Well, It's A Start--And Long Overdue

The Iranian ForMin has allowed that Iran will participate in a regional conference on security and stability in Afghanistan if the US does in fact offer an invitation. If the Iranians are not carrying a hidden agenda filled with assorted and irrelevant terms and conditions, this is an encouraging first small step toward constructive engagement.

Iran has a very long and equally permeable border with Afghanistan. The Mullahocracy has much to worry about should instability, Taliban-inspired enthusiasms, and ethno-religious insurgency pour across the border along with the flood of opium and opioids which has flowed for the last several years.

The extreme antipathy Tehran's mullahs held toward the Taliban was behind the incontrovertible fact that no country provided more to the American sponsored exercise in regime change way back in '02. The US and Iran had coinciding national interests then.

And, we and Tehran have them today. Coinciding national interests--the vanilla ice cream form of diplomacy.

But, before the Obama Administration and We the People take a lick from the old vanilla cone, some cautionary words are necessary. As the folks topside in the Obama Administration undoubtedly remember quite well, the initial, cautious open hand offered by the president was rudely, crudely slapped aside by Iran's Orator-in-Chief, Ahmedinejad.

Showing the diplomatic gaucherie which typifies not only Ahmedinejad but the Iranian regime generally, the Orator-in-Chief attached a list of conditions to any possible acceptance of the US demarche. These included offering a "sincere" apology to the Iranian government and people for all the icky-poo things the US has said and done over the last several generations.

The recycled Clinton crew may have a collective institutional memory up to the task of recalling just how often and in what ways the Iranian regime has initially seemed to accept an offer only to turn the acceptance into effective rejection by attaching provisos or demanding discussions on utterly irrelevant matters. There is no guarantee that this will not happen with regard to the regional conference on Afghanistan.

Mitigating against this possibility is an increasing Iranian alarm over the flood of opioids. As long as the narcotics were just passing through Iran with the usual gratuities being provided to the customary recipients including the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, the traffic was acceptable and good for the economic climate generally.

But, in the last couple of years an ever-growing amount of the traffic has stopped in Iran. Since the regime is not about to join in a chorus of "It's alright, ma, everybody gotta get stoned," the drug trade is now a sort of public enemy.

(Hmm, the Geek wonders, could the explosion in heroin and opium use in Iran be at all connected with an inflation rate in excess of twenty percent and an unemployment rate above thiry percent? Well, Ahmedinejad would disagree with that and point the finger at capitalism in the West. But, the Geek is of the view that were he to live in a tanked economy like Iran's, he would seek the pleasures of drug induced euphoria. Of course, the way things are going here, he may get that chance--and inducement.)

Iran has actually cooperated with both Afghanistan and Pakistan in the sharing of information and the effecting of arrests of suspected traffickers. Who knows, some of those arrested might actually be smugglers of drugs rather than subversive insurgency oriented ideology.

So, the US is best off pretending that the crew in Tehran is being upfront in wishing to participate meaningfully in the Afghanistan stability conference. In any event it is an excellent test match to determine the degree to which Iran will be a genuine interlocutor in any dialogue regarding other vital, vexing matters such as its nuclear aspirations and support of Hamas and Hezbollah.

The nuclear program of Iran is top on the list. There is something just so damn scary about the idea of an eschatologically oriented collection of mullahs having the capacity in-house to inaugurate a nuclear exchange.

The matter of Iranian nuclear capacity is of an existential sort from the perspective of Israel. It is not from an American point of view. Thus, it is critical that the US not allow itself to be stampeded by the usual suspects of the Israel Lobby. This will not be easy given the long established power of the Lobby as has been demonstrated recently by the withdrawal of Chaz Freeman.

There is at least another year, perhaps two, before the Iranians can have a meaningful stockpile of highly enriched uranium. It will take longer than that for them to extract plutonium from the fuel rods of their soon to go online Russian supplied heavy water reactor.

In either case the Iranians will need some time to effectively weaponise their fissile materials. This time frame is ample to test the willingness of Tehran to abandon their domestic production schemes and accept fuel from the EU, Russia or even the Great Satan US.

Right now, today, the US as well as its partners in the Six Power Talks accepts the North Korean possession of several tens of kilograms of plutonium as well as an unknown amount of highly enriched uranium. The North Koran regime has not shown itself to be susceptible to either pressure or rational discourse. Indeed, since the last elections in South Korea tossed up a government far less diffident to the desires of the Hermit Kingdom of the North than its predecessors the rhetoric out of the North has been at least as inflammatory and utterly irrational as the remarks of the Orator-in-Chief at his worst.

Admiral Blair, the Director on National Intelligence, opined to Congress that the North Koreans were not intending their nuclear weapons for actual usage but rather as instruments of diplomatic leverage and expressions of national prestige. It is not impossible that Iran would see a limited nuclear capacity in the same terms.

The DNI also advised his Senatorial auditors that it was not likely that the North Koreans would sell or otherwise transfer fissile materials to another party, either a state or a non-state actor since it would suffer nuclear obliteration if material bearing the Made in North Korea isotope signature were to be used anywhere, at any time, against any target. The same logic applies to Iran.

One important caveat is necessary. The analogy between North Korea and Iran breaks down if the Tehran regime is actually as eschatological in motivation as sometimes seems to be the case. It also breaks down if the Iranian president at some future date is as seemingly irrational as Ahmedinejad so often appears to be.

Indeed, while surveying the participants in any regional conference on Afghanistan, there is one far more troubling than Iran. That, of course, is Pakistan.

Pakistan has the bomb. Several dozen of them at the most conservative. Pakistan has a military and intelligence community well penetrated at all levels with people who are strongly Islamist in bent. While Pakistan has repeatedly "talked the talk" regarding its actions against Islamist terror and insurgent groups, it has rarely, if ever, "walked the walk." In short, whether meaning to or not, the government of Pakistan has been repeatedly tergiversatious. (That means they lie a lot.)

If the Geek had the chance to talk with the president and/or his secretary of state, the Geek would say, "Sure, talk to Iran. Start the process slowly and without any real expectations. Don't fall into the diplomat's occupational disease--the love of process regardless of results."

Then as the audience was nodding in agreement the Geek would add, "And, worry a lot more about the Pakistanis. They are far more dangerous."