they will retaliate somewhere somehow. As I mention below, they might even try and sabatoge tankers in the gulf. When they do, this will be our pretext for destroying some of their naval assets.
The Iranian Response
They're not going to sit there and take this. They will strike back. As Clausewitz said, "the enemy is an animate object that reacts". We can expect direct terrorist attacks to attempts to subvert our financial markets. They will step up support of the insurgent terrorists in Iran. They might even try and sabatoge tanker shipments in the gulf through mining operations much like they did during the Iran-Iraq war. And they will try to carry out terrorist operations in the United States itself, if not directly then through proxies such as Hezbollah.
The Final Option
Massive, sustained air strikes are our final resort. If we must use them, we should realize that it will not be a quick one or two day operation. Iran has hidden it's assets well, and air strikes will require several weeks, and will undoubtably involve naval fighting as well. Tanker traffic will be shut down for a month or more, and oil prices will skyrocket.
But it all comes down to these questions:
1) Is Iran trying to obtain nuclear weapons?
2) Is it acceptable for Iran to have nuclear weapons?
1) yes 2) no The reason is simple; at the worst they will actually use them against us or Israel, and at best will create an intolerable situation in the region. The authors of this Army War College Paper point out that Iran can do many nasty things once armed with nuclear weapons.
We must not let this happen. And to achieve that goal, we must not wait until the last minute. We need to put strong measures in place now.
Posted by Tom at September 4, 2006 9:00 PM
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Comments
(I have deleted this comment because its author was simply advertising a post on his blog which has no relation to my post - Tom)
Posted by: Joe at September 5, 2006 2:13 AM
One of the most encouraging things I have heard about in Iran is the recent press conference (when Ahmadinejad "challenged Bush to a debate"), in which the press began to ask pressing questions about freedom of the press and some of the failed economic policies. It is important to note that Ahmadinejad was 'voted' into power on a platform of economic reform, not as a international wildman that he has become. In fact, if you look at pre-election articles, he refused to even comment on his views on foreign policy (now we know why) and instead focused on a domestic agenda. As such, it will be worthwhile to watch how his public support lasts, especially if he is unable to carry through on the domestic economic issues that carried him to power. Unfortunately, the price of oil plays well to his agenda (just as it aides Chavez as well).
While I don't think Iran is harmless, I do like the idea of not delivering democracy to them from open bomb bay doors and from muzzle of a M-4, since this approach hasn't gone smoothly in Iraq. Enabling Iranians to chose their own time and place for regime change seems much wiser than having our military carry out the "white-mans" burden of bringing "liberal democracy" to the oppresed Iranian people by force and foreign occupation, which tends to bring out reactions of chaos and nationalism/tribalism from local populations.
Posted by: jason at September 5, 2006 8:03 PM
Insightful comments, jason. Thank you for stopping by.
If Iran was not developing nuclear weapons, then I'd be all for letting them change the regime in their own way at their own pace. But I think they are developing nukes, I don't want to wait until the last minute to do something, our current strategy won't work, and it's unacceptable for the current regime to have such weapons.
So as I said in the post, what it comes down to is how you answer these questions: Is Iran trying to obtain nuclear weapons? If so, is it acceptable for them to have such weapons? Lastly, is our current strategy to prevent them from getting nuclear weapons working?
My answers are answers are yes, no, and no.
What are your answers, and if you don't think our current strategy is working what do you propose we do? I ask sincerely, as I'm not locked into my proposals.
Posted by: Tom the Redhunter at September 5, 2006 9:19 PM
Tom,
I’m not sure what the current strategy with Iran is. Tough talk and resolutions in the UN for an eventual “strong statement” are futile efforts; we all know that is next to meaningless, other than courting world public opinion. Even economic sanctions would be futile. World oil demand and restricted supply would reward Iran with higher oil prices and would only encourage smuggling, like it did in Iraq. Sanctions rarely seem to achieve anything, except hurting the most vulnerable in a target society. We all know sanctions were an abject failure in Iraq (Saddams sons still had enough wealth to plate their AK-47s with gold, while it was the poor who had to make do with fewer medical supplies and food items). The threat and implementation of economic sanctions also utterly failed to prevent Pakistan from obtaining the bomb.
I think my biggest difference (naturally) from your suggestions is that I don’t really think saber rattling (increased military pressure) will help the situation. When a foreign power threatens a nation, the citizens usually support their leaders (rally around the flag, regardless of their popularity or actual policies). Bush had sagging opinion numbers prior to 9/11, and then the day after the attack he had an approval rating of above 90%. Menacing Iran would provide them the excuse to crack down on dissent, and try to appeal to nationalistic sentiment (remember, we grossly underestimated the public mood when we re-installed the Shah and actually empowered radical nationalistic/Islamic elements).
I used to have an Iranian roommate, she was a Christian and her family fled Iran and the Pasdaran after years of persecution and midnight visits by the secret police (her dad was a communist and a Christian). They traveled 36 hours overland to escape to Turkey, and left behind everything, cars, property, everything. Needless to say, she had no love for the mullahs and the Pasdaran. However, she did support Iran’s right to develop nuclear technology, even though she hated the regime. They do have multiple uranium mines and she felt it was unfair that the US tried to dictate what her country did with its resources. Even though she hated and fled the current regime, she was nationalistic enough to support Iran’s ‘peaceful nuclear’ program, which I found interesting. Of course, I wouldn’t pretend to believe their program is solely for energy proposes, but that is the challenge with using nuclear technology for energy generation, it is always a few steps always from weapons grade material.
Some suggest that security guarantees would help slow Iran’s nuclear ambition (the author also makes a more detailed case in Foreign Affairs, but you have to pay for the full article, so I haven’t read it). While I am doubtful of this approach, security guarantees from the US could help to improve the image of the US in Iranian public opinion and reduce Iran popular support for the nuclear program and undermine the current President in Iran. Of course, such guarantees would be meaningless if Iran or their proxies used a bomb, but it would be a token gesture of goodwill to the Iranian public and would reduce any legitimacy or defensive nationalism Ahmadinejad seems to be trying to foment. Contrary to many right-wing radio talk shows, I think it is encouraging that Khatami is visiting the US. It is a good thing to develop ties with moderate political players in Iran, and like Sun Tzu is claimed to have said, “it is good to keep your friends close but keep your enemies closer.”
Honestly, I have thought about this for a few days and I have no good ideas. I don’t know much about Iranian public opinion, or how close to an internal revolution they are. I do know that too much outside meddling can undermine revolutionary movements by labeling legitimate dissenters as “foreign agents”, but I don’t have a good grasp of how Iranians really fell about their country. Many protested in the streets after the ‘axis of evil’ speech, but many (especially the youth) also are tired of the conservative mullahs and just want to go shopping, date and buy western products like other youth around the world.
BTW, I thought your August 29, 2006 post was a very unbiased, open and honest appraisal and critique (GOP pork-barrel spending akin to behavior of drunken sailors) of how some conservative political virtues have been tarnished in recent years. Out of respect (and since there was nothing I could really add), I decided not to join in the Republican Party bashing, since it seemed like the self-assessment was far more dignified than any additional political points I could have made with the usual liberal points of contention (aka it’s all Halliburton’s fault, Tom Delay is corrupt, etc.)
Posted by: jason at September 7, 2006 1:21 PM
