Good piece. I don't think you're actually splitting the difference between me and Mark Steyn, though, because I basically agree with you. I'm not "certain" that the Iranians would never use nuclear weapons, because you can never be certain about that kind of thing. But we have decades of history of pretty dodgy states becoming saner once they're part of the nuclear club. Therefore I rate the odds of Iran using a nuke as so low as to make preventive war a foolish response to the problem for the conservative reasons you adduce. I'm just a lot less polite about it than you are because of recent history.

Thing about Churchill is, IIRC he's the guy who objected to ending the war to keep Ireland in the British empire and to use military force to keep India in the British Empire indefinitely. I think that he called the Nazis right, but that may just have been the odds evening out for him. (Granted, he said - safely after the fact - the US should have stayed out of WWI, which was wisdom that cut against the grain of his reflexes, so I may be selling him short.)

Anyone remember Mein Kampf? Hitler laid out a plan to get rid of the Jews and meant every word of it as history has verified. The President of Iran has pledged to get rid of Israel and Israelis. I for one believe he means every word of what he has said.

However, I too would hesitate to destroy any chance for a peaceful solution to this problem. Iran has to know that the US would respond very drastically, i. e. nuclear bombs would fall, if they attack Israel. (That assumes we don't have a Kerrian president at the time.) The mullahs will probably restrain any really drastic action knowing what the consequences would surely be. The President does not have the power to unilaterally issue a strike order, or so the news media have said. Hope they are right.

One other consequence of a nuclear exchange between Israel and Iran, with or without the US following suit, would be the complete disruption of the world's economies. We could easily see a crash comparable to or worse than the 1930's. Without oil from either Iran or some of the other mid-East kingdoms the whole world would come to an economic stand still.

My own belief is that if we give this problem a little time it could well resolve itself without any major conflict. The Iranian government is not all that stable. We should, to paraphrase Reagan, wait but prepare for the worst case.

A nice, rational post, but two replies and already invoking Godwin.

The Mullahs have been in power for 27 some years. Suddenly, after the Axis-of-evil speech and Invasion of Iraq, Iran is nefariously interested in large-scale enrichment. Ahmadinejad is a response to our policies, and our stated policy is to destabalize the Middle East to make it more stable.

If we are to believe GW's words as much as Ahmadinejads, then the threat is 'existential'. But the rational tools available to him cannot solve the 'problem'. At best, they might delay their entry into the 'Nucular' Club.

So, we only have two options:
1) Rational actors within the Gov't or Pentagon sell GW on a program that sounds nice, but really doesn't accomplish anything and limits fallout.
2) Irrational actors within the Gov't implement a faith-based solution.

I think it's pretty clear that rational actors have taken over the driving in Iraq. But Bush continues to speak with the same kind of fervor as our Iranian 'Hitler' does. Either they're both very smart, or a whole lotta people are going to die.

srv, Iran _didn't_ suddenly become interested in enrichment in the wake of the 2003 war with Iraq.

They've been doing it for a while now. Their arrangement with Russia, which IMHO was geared towards establishing the infrastructure to build a bomb with, has been ongoing for about a decade. They've also apparently received centrifuge technology from A. Q. Khan, and we only found out about that proliferation effort (and how long it had been going on) in the aftermath of the invasion of Iraq.

Oh, and my opinion on what to do about it? I keep hoping I'll wake up one morning and a _good_ option will have appeared overnight.

Ditto with Henley. Additionally, I still havn't seen strong evidence that Iran really has a covert nuclear weapons program, hell I think the 10 year estimate is probably optimistic, so we certainly have time to formulate a plan, or to get a more useful leadership.

Ummm...no one invoked Godwin.

I do not think that word means what you think it means.

