wants to kill everybody
in the whole world
My big concern about Iran, and I first wrote along these lines at the start
of the Iraq war, is that Bush is going to bomb it with nuclear weapons.
People who think this might be a good idea probably thought attacking Iraq
would be a good idea too, and they're much more wrong about this.
A nuclear attack on Iran could in the worst plausible case quickly escalate,
by one scenario or another, into global thermonuclear exchange. A great
many Americans would die, and our country would cease to exist in its present
form. I'm not saying this is likely, but it is certainly plausible. In the
longer and more certain term, I think a nuclear attack on Iran would in
time reverberate to use of nuclear weapons elsewhere, most likely against
Washington and/or New York. Unfortunately, such considerations may not hold
sway.
Further, even a conventional attack on Iran is going to be the mother of all messes. If you think they've messed up in Afghanistan and Iraq, tighten your seat belt for Iran. I think the worst case for a conventional attack is that Bush will be quickly backed into a nuclear corner. The best realistic case is some multiple of Iraq. The Middle East will in some measure politically unzip. Oil, however much of it we can get, will of course go through the roof. Iraq could turn into another Stalingrad. And we should be prepared to lose some fraction of our navy in the Persian Gulf. Feel free to send Cheney an email explaining this.
The basic deal with Iran is that Israel won't tolerate nuclear parity in the Middle East, so we can't either. We here in the US may have lived with global nuclear parity for over half a century, but that's our problem, not Israel's. Thus it makes no real difference whether Iran is pursuing a peaceful or military nuclear capability, since even a peaceful nuclear capability is a short step away from nuclear weapons, a step which would be difficult to stop. This ability to take the step to nuclear weapons would alone fundamentally alter the nuclear balance of power in the Middle East, a balance of power currently owned and operated by the Israelis. This is the one and only factor. The Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, the UN charter, US security, the basic concept of national equality, indeed even the idea of common sustainable sense- none of these considerations make any real difference.
In the long term, lecturing on nuclear temperance from a bar stool simply will not work. We cannot plausibly deny others the right to build weapons which we possess in greater number than every other nation on Earth combined. In addition to being morally specious, such a nuclear Jim Crow paradigm is in the long term a laughable impossibility. The concern that Iran may acquire nuclear weapons must be addressed within a framework of global nuclear disarmament, as specified in the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty to which our country is a signatory. Anything short of this is like trying to stamp out a camp fire while the forest burns down around us.
addendum:
4/20/06- As of April 18, President George Bush is now openly threatening
Iran with nuclear war. Incredibly enough, the thing that's supposed to make
this OK is the very shaky supposition that it's just schoolboy bluster.
And I'm not making any of this up.
addendum2:
7/3/06- Well, it looks like the nuclear option has been taken off the
table by the generals. Seymour Hersh quotes a retired four star general-
"The system is starting to sense the end of the road,
and they don’t want to be condemned by history. They want to be able to
say, ‘We stood up.’” So now we're down to the conventional craziness
of conventional air strikes on Iran. Here's some interesting speculation
on the possible consequences, written by Claude Salhani of UPI:
"On Day Two of the war, Iran sends thousands
of Revolutionary Guards into Iraq where clashes with American troops result
in many casualties, while Hezbollah attacks Israel. The chaos quickly spreads
through the Middle East. The consequences continue to ripple out on Days
Three and Four; Saudia Arabia is in turmoil, and Musharraf is overthrown.
Then, on what is only Day Four of this conflict, we see the following transpire:
Pakistan’s intelligence service, the ISI—a long-time supporter of the fundamentalists—in
agreement with the plotters, takes control of the country’s nuclear arsenal
and its codes. Within hours, and before news of the coup leaks out, Pakistan,
now run by pro-bin Laden fundamentalists, loads two nuclear weapons aboard
executive Lear jets that take off from a remote military airfield, headed
for Tel Aviv and Ashdod. Detouring and refueling in east Africa, they approach
Israel from the south. The crafts identify themselves as South African.
