How not to bomb Iran
I don't have a better prescription than anybody else. What I do have is this here article about other peoples' ideas.
In the past month, President Bush and his allies in the Congress have set Washington once again buzzing with speculation about the administration's end game for Iran -- having accused the Iranians of stoking a third world war and dubbed the Revolutionary Guard Corps a terrorist organization. But as everyone from antiwar activists to military insiders wring their hands over the White House's intentions, a lonely handful of Democratic legislators are working to wedge Congress between the administration and Tehran.Massachusetts Rep. John Tierney and Virginia Sen. Jim Webb have emerged as early leaders. With a few exceptions, their efforts have drawn tepid support from their colleagues, in both parties. But Tierney points to hopeful signs of a groundswell -- and sources say influential Democratic donors have begun demanding that party leaders match Bush’s saber rattling with an equally vocal chorus of caution.
In 1998, during a politically fraught moment in United States history, the Congress passed, and President Bill Clinton signed into law, the Iraq Liberation Act, which made ending Saddam Hussein’s regime an official U.S. policy goal. The legislation said as much explicitly: "It should be the policy of the United States to support efforts to remove the regime headed by Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq."
Nine years later, Sens. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., and Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., introduced an eerily similar amendment to the 2008 Department of Defense spending bill, which passed with overwhelming support and will soon be U.S. law. "It should be the policy of the United States," the Kyl-Lieberman amendment reads, "to combat, contain, and roll back the violent activities and destabilizing influence inside Iraq of the Government of the Islamic Republic of Iran, its foreign facilitators such as Lebanese Hezbollah, and its indigenous Iraqi proxies." This should be accomplished, according to the language, with the "use of all instruments of United States national power in Iraq, including diplomatic, economic, intelligence, and military instruments."
Two, in this case, doesn’t make a coincidence.
Fun weekend reading. I'm off to New York.
Comments
If there were a better prescription than military action, it would be of interest. But foreclosing on that option is not a good prescription. As written before, allowing the mullahs to have nuclear weapons and then "living with it" is not a risk we should be prepared to take. Why fall all over ourselves trying to protect them and afford them every advantage? Why let a terrible monster grow when it might be nipped in the bud? And it is still a "bud," for all its posturing and roaring. It will not be a bud when it has nuclear weapons.
Why let a terrible monster grow when it might be nipped in the bud?
Because no sane person thinks it will be a terrible monster. Even if the Iranians get the bomb, they'll still be the weakest nuclear power in their neighborhood by a long shot. It would be a bad thing--possibly even a very bad thing--if Iran got the bomb. It wouldn't present an existential threat.
Wouldn't be an existential threat to whom? It doesn't matter that they will have fewer weapons than Israel does. Having one bomb would make them an existential threat to Israel, because unlike most countries, they might very well use it. Let us imagine the situation then. Would the Israelis just shrug off the loss of Tel Aviv, retaliate massively and carry on happily as before? On the contrary, Israel would have lost a third of its population and most of its land mass to radioactive fallout. It would have on its national conscience the killing of scores of millions of people in Iran. This would be the end of Israel at least as we know the country today. This is not a situation that we even want to get close to.
Far short of this nightmare, as Ephraim Sneh commented recently, "People are not enthusiastic about being scorched." By this he meant that even the threat of nuclear attack from Iran would end the Zionist dream. The Israelis are not going to live with that kind of risk, beholden to the good will of people who hate them more than they love life itself, and as their friends, we shouldn't ask them to.
If we need to take military action to remove all chance that Iran acquires nuclear weapons, we certainly should.
Bruce, it seems you aren't thinking comprehensively about the region. Pakistan has proven that they will sell nuclear technology and we didn't level their cities. And Pakistan is far more unstable than Iran. You also seem to ignore the nuclear deterrence matter entirely: we could promise that any sale or gift of technology, or first use (including eminent threat) would be met with US nuclear attack. The Iranians don't want to be leveled either.
As the IAEA has stated publicly, within recent weeks, they have no (NO!) evidence that Iran is pursuing a nuclear bomb program.
So what should our policy be: nuclear deterrence (the younger brother of Mutually Assured Destruction - they clearly can't destroy the US or its nuclear retaliatory capability.)
There should be be no policy of preventative attack (attack without evidence of an eminent preemptive attack by Iran or the US, Israel or its' neighbors) on the table of the US, for any country. That was our policy throughout the cold war, and is consistent with America's 'don't tread on me' heritage.
A US preventative attack on Iran is counter to our interests in many, many ways, not the least of which is that about 1 billion moslems would instantly be our enemies - including unstable Pakistan, Iraq and Afghanistan.
Wouldn't be an existential threat to whom?
1. I'm American, and not Israeli, so my concern for Israel's problems is discounted appropriately and necessarily derivative to what I believe to be US national interests.
2. I'm not sure that an Iranian bomb would destroy Tel Aviv. Somewhere out there is a little java application that lets you play with the field of destruction of an atomic bomb (of varying strength) on a map. Less destructive than I'd assumed, is what I took away from it. I don't know how powerful an Iranian bomb would be, but I suspect it would be at the lower end of the scale.
3. People who think Iran would nuke Israel first are, to my mind, insane.
4. The more convincing argument is that Iran would be able increase the extent to which they dicked around by other means. That might impact Israel's future. It's not so much that nobody wants to be scorched as that everybody wants to live in a normal country. In the absence of substantial anti-semitism, at some point, people start leaving. I'm sympathetic, but we're not at that point yet, and, again, I'm not Israeli.