Good article, though I think things are more complicated again than have been presented. This phase in the global issue of nuclear proliferation began in earnest either when Israel developed a nuclear arsenal or when North Korea, India and Pakistan did. In each of these cases the powerful players in world politics watched in alarm but didn't step in decisively to stop them. The key lesson was that a covert nuclear program could be run up to almost the last stage of the cycle at which point becoming a nuclear power was inevitable.

The cost/benefit analysis has changed for Iran because, on the one hand, the world is now watching and knows what they're trying to do and doesn't want Iran to be a nuclear power (though without the crucial consensus on how to confront the issue) but on the other side because the invasion of Iraq has significantly weakened the US in terms of credible foreign policy options while the (IMO necessary) appeasement of North Korea has demonstrated beyond doubt that nuclear powers are treated very differently.

Before I ramble off too far, the key issue for those of us who see the Iranian regime as relatively rational is that an Iranian bomb will contribute to the general push among second tier nations to arm themselves. Turkey and Saudi Arabia would definitely have a strategic reason to follow their neighbour while the likes of Brazil, Germany and Japan have other reasons to covet nuclear status. In another nightmare scenario for the US, how about Hugo Chavez seeking the bomb as champion of a left-wing south america?

The key for the left is understanding the wider consequences of an Iranian bomb and the costs of doing nothing. The key for the right is in understanding the way the appallingly inconsistent approach to the global nuclear issue from the Bush administration so far combined with the mess in Iraq has drastically shifted the cost of dealing with the issue now, and also understanding that Iran is less important than the wider question of what to do about nuclear proliferation. Any solution which looks to punish Iran in isolation will very likely cause more problems than it solves.

Iran _didn't_ suddenly become interested in enrichment in the wake of the 2003 war with Iraq.

I said large-scale enrichment. Of course they have centrifuges.

Ummm...no one invoked Godwin.

I do not think that word means what you think it means.

From Wiki: "As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one."

Maybe Wes meant the other Hitler.

So now we can't use Hitler comparisons when someone runs a dictatorship and makes frequent references to annihilating the jews?

Godwin meant to cut down on hyperbolic use of the Hitler analogy.

"Anyone remember Mein Kampf? Hitler laid out a plan to get rid of the Jews and meant every word of it as history has verified. The President of Iran has pledged to get rid of Israel and Israelis. I for one believe he means every word of what he has said." isn't exactly hyperbolic. Wes said that Hitler meant what he said and Iran means what they say. And both are talking about annihilating populations. It was a limited analogy. Sorry about the associated baggage that comes along with Hitler, but there aren't that many other examples of dictators laying out a plan of genocide and then doing exactly what they said.

Now, were I to call you a Godwin-nazi. That would be hyperbolic. Oops, see what I did there, now you won the argument.

Sorry about the associated baggage that comes along with Hitler, but there aren't that many other examples of dictators laying out a plan of genocide and then doing exactly what they said.

Indeed there aren't. For all the pub Hitler gets he's the rarity: the politician who meant what he said. If you troubled to look, you could find many more instances of tough-talking leaders, autocrats and not, whose bark was worse than their bite. History began before 1933 and continued past 1945.

The same logic the French and British shied from in 1936 (reversing the remilitarization of the Rhineland) was the logic they had embraced to horrific cost in 1914, when the Triple Entente decided that they needed to deal with the looming threat of Germany before it got too powerful. That worked out poorly and indeed set the stage for the next war.

Had your or my definition of "we" gone to war with every bellicose antagonist "while they were still weak," including Germany in 1936, history might have been catastrophically *bloodier*.

And let's face it, we don't really know how things would have worked out had France reoccupied the Rhineland in 1936. German generals may have deposed Hitler, but ended up installing a much smarter aggressive leader in his place. (Imagine a Germany led by someone smart enough to drive for the Caucusus in 1942 rather than throw everything into the symbolic blow of conquering the city named for the enemy dictator.)

Nor is Iran a dictatorship. It's a weird semi-representative government where their version of the Supreme Court has a lot of power relative to the executive. I'm not saying it's a cuddly regime by any stretch of the imagination, but it's more broadly accountable and normalized than Iraq under Saddam.

