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May 23, 2006

Iran

Dave Schuler had an interesting post on Iran, in which he argues that our options are to get Russia and China on board with sanctions, or we have no options. I do not concur.

Well, let me be more clear. I concur that our best option is to get China and Russia on board (for real) with sanctions, and I hope that the government is focusing its will and bending its enormous resources to that task. My failure to concur arises from one likelihood and one fact: the likelihood is that Russia and China will not come on board with tough sanctions, and the fact is that we do have options past that point.

In my opinion, the US goals, in order, must be to (1) prevent genocide, (2) keep the oil flowing, (3) minimize attacks on the US and allied interests.

If Iran appears to be close to getting nuclear weapons, or if it is found to have done so, Israel will use its nuclear arsenal to destroy Iran utterly. Failure to do so implies that Israel will itself be destroyed, because 9/11 showed us pretty clearly to take our enemies at their words when they say they want to kill us. And the Iranians have been very clear about their goal to test their nuclear weapons in Tel Aviv and Haifa. So to accomplish goal #1, the US must prevent Iran from even getting close to a nuclear weapons capability.

Sanctions as a tool to accomplish that violate goal #2, but are more politically palatable than an outright attack on Iran. Assuming that diplomacy has failed to convince the Iranians to abandon seeking nuclear weapons (and I think that is nearly a given at this point, and will be assured when Iran rejects the latest EU proposal that would give Iran guaranteed access to commercial-grade nuclear fuel), sanctions will be our next attempt; indeed, we are already moving down that road.

But in order for sanctions to work, as you note, Russia and China must be on board. The history of N. Korea, and of the Oil For Food program, indicate that a tight sanctions regime is unworkable. I think we have to try, but I also think that we are unlikely to get what we want, and must keep in mind the timeline to achieve goal #1 is shrinking rapidly - particularly since it now appears that the Iranians (quelle surprise) have a parallel, secret military nuclear program in place.

So let's say that we can't get a tight sanctions regime. Do we go for a leaky sanctions regime? This is where, I believe, your "Without that we’ve got nothing" comment comes into play. No, we cannot accept a leaky sanctions regime that makes us the bad guy while letting Iran continue to develop their nuclear program essentially unhindered, in practical terms. Remember all the stories of starving Iraqi children? Think those won't come back in Iranian clothes? If so, think again.

So if leaky sanctions are not going to help us achieve goal #1, and would in the meantime lessen the oil flow (goal #2 violated) while giving excuses to the Iranians to attack us (goal #3 violated), we cannot do leaky sanctions.

What's next? Embargo. We could shut off Iran's access to the sea, and (if we were willing to attack oil pipelines and road nets, particularly in the North) could shut off any significant Iranian imports or exports. But that is an act of war: we have gone from "we all agree not to trade with you" to "we will compel everyone by force of arms not to trade with you." At that point, we have lost goal #2 and goal #3, and goal #1 is still very questionable because we will not be able to guarantee a stoppage of the Iranian nuclear program short of their utter surrender, more complete even than that of Serbia. Now, it's possible that Iran will surrender, and we'll be able to go in and eliminate their nuclear programs to a degree we (and the Israelis) consider sufficient, get the oil flowing again, and not take massive attacks in the process (surrender may just mean entrapment, in an age and land of terrorism). Possible, but then it's possible that the Cubs will win the Series. Possible, but unlikely.

So we are past sanctions as an option at this point in the logic, and Iran continues onwards. We've looked at the possibility of an embargo, and it's just not an attractive option for obtaining our goals. At this point, we've exhausted all possibilities of obtaining goal #1 short of war, and the question is what kind of war it will be. As I noted in my response to Dave's post, we've got the resources to do considerably more than a limited embargo, and in the process to acheive all three goals.

To do this, we must actively destroy Iran's civilian and military infrastructure and occupy the oil fields and the territory around the Straits of Hormuz. This would take considerably fewer ground troops than occupying all of Iran (which we do not have the strength to do, frankly, and might not have even were we not also engaged in Iraq). We would achieve goal #1 by simply making it impossible for Iran to function in any way until they surrender utterly, thus making it impossible (by tautology) for Iran to continue nuclear development. We would certainly take terror attacks for this, as would our allies, and some of them would be big.

On the other hand, of course, which is better: taking those terror attacks, or waiting until either Iran or Israel attacks the other with nuclear weapons? Politically, I suppose we could just let Israel go for it, and denounce them afterwards. Morally? Well, that's another story.

Posted by jeff at May 23, 2006 1:11 PM

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Comments

Other things we can do:

There is an armed Kurdish resistance in Iran. We can support it clandestinely. This is a tricky option, of course (Turkey wouldn't be pleased, and Iran would step up incursions into the Kurdish part of Iraq), but fighting Kurds is always a tough business for the affected country.

The Iranian Azeris are also getting restless. Any way we can foment trouble there would be useful.

Iranian fundamentalists enjoy their greatest support from rural and small town Iranians, but even these folks are appalled at things like flogging 14-year-old boys to death and hanging young rape victims. If the individuals in authority directly responsible for these atrocities at the local level were to be "wacked," the rural locals would be fine with it.

Posted by: Roderick Reilly at May 24, 2006 11:41 AM

I think the word you're looking for is “blockade” rather than embargo. This is the point to keep in mind: between us we and the Russians easily have the ability to cut Iranian international trade to a trickle. The Iranians might have the ability to punish us for doing that but they don't have the ability to end the blockade.

China, in this as in so much else, is a special case. If the Chinese regime were merely to stop subsidizing oil consumption in China, China would be very nearly oil self-sufficient. And the regime certainly has the will and ability to implement temporary measures that would do that.

With China and Russia on board we have the ability to implement a sanctions regime that is sufficiently non-porous as to be effective in applying pressure on the regime.

Posted by: Dave Schuler [TypeKey Profile Page] at May 25, 2006 7:42 AM

You are correct about "blockade". Note to self: when typing fast, proof read!

I agree that with the help of the Russians we could easily blockade Iran. This would unleash a multi-fronted Iranian campaign against us, of which the three most effective parts would be terror attacks on us around the world, destabilization of the Iraqi government to a much greater degree than currently (possibly including open revolt by Sadr and crew) and the media campaign portraying all of this as our fault, complete with blaming us for every problem Iran has including theocracy and poverty.

At that point, we have entered into an action that is unlikely to be sustainable long enough to achieve our goals, but at very high cost. Is that really preferable to attacking Iran, which would also be high cost but would at least have a very high chance of attaining our primary goal?

Posted by: Jeff Medcalf [TypeKey Profile Page] at May 25, 2006 8:29 AM