What if diplomacy with Iran fails? That is the question The National is asking. Obviously a nuclear Iran will turn the region upside down. A likely arms race will ensue and at least two Arab states will follow Iran in their own nuclear weapon making capabilities. None of those things are good for the U.S. or for Israel and the unstable region.
As far as diplomacy in and of itself with Iran, it is a case where the carrots have gotten so big that they have broken the sticks. Iran set out for more time and they accomplished that goal with ease considering they held the attention of most of the world for years now. There were rough spells for Tehran to be sure but all in all, the end, in the eye of the regime, will far exceed all the costs. Barring a direct confrontation or some strange internal events, it is highly probable at this point Iran will join the elite fraternity of nuclear states in the near future. With the absence of Russia’s and China’s cooperation there is little hope of economic leverage and the threat of isolation to use against Tehran.
Throw in the facts that Europe has been less than decisive during the process, and Arab and Gulf nations have failed to confront or cooperate together against Iran, and that leaves the U.S. alone trying outmaneuver Iran. Therefore, The National is asking legitimate if uncomfortable questions, “What if diplomacy fails?”
Meanwhile, the US has seemingly taken a military strike out of the diplomatic equation. The military solution would wreak untold havoc on the region, but disavowing the use of force removes a source of leverage, and with such an intransigent nation you need all the leverage you can get.
At this point it appears that Washington may be preparing to live with the consequences of a nuclear Iran. If Iran is not overtly threatened with an attack, then it has less reason to bridge the gap between nuclear weapons capability and a nuclear weapons arsenal.
Yet, if the world is ultimately not prepared to do what is necessary to halt Iran’s nuclear programme through strong sanctions, diplomacy or, in the last resort, force, another question remains: what was the point of this exercise?
Regardless of the outcome for those out there who study and follow international studies/relations this is a great example of how anarchy is still the prevailing international system. In an age where many like to point to a strong international system, an increasingly interdependent and connected world, with a ready list of accomplishments to go with it, falsely assume states like Iran are obsolete in today’s world.
The same centralizing forces in the world can equally be decentralizing forces. That is because states make decisions based off their interests and usually at the expense of other states. The state is still the key player in the international arena. There is no higher power to constrain their behavior. They are the primary actor on the international stage. And world politics is still a zero-sum game.
War, peace, and security. Countries prepare for all three and when a country like Iran can limit the desire of its enemies to wage war by producing nuclear weapons, thereby increasing Persian-hegemony in the Middle East, overcoming a security dilemma, and changing the status quo, it will. That falls under historical prescription.
Of course, there is another side to this debate and more to this exercise before we say all is lost. We use diplomacy as long as it promotes our interests but the minute it fails, and our interests are threatened, we prepare for war. That has been the realist approach to foreign policy for centuries. The U.S. has been no exception to that rule and has made that philosophy its mainstay. And one could argue well it has been relentless and unforgiving when in use too.
The 19th century Prussian General Karl von Clausewitz, “War is nothing but the continuation of politics by other means.”
Walter Russell Mead over at the American Interest is right on cue.
President McKinley wanted to stay out of Spain’s war in Cuba; he didn’t succeed. President Madison didn’t want a war with Great Britain but the War of 1812 came all the same. Woodrow Wilson hoped to stay out of World War One; the last thing President Truman wanted was a war in Korea, and Lyndon Johnson felt trapped by the war in Vietnam. President Obama clearly doesn’t want a war with Iran (and, for what it’s worth, neither do I) but if history teaches anything, it’s that you can’t always get what you want.
It’s unfortunately rather easy to think of circumstances that could force the Obama administration into a war it would rather avoid. Here’s a scenario: without asking American permission the Israelis launch attacks on Iran that bloody the regime’s nose and, while they don’t destroy the nuclear program, they do expose the regime’s inability to defend its airspace against the hated Zionist foe. Not believing US denials or really caring whether they are true, to distract public attention at home and abroad from its military failures against the hated Zionists, and to capitalize on a perceived opportunity to pose as the leader of Islamic resistance to the “Crusader and Zionist alliance,” Iran retaliates against US targets — firing on our ships in the Gulf, for example, or openly attacking American forces in Iraq and/or Afghanistan.
Could President Obama turn the other cheek, or would he have to respond — and where would a cycle of tit-for-tat retaliations end up?
There are other scenarios that end up with the US and Iran with daggers drawn. There are signs that the mullahs overestimate their clout and underestimate America’s ability to confront them. In the past, Iranian radical factions have turned up the temperature in the US-Iranian relationship in order to improve their political standing at home. Calling on Iranians to unite against the foreign menace has worked before, isolating moderates and consolidating the radicals’ grip on power; it’s easy to see them trying this same tactic again. Radicals used the 1979 seizure of American diplomatic hostages, for example, to discredit moderates during the Iranian Revolution. At other times radicals have sent boats out into the Gulf to harass American shipping, and supported Iraqi groups fighting American troops. It would be easy for radical clerics and activists to miscalculate and, intending only to stage a crisis, to overreach and set off a war.
Paradoxically, the only way to avoid scenarios like these with Iran may be to make the regime and its radical allies fear us more than they now do.
The United States genuinely does not want a war with Iran, but if Iran attacks American forces or American interests, that will change. An attack from Iran would set off the kind of Jacksonian rage that followed Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor or indeed that transformed American foreign policy after 9/11.
Go and read all of it. It’s very good.