The same logic the French and British shied from in 1936 (reversing the remilitarization of the Rhineland) was the logic they had embraced to horrific cost in 1914, when the Triple Entente decided that they needed to deal with the looming threat of Germany before it got too powerful.

I'm going to have to disagree here. The Triple Entente had only two options in 1914: mobilize, or don't. Once the Austro-Hungarian Empire decided it was going after Serbian, the only thing that could have stopped WWI would be Russian choosing not to mobilize. Once Russia decided to mobilize, Germany followed suit and would almost certain attempted the Schlieffen Plan whether France had mobilized or not.

'Nor is Iran a dictatorship. It's a weird semi-representative government where their version of the Supreme Court has a lot of power relative to the executive. I'm not saying it's a cuddly regime by any stretch of the imagination, but it's more broadly accountable and normalized than Iraq under Saddam.'

I consider Iran to be a dictatorship because the power of the unelected body is moderated solely by their knowledge that the Iranian people will revolt if they move too far. The evidence from the past decade is that the democratically elected leader has no power whatsoever beyond being a useful piece of PR for the religious authorities.

I think the key point is not whether Iran is democratic or not but the fact that the people are strongly opposed to western help in acheiving it. As with Saudi it's far from clear that a democratic regime would be a safer prospect from our point of view (and, of course, we overthrew the last democratically elected regime in Iran precisely because their socialist posturing was unpalatable).

So now we can't use Hitler comparisons when someone runs a dictatorship and makes frequent references to annihilating the jews?

Words and usage seem to be important to you, so you might look up the exact words that Ahmadinejad actually said.

You might also want to look at what say, former President Rafsanjani, Ayatollah Khomeini and what many Arab leaders have said in the past. Easily just as bad, or worse. For instance, Libya's Col. Q or Sadat.

So are/where they all Hitler too? Or do we have degress of Hitler invocations where Godwin does not apply? Sadat was sorta Hitler, but then came around?

As far as having "a plan", I haven't seen Admadinejads equivalent to Mein Kampf. If it exists, maybe someone can provide a link for me.

But you both made my point for me. You can't just invoke Godwin in a situation such as this and expect people to just quiver and run away (despite the fact that I am just a "scared little girl"). Your responses made actualy arguments as to why you think the analogy is invalid. If this were truly a Godwin situation (a la Rush Limbaugh's feminazis, etc.) you wouldn't feel the need to do that.

Look, you think the Iranians are posing. That to me is a perfectly valid point of view. However, I also don't think it is irrational to take them at their word.

And yes, I take seriously all the other Arab national leaders that have screamed for the death of the Jews. Do you honestly think that if they had won any of the wars they started that they would have merely deported them? I think they meant it when they said they would kill them. And this isn't just talk. The Palestinians talk the talk and they walk the walk. (And, incidentally, just because all the Arab leaders that have screamed for the death of the jews haven't been able to implement that particular plank doesn't mean they would not do so. Willingness AND ability are the keys to a successful transaction.)

And yes, there are degrees of Hitler invocation where Godwin does not apply. I don't think Saddam was Hitlerian. Nor do I think the Mullahs in Iran are Nazis. (And I'm not Wes, but I merely read the analogy as saying - in the past we have been burned by not taking people at their word and it could happen again. Not Iran is Nazi Germany and Amhadinejad is Hitler.) I don't even know if I think the Mullahs are crazy enough to start nuking Israel the minute they get a bomb. But thinking about it, and thinking about the consequences of an Iranian nuke don't make me crazy. And you can't just invoke Godwin and have the whole thing go away.

And why is it so important to get bogged down in nitpicky things like whether there is an Iranian Mein Kampf or whether Iran is actually a dictatorship? Those are both tangentially related at best. Internet arguments so often get bogged down in these minutia that it is tiring. (And I do understand that Iran is not a dictatorship, but that is just such a minor point I frankly can't even believe Mr. Henley brought it up. They aren't exactly a representative democracy despite the elections.)

