Lost in the brouhaha which has surrounded both the Iranian effort at long delayed honesty and the Presidential statement accusing Iran of having suffered a deficiency in candor is the underlying fact that Islam, particularly that of the Shia flavor, is unique among monotheistic faiths by endorsing the practice of lying in order to advance the interests of the belief or protect the believer. More than most states, the semi-theocracy of Iran has a firm justification for lying. And, they act on that justification with both skill and inventiveness.
The Iranians have also shown an unexpected bit of creativity in their request that the US (or presumably some other member of the P5+1) sell them a bit of moderately enriched uranium for their elderly US furnished research reactor. The aging machine has used all the stockpile of twenty percent enriched uranium and needs a refill.
This request presents the Obama administration with a pretty conundrum. Providing the moderately enriched uranium would, of course, violate the current sanction regime--all the more so given the Security Council passage the other day of the tougher add-on to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT.) But not providing the stuff justifies the Iranians taking some of their current stockpile of low enriched uranium and spinning it up to the higher concentration--or beyond.
The impasse over the twenty percent solution will give the P5+1 little, if any additional leverage in the upcoming talks with Iran. Whatever additional leverage is provided to the anti-nuclear group comes from the acknowledgement by Iran of its second enrichment plant.
This pleasant fact has already manifested itself with Russia. The long-time diplomatic protector of Iran and its ambitions has been sidling a bit closer to the additional sanction position espoused by the US, Britain, and France. The Kremlin now proclaims itself, in the manner of the French police commander in the movie Casablanca, to be "shocked, shocked," at the revelations.
This development implies that China might sit on its hands and abstain in the Security Council if and when a vote on additional sanctions is taken. An abstention would make Beijing appear to be somewhat on the side of the anti-Iran nuclear forces while not actually requiring it to abide by the sanctions.
The Russian position is that while sanctions don't work, they might be necessary in the present case. This finely nuanced view takes proper account of reality. The present triple whammy of sanctions would have put excruciating pressure on Iran had the countries of the European Union actually enforced them.
Even France, whose president, Nicholas Sarkozy has become famous for lambasting the Iranians and their newly "re-elected" Orator-in-Chief, has viewed sanctions so dimly that the businesses of the country do well over a billion bucks a year in sales to the mullahs and their henchmen. The same is true with Germany--which pronounced itself "disturbed" by the Iranian revelations but is the charter member and biggest profiteer in the "Billion Dollar Club" of those trading with Iran.
It can be argued effortlessly that should the members of the EU cease all investment in Iran, this would place crippling pressure on the regime and its industrial base--including the local version of the "military-industrial complex." However, the hoary Lenin Doctrine--"The capitalists will sell us the rope with which we hang them"--continues to apply without exception.
Beyond even the barest hint of a shadow of doubt, the Iranians will continue their so far successful approach of very limited concessions, endless palaver, and boasts of "cutting off the hands of any who would attack," while the centrifuges spin first to five percent and then, who knows, to twenty percent and far beyond. Absent truly crushing sanctions including the total cessation of investment and trade by the West, there will be no realistic probability of diplomatic engagement bearing useful results.
The pervasive fear in the Obama administration--and elsewhere in the West--is that actual, painful, long-term sanctions will rally the Iranian people behind the mullahs and their "democratically" elected stooges. There is a real ground historically for this fear.
This fear has been attenuated at least somewhat by the continuing internal dissent ignited by the blatantly hijacked presidential election. The pain of genuine sanctions, perhaps even including foodstuffs (from which the US benefited last year to the tune of more than eight hundred million dollars) would have just as much likelihood of strengthening the dissidents as solidifying the public behind Ahmedinejad and Khamenei. It is a fact that nuclear weapons are not edible--nor do they serve as motor vehicle fuel, and national pride does not compensate for the lack of jobs.
Iran has given the rest of the world--or at least that part which agrees with President Obama's statement that "a nuclear armed Iran is unacceptable"--very little in the option department. The imposition of an end of the year deadline means that the time when push comes to shove is very, very close. This means that the US, France, Britain, and other nations must reach a consensus soon on the choice between what would amount to a full blockade of Iran and what is euphemistically termed "the military option."
Of course, recent history shows that resorting to the former does not obviate the latter. The US imposed the financial equivalent of a physical blockade of Imperial Japan in the early Fall of 1941. Roughly three months later the bombs fell on Pearl Harbor.
No one in the US sought war with Japan on that long ago day. It came uninvited but clearly foreseeably as a direct result of the choice our sanctions placed before the Imperial Japanese government--a humiliating capitulation to American policy demands or war with a superior power. The Japanese hoped that the US was so preoccupied with affairs in Europe that it would accept an accomplished feat in the Pacific. They were wrong.
Really tough sanctions, the equivalent of a physical blockade, would provide Tehran with the same set of choices. Quite possibly the mullahs and their frontmen would conclude that the US and others were so preoccupied with affairs in the Mideast, Afghanistan, and in the recovery from the Great Recession that even relatively minor responses to the "blockade" such as a cranking up of the assorted terror specialists would preclude a genuine military effort by the US and others.
Sometimes a appeal to the gods of war is preferable to the appearance and consequences of a humiliating surrender to the dictates of outsiders.
Maybe this is the foreign policy challenge, Joe Biden warned us about.
No comments:
Post a Comment