Their tail markings match the given identification.
The two planes with their deadly cargo are flown by suicide pilots who,
armed with false flight plans and posing as business executives, follow
the flight path given to them by Israeli air traffic control. At the last
moment, however, the planes veer away from the airfield, soar into the sky
and dive into the outskirts of the two cities, detonating their nuclear
devices in the process.
The rest of this scenario can unfold in a number of ways. Take your pick;
none are encouraging.
Israel retaliates against Pakistan, killing millions in the process. Arab
governments fall. Following days of violence, Syria, Jordan, and Egypt succumb
to Islamist rebels who vow open warfare with Israel. The Middle East regresses
into war, with the fighting claiming hundreds of thousands of lives. A much-weakened
Israel, now struggling for its very survival, deploys more nuclear weapons,
targeting multiple Arab capitals. The Middle East is in complete mayhem,
as the United States desperately tries to arrange a cease-fire."
I could cut and paste my similar speculation from the past few years, but
suffice it to say that Cheney and his people may be as oblivious to the
consequences of attacking Iran as they were to the consequences of attacking
Iraq.
Where is Congress in all this? How can they let the President possibly swagger
us into yet another and much worse war? The Constitution specifies that
the decision to go to war is in the hands of Congress and Congress alone.
They swear on oath to this. Where are they? Where is Inglis?
addendum3:
(Reuters,
9/17/06) (Israeli) Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni said on Sunday that
the world may have as little as "a few months" to avoid a nuclear Iran and
called for sanctions.
"The crucial moment is not the day of the bomb. The crucial moment is the
day in which Iran will master the enrichment, the knowledge of enrichment,"
she said on CNN's "Late Edition."
Like I said above- "it makes no real difference whether Iran is pursuing
a peaceful or military nuclear capability".
addendum4:
(CNN,
2/9/07) Offering some of the first public details of evidence the
military has collected, Gates said, "I think there's some serial numbers,
there may be some markings on some of the projectile fragments that we found,"
that point to Iran.
... He "thinks" there are "some serial numbers"? Why do people buy this
stuff? Besides which, practically all the IEDs in Iraq are planted by Sunnis,
who at least in this universe aren't supported by Iranian Shiites.
And riddle me this- how does a nation supposedly on the verge of building
atomic bombs four years ago suddenly require massive outside help to build
roadside booby traps? How is that?
addendum5:
(AP,
8/17/07) Israel considers Iran, whose president has repeatedly threatened
to destroy the Jewish state, its greatest enemy.
Ahmadinejad has not in fact made a single threat against Israel, and yet
the AP claims he has "repeatedly threatened to destroy the Jewish state".
Earlier this month Bush told us Iran "has proclaimed its desire to build
a nuclear weapon", a statement bluntly at odds with years of Iranian insistence
to the contrary.
Is all this going to work? Is truth simply no longer on the table?
addendum6:
(10/22/07) Here's
an article in Esquire detailing the neocon determination to attack Iran,
even to the point of rebuffing Iranian overtures toward peace.
War isn't just a means for such people, it's an end in itself.
addendum7:
(10/23/07) Fareed Zakaria sums
up the Iranian threat-
Here is the reality. Iran has an economy the size
of Finland's and an annual defense budget of around $4.8 billion. It has
not invaded a country since the late 18th century. The United States has
a GDP that is 68 times larger and defense expenditures that are 110 times
greater. Israel and every Arab country (except Syria and Iraq) are quietly
or actively allied against Iran. And yet we are to believe that Tehran is
about to overturn the international system and replace it with an Islamo-fascist
order? What planet are we on?
addendum8:
(11/2/07) Here's
a detailed takedown of the "Ahmadinejad has threatened to wipe Israel off
the map" talking point.
addendum9:
(3/5/08) I wrote Ahmadinejad a year and