Obviously, you feel that using Hitler as an analogy at any time has been always and forever revoked by Mike Godwin. That's fine. But don't expect people to be convinced by your arguments, because you haven't made one.

Well now we talk about substance. wes' other comments would have been more substatantive (IMHO) if it didn't open with the idea that Admadinejads comments are something out of the norm in that part of the world. You then conflated that with "annihilating populations", which is a bit more. I would agree the President Rafsanjani implied that, but not Mr. A. (I get tired of spelling his name).

I think you and Wes can make points without resorting to Hitler, and don't want anyone to run away because I rolled my eyes over it.

Mr. A may well end up posing an existential threat to Israel. I predict he will, but only if we/they attack Iran. He may then be forced to live up to his language. Otherwise he'll be replaced by someone even worse.

As far as Henley's point you bring up. Well, I think Iran was alot more of a "representative" democracy before the Axis-of-evil nonsense, and now it is less of one because. At least alot of my Iranian friends thought so, and had high hopes about the future until we started tossing grenades over there to make it better on our schedule. Am I nitpicking?

I'm not sure where you get the idea that Wes was implying that Mr. A's comments are out of the norm in the greater middle east. He merely said that he was taking them at their word.

Iran's system of government is a totally separate argument (yes, I miswrote when I said dictatorship, but it was a shortcut and not key to my argument). My point is merely that if you want to engage in conversation it is not enough to invoke Godwin's law (especially when you do it with sneering condescension). There are people out there who believe that Iran does in fact mean to wipe out Israel if they get the chance. I'm not convinced, but I take Iran more seriously when they start doing calculation about what Iran could take vs. dish out in a nuclear exchange. That's a lot more suppositioning than I'm necessarily comfortable with.

I know that Mr. Henley reads the following statement as a deterrent and not a threat, but I don't think it is unreasonable for people to interpret it as a threat:
"If a day comes when the world of Islam is duly equipped with the arms Israel has in possession, the strategy of colonialism would face a stalemate because application of an atomic bomb would not leave any thing in Israel but the same thing would just produce damages in the Muslim world", Ayatollah Ali Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani told the crowd at the traditional Friday prayers in Tehran." (yes, i know it is Mr. R and not Mr. A the point is that the leadership in Iran don't sound particularly peaceful)

Let's face it, you understood the point that Wes was making and you attempted to condescend it out of the conversation. Rather than address it and offer a better argument, you simply invoked Godwin as if that would settle the matter.

Andrew, that's a reasonable argument re the position of France by the time it got to that point. Lord knows there was plenty of folly to go around in the runup to 1914. If Austria-Hungary had - horrors! - "appeased" the Serbs, their "empire" might have lasted more than another four years, for instance.

Enrak: "scared little girls" is as scared little girls does. Yes, much post-Afghanistan hawkery has been motivated by rank cowardice, which the Bush Administration has deliberately fostered. (That goes for its aggrandizements on the internal-"security" front too.) That's the very thing that I've never been able to forgive it for. I was relatively Bush-friendly (despite having held my nose and voted for Harry Browne in 2000) up until early 2002.

Inflating problems (Saddam's Iraq, Iran's nuke program) into *crises* by discouraging any sense of proportion is fear-mongering. In private citizens, like the average warblogger, it's unbecoming. In government officials whose power rises directly as the general level of fear, it's despicable.

On the other side of that, and I'm going to blog about this, I'm convinced there are serious downsides to preventively bombing Iran - nevertheless, the quaking certainty that every bad thing we can imagine will happen in the aftermath is itself overdrawn.

He merely said that he was taking them at their word.

Well, maybe wes only takes "them" (you changed that from "he", Mr. A) at his word and not practically every other ME leader, but somehow I doubt that he thinks everyone else is a Hitler. He seems to think the Mullahs are more pragmatic.