5. Once upon a time, we could have--I think--just left it to the Israelis to bomb the nuclear sites, and publicly condemned them and privately congratulated them. After the Iraq invasion, that's harder to do: we're in the area, at risk, and more clearly well-positioned to inflect Israeli intentions. My personal belief is that the neocons unintentionally fucked Israel pretty hard; if y'all catch them in Israel and want to administer a beating, I think we can probably do the publicly wrong/privately OK thing with that. Short of that, I don't know what to tell you.
6. After the Iraq invasion in the face of broad world opposition and without any clear need to do so, I think you'd have to pretty incompetent as a Defense Minister not to want a nuke. So I assume that Iran will continue to want one, whatever happens.
7. That said, I understand that countries can be walked backward along the path to a nuclear program through bribes and guarantees. I believe that this has happened before, and that there are costs to a nuclear program beyond simply world opprobrium and the related sanctions. I think we have more time to deal with this than other people imply or say. But that's entirely a felt sense: I couldn't point to anything specific at the moment.
8. I think nothing good comes of trying to deal with this while Bush is in office. I hope I'm wrong. But I don't have much faith in this Administration.
9. It seems to me that we should probably account for the very unlikely possibility that Iran does, insanely, nuke Israel by swapping what bombs they have (200, as I understand it) out for neutron bombs. I thought I saw that the Israelis already had this technology, so maybe it's not necessary. Or perhaps it's such a closely guarded secret that we can't do that.
Tough situation, and you all have my sympathies.
Tim and Jim:
You seem at odds over whether Iran is actually developing nuclear weapons, with Jim accepting the word of the IAEA that there is NO evidence and Tim tacitly agreeing that the Iranians are developing nuclear weapons, but commenting that they might be backed away from it by bribery and guarantees. I side with Tim on the first point. No responsible country would merely accept the word of Iran or the IAEA on this matter, and the Israelis, Americans and European countries certainly do not. Whether they can be backed away is another question, and if they can, fine for all concerned.
But I differ with Tim on several points. I am also an American and not an Israeli, but to shrug and leave Israel to its own fate would be not only immoral but ultimately destabilizing. The Israelis will go to all lengths to survive, and they are not going to tolerate a conventional slug-fest with Iran for very long. They will resort to their nuclear arsenal before they see their cities in flames from Iran's long-range rockets.
Tim splits hairs over whether Tel Aviv would be "destroyed." The small Hiroshima-sized device certainly did a good job on Hiroshima, and to argue that Tel Aviv wouldn't be "destroyed" by a fission bomb... not 'technically, really, utterly destroyed,' is sophistry and I am sure he knows this.
It is not "insane" to think that Iran might exercise a first strike; there is a finite (and to my mind unacceptably large) probability that they will do so. I agree, however, that once in possession of a nuclear umbrella, Iran would be much more adventurous and would try to kill Israel by the attrition of conventional warfare. This I find unacceptable as well (and again, I speak as an American).
I really do not know what Tim is thinking about when he proposes, in the event of a first strike by Iran, to swap Israel's current arsenal of nuclear weapons for neutron bombs, which, as he observes, Israel probably possesses in any case. Does Tim mean to spare the architecture and infrastructure of Iran while permitting the extermination of its people? Really this is rather a strange proposal. And you may be sure that Israel is not going to be in the mood to ponder it even for a second after sustaining a first strike.
To Jim, I would say by way of agreement that Pakistan is a terrible problem as well. It is certainly unstable, might become a jihadist state a few days from now for all we know, and would then be in possession of a few atomic weapons (about fifteen of them, so I understand). It is a disgrace that things were ever allowed to get to this point. The only ray of light there is that they lack long-distance delivery vehicles at present. But just because there is one disaster looming on the horizon, we ought not turn a blind eye to a second one, nor be cowed into accepting it as inevitable.
They will resort to their nuclear arsenal before they see their cities in flames from Iran's long-range rockets.
And you may be sure that Israel is not going to be in the mood to ponder it even for a second after sustaining a first strike.
I think we probably disagree about the extent of US influence over Israeli actions, especially at the nuclear extreme. I think we're the ultimate guarantor of Israel's chance to exist, and should--unthinkable--Israel cease, the Israelis are going to want some country that they can flee to that will greet them with open arms.
I don't think it's very likely that we'll get anywhere near that point, though.
To quote Oliver Hardy:
"Well it's a fine mess you've gotten us into, George"
I don't think we have any viable options as long as Bush is in office. An attack on Iran would not eliminate their nuclear program, It might delay it, but it also might speed it up. Standing by complacently also has risks, especiallly over a 3-5 year timeline. Bush has to be held in check for the next 14 months. Then maybe, maybe we can start to undo some of the damage and danger he's created.
To Tim:
We probably do disagree over Israel's independence of action. No question, when the US talks, Israel listens. But it is precisely in extreme situations that Israel acts with full independence. That's what "vital interests" are all about. In the days before the Six Day War, Lyndon Johnson appealed to the Eshkol government to stand down, telling Abba Eban repeatedly: "Israel won't be alone unless it decides to go it alone." But the Israelis, fully mobilized, unable to maintain mobilization indefinitely, and surrounded by hundreds of thousands of Arab troops and thousands of tanks, decided otherwise. Two days later, calculating their best strategy for survival, the Israelis defied Johnson and launched a pre-emptive airstrike against the Egyptian airforce; then destroyed all of their armies over the next few days. When it comes to using its nuclear arsenal, Israel will surely be highly circumspect, but it will not ask the advice of anyone.
As to the Israelis needing to keep the Americans on their good side as an "insurance policy" because the might need to flee there... forget it. They are going nowhere. They have proved this again and again. They are willing to die for their country.
Yes. At least for this generation. The few who felt compelled to leave... have already left. Even members of the peace movement there are quite patriotic, and while they disagree mith many of the governments policies re: Palestinans, they are much more united against a belligerent Iran.
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