The memo was written shortly after the Iranians successfully ignored yet one more of the lines in the sand so often drawn by President Obama. Of course, it is legitimate to ask whatever possessed the administration to believe the mullahs and their verbose front men would actually agree to surrender their uranium stockpile and otherwise live according to the worldviews of the US, the West, the IAEA, and other assemblages of foreign infidels?
As unsurprising as the contents of the Gates Memo was the response from the White House. National Security Advisor, (former) Marine General James Jones, took the predictable route of assuring the masses that the administration has really, really been on top of the policy planning thing each and every one of the past fifteen months.
The general went on to make his key point. The US strategy was not a public document. We had to trust the older?, wiser? heads in and near the Oval. Effective action, the general wanted us to believe would be taken when, how, and if appropriate.
Duh.
The problem comes in determining the actual state of Iran's nuclear capability. The most probable goal of the mullahs is to assemble all the components of a nuclear weapon but not put the final package together in a deliverable form. This would not only allow the transgressor state to keep within technical compliance with the Non-Proliferation Treaty but immeasurably complicate the task of assessing capability. And the degree of threat.
(It deserves recalling that the US would have been in compliance with today's NPT when the bombs destined for Hiroshima and Nagasaki were loaded on board the B-29s. Final assembly occurred only after the bombers were airborne. Only then did the US possess weapons as defined by the NPT.)
Implicit in the Gates Memo is the most basic question: Is the US prepared to accept a nuclear capable Iran, particularly one which has an off-the-shelf arsenal?
The president and his secretary of state have worn out their vocal cords saying, "No way." Yet the nature of the failed policies on the ground have given credibility to the opposite. We are willing to see Iran join the Nuclear Club (virtual division.)
The Gates Memo also demands a clear cut demonstration of political will in the (rather unlikely) event the administration is seriously committed to a No-Nuclear-Iran policy. Diplomacy requires credible political will as its foundation if it is to have any effect.
The Iranians have no reason to believe that the US will take any real risks to compel Tehran's compliance with our requirements. The soft sanctions which have been enforced with even greater tenderness have not shown that the US and its "allies" are truly serious about forcing the Iranians to abandon the nuclear weapons quest. The unfortunate combination of soft actions and "hard" words, words which have been lessened in their effect by the hearty admixture of kind, gentle, open handed presidential remarks, has combined to assure the mullahs that no icky-poo consequences will ensue over their attaining nuclear status.
It would not be surprising if the Iranian regime has concluded that its robust pursuit of the nuclear goal has been responsible in large measure for the Obama administration's radical shift in policy toward Israel. Considering that the regime's hold on the political and diplomatic context operating on the Israel-Arab matter is tenuous at best and its sense of self-importance borders on the grandiose, it is not out to lunch to infer that the Bearded Lads of Tehran see that their having hung tough in the face of American "pressure" has had the result of forcing the administration to back down in its support of Israel. That is a very important factor in Iranian policy thinking.
Achieving a breakout capacity covered with the same fog of ambiguity which has typified the Israeli nuclear program for fifty years would give Tehran an unaccustomed degree of regional and global influence. The self-evident lack of a well defined, well presented policy on the part of the US, particularly one which includes a credible degree of direct military threat, has not only furthered Iranian influence, it has lessened that possessed by the US. In the region and throughout the world, the loud talk and ineffective action of the Obama administration has done much to erode the American capacity to be taken seriously.
In a similar vein the bumbling actions of the US in both Iraq and Afghanistan for so many years went a long, a very long way to eroding the fear with which many countries once viewed our military capacity. The sheer ineptitude of the Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld years of "shock and awe" in these two wars did nothing to enhance the credibility of the American military as a Big Stick. It must be remembered that all diplomacy other than that between countries with the greatest number of coinciding national interests rests in large part on the "military option." Certainly all diplomacy of the coercive sort, the kind we are engaged in with respect to Iran, rests on the perceived will and ability to employ force in support of policy.
The Iranians have concluded, perhaps quite accurately, that the US lacks the will and ability to use its military against the Revolutionary Republic. Thus it is safe for Ahmadinejad to boast of Iran's military being too "mighty" for any foreign state to consider attacking the country. It is a boast that he believes will never be put to the test.
The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Admiral Mullen, has recently sent a memo around which reminded all hands of the need for a range of options to be both prepared and refined so that the administration will have the military means available immediately should it conclude that diplomacy has failed and the Iranian nuclear nuisance must be abated. This is a necessary step. But it is not both necessary and sufficient.
As the ancient recipe for rabbit stew starts, "First, catch your rabbit," the first step is to have a definite policy. The Obama administration which means Obama himself, must decide whether or not to declare defeat and proceed to some sort of containment policy directed against a nuclear capable Iran or, with the failure of unsupported diplomacy, to use the long taboo "military option." Given the record of delay, of hesitation, of combining hard words with soft mood music, and the unwillingness of key players such as Russia and China to see the potential threats in a way similar to that of the US, France, and the UK, the choice must come soon and must be made both public and compelling.
War is undesirable, to put it mildly. The consequences of a military strike would be of "world historical" importance. The same may be said of the Iran-Bested-Us alternative. A nuclear capable Iran would be certain to be a severe game changer both in the region and around the world.
Tough choices, it may be inferred from the Gates Memo, do not become any easier with the passage of time. They become both harder and starker. To be blunt, the Obama administration has fiddled while the Iranian centrifuges have spun. The fiddling must stop before the centrifuges have scored a clear cut victory over the Civilized States of the world.
This may mean that Mr Obama will have to act as if he had morphed into George W. Bush. The US may have to act as a Great Power pursuing its national interest whether Brazil or even China likes the idea. Mr Obama may have to run against type, against his own sense of self. But, that sort of thing comes with being in the Oval.
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