You mixed in Henley's substantive response to your response, and called part of it nitpicky, so I thought I'd reply.

Rather than address it and offer a better argument, you simply invoked Godwin as if that would settle the matter.

I don't think the rest of my reply was a sneering condescension, I just think his first sentences detract from the rest. Wes implies it may all work out, I address that by implying the Iranians don't really have control over the outcome because it's really up to GW. You seem to miss that in all your anti-Godwin-Nazism. Perhaps we both focus too much on the opening sentences?

Maybe if I'd put a smiley after my first sentence you wouldn't have gone off, but I didn't intend a smiley or a sneer. Maybe I could delimit my responses more clearly, but then maybe you want to look at that too (not in a smiley or sneering sorta way).

Did you just call me an anti-Godwin-Nazi??!?

OK, everyone out of the pool. Let's declare both sides dead per Godwin and move on to other things.

If I may be permitted to speculate as to Wes' meaning, if Iran acquires nuclear devices, they will have the unique combination of desire and ability to wipe out Israel. That, it seems to me, marks Iran as different from the other Islamic states at this moment (I realize Pakistan has nuclear weapons, but anti-Semitism seems to take a back seat there to anti-Hinduism, and I'm not certain Pakistan yet has the ability to deliver a warhead to Israel, though I could be wrong.) Further, Iran has a history of reaching out to kill Jews at great distances: see the two Argentina attacks as prime examples of this. So I don't think it's unreasonable to think that the various mullahs who keep talking about annihilating Israel may actually plan on trying to follow through on their rhetoric. I'm not convinced that they cannot be deterred by Israel's own arsenal (although the guy who talked about Israel being wiped out while Iran could survive a nuclear exchange doesn't inspire confidence), but I don't blame people for being nervous, since the cost of being wrong would be pretty high.

The bottom line for me remains avoiding a military solution, since I'm not convinced that any military action that could actually solve the problem would be feasible from an ethical or political standpoint.

Fascinating. Who knew I could provoke such a discussion with a single sentence. GW will not always be there so the point that he controls is true only in the short run. I still think time will take care of most of the cited issues if we don't overreact.

Any one read Charlie Wilson's War? It was about how one slightly irrevrent congressman from Texas beat the Russians in Afganistan. Based upon the ethnic diversity of the Iranian population, the wide dislike of the theocracy, covert and finally overt funding of these tribes to over throw the "occupation" (govt. by mullah)would work.

Just an idea somewhere between doing nothing and attacking.

"I'm not surrounded. I'm at the center of a target rich environment."

CAG

I sure want to foment in Iran as much of the same sort of ethnic and sectarian strife that made Afghanistan a failed state and threatens to do the same with Iraq as possible. That's a great idea.

I've got to concur with Jim on this. After a century of meddling in other country's internal affairs with few good results to show for it, I would prefer to see us stay out of that game in the future. Even assuming we could foment a successful revolt against the mullahs, there's no way to know if the new government would be better or worse than the current one, and we would cost ourselves the reasonably good image we currently have among the average Persian. I'm willing to encourage republican reform in Iran verbally, but that's as far as I think our efforts should take us.

The problem I have is that how do we know how far to go?

When does opening up dialogue, normalizing trade, etc. become support for the regime. China is a good example. I support our current rapprochement with China, but sometimes I wonder if it is the correct approach. China is still one of the worst human rights abusers in the world from what I understand. Are we aiding and abetting by normalizing trade and relations, or are we supporting democratization and economic reform? It seems to be a very fine line.

On the other side we have Iran. We are contemplating military strikes, and covert operations. I think those are bad (potentially disastrous as Mr. Henley is convincing me) ideas. Should we be taking a tack similar to that with China? What would the consequences of that be?

