So, tell me. If you were sitting in W.’s chair trying to figure out what to do about Iran’s nuclear program, what would you be thinking about (and, no, you can’t say “my next vacation to Texas” … you’re not W., so you treat matters of great importance with appropriate dignity).
Here’s one to contemplate — how ’bout a trade off? We give up control of southern Iraq to the Iranian-supported militias (i.e., we allow the de facto federalization of Iraq to continue) in return for Iran’s abandonment of its nuclear ambitions.
Too often in this public debate about Iran’s nuclear program, we seem to miss the essential point — Iran is a self-interested actor, with enough checks and balances domestically to be forcibly constrained to focus on only a few essential strategic aims.
It’s a devil’s bargain, and one that didn’t have to be made — had Bush not both mangled the invasion of Iraq and hacked his way through the tenuous feelers of goodwill which had began to form between our two countries under Clinton and in the days immediately after 9/11*, we might be in a much different situation vis a vis Iran than we are today.
Nonetheless, the situation today is as it is. Given that, this comes down to simple game theory. If you’re the U.S., you can (potentially) have both an end to Iran’s nuclear program AND an Iran-free Iraq, but only if you’re willing to pay the extremely high costs of a military buildup and potential confrontation, in addition to the great uncertainties about the outcome of those actions.
Iran faces a similar situation. They can both have a nuclear program AND tremendous influence in Iraq, but only if they’re willing to pay the economic costs, including those from a potential military showdown with the U.S.
The “right” answer for both parties is compromise. Since even the Iranians aren’t sure they really want nukes, it looks to me like the obvious tradeoff is that the U.S. allows Iran to hold sway in Shi’a Iraq in return for Iran giving up its efforts to get the bomb. No matter what the circumstances that got us to this point, this is a compromise in the grand traditions of U.S. diplomacy. Remember that even JFK compromised — the Cuban missile crisis was resolved as much by Kennedy’s promise to remove Jupiter missiles from Turkey as from his threats to forcibly intervene in Cuba.
Of course, since this is so obviously the right answer, I have every confidence in the world that W. will bungle this just as badly as he has everything else he’s done in office.
* I contend that the “axis of evil” speech — intended to be Bush’s “tear down this wall” moment — has been one of his most ill-considered blunders.
Ceding control of the entire south of Iraq seems like more of a capitulation than a diplomatic overture. But it seems that — at one point at least — the Bush Administration didn’t/doesn’t have to go nearly that far:
http://oxblog.blogspot.com/2007/01/could-this-be-one-of-mistakes-bush-is.html
Capitulation, maybe. But I’m glad to see that at least MY brain’s still working. That article you link to makes almost exactly the same point I do … including the aside about the “axis of evil” speech being among Bush’s worst moments.
And remember that the 2003 overture from the Iranians was when the US was in a position of relative strength: we’d just swiftly toppled Saddam’s regime (or we were about to) and Teheran was scared.
I don’t think they’re so scared now, which is why we’ve had to up the ante by deploying a 2nd carrier group to the region.