There aren't many examples in history of autocratic governments peacefully reforming, but the U.S.S.R. revolution occurred primarily because they were going bankrupt. Are we preventing similar reform in China? Would we prevent similar reform in Iran by normalizing trade?

One of the reasons I am against military action in Iran is that I believe it would rally support for the current government. But I think we need to think carefully about the consequences of too much rapprochement with the Iranian government as well.

Those are valid concerns, Enrak, although I admit that sometimes I think we have an entirely too U.S.-centric view of the world. SRV is convinced that the Iranian nuclear program is our fault. You're concerned that rapprochement with China and Iran helps to prop up unjust regimes. There's probably some truth in both, but as the world opens up I wonder just how great our (U.S.) influence really is. Forty-plus years of embargo against Cuba may have succeeded in making the average Cuban even more miserable that he might normally be under Castro, but it doesn't appear to have done a darn thing to get a more representative government in place.

That doesn't mean that the opposite policy is any better, but I'm not convinced it would be any worse. In Iran, particularly, there is already at least some acknowledgement of the need of some representation of the people in their decision to hold elections, however carefully they vet the candidate lists. If the regime can't point to the dangerous external threat of the United States as a reason to maintain its tight hold on the country, perhaps the people would be more successful in pressing for liberalization. There are no certainties in life, but I can't help but think that we'd benefit by ratcheting down tensions some, even if the regime does continue to push its nuclear program forward. As I've noted before, any military solution capable of knocking out Iran's program with certainty is neither morally or politicially feasible, so perhaps we can attack the problem from the other side by removing the threat to Iran and drawing them more deeply into the international community. As Jon Henke at QandO noted the other day, China's ties with Iran may sound threatening to us, but they also undermine Iran's ability to deploy the oil weapon, since China needs cheap oil as badly (if not more so) as we do. A few more such ties might be more effective in moderating the mullahs than any military action.

Pre-911, the neocons and other hardliners were obsessed with China. Perhaps Iran is really just a war with China by proxy (if that's the proper usage). Western economies may be able to better absorb higher oil prices, whereas the current strategy hurts China more.

And it could certainly go the other way. China could see Iraq and Iran as a way to sap our interest in the ME.

Whoah - did we all become . . . nice in this thread? That's pretty cool. I credit the moderating influence of our host. I hope they give him all the hotheaded recruits on base - he probably does wonders for them.

Enrak, I understand the distaste for having normal relations with thuggish countries. I took great pleasure one cold morning in Washington DC back around 1990 in flipping off the first President Bush's limo as it drove by. This was shortly after news of James Baker's secret post-Tienanmen trip to China and the "We are swell friends" toast.

Practically speaking, you leave out the toasts. The ideal would be businesslike, productive relations with neither special warmth nor particular heat. The US and Iran need to enter into comprehensive talks, with all issues on the table, including support for anti-Israeli terrorism, as the Iranians proposed in Spring 2003. Michael Young has a surprisingly good article up on Reason's site this week laying out a pretty persuasive case that Iran's own options for pursuing retaliation against any US strike are problematic. I don't think they're problematic enough to make it likely we can bomb Iran with impunity, but they are bad enough to give the Iranians an incentive to pursue a deal that gets them something.

That's the thing: by leaving diplomacy to the Europeans and threats to us, we've got a policy that's all stick and no carrot. The Europeans can't offer Iran enough of what they want but don't already have to make it worth Iran's while to deal. The Europeans already have diplomatic relations and sizable trade with Iran. The Europeans are already not visibly lusting after regime change in Iran. (The Russian reactor offer wasn't bad - pretty creative actually. But that's the extent of what Europe can give Iran that Iran wants but doesn't have.)

We're the ones who have genuine diplomatic leverage, as opposed to threat power, and we're not using it. My suspicion is that we're not using it because we don't want it to succeed. If we will not so much as say, if you shut down these centrifuges we'll call off the dogs, then what incentive does the Iranian government have to cooperate? They're fvcked either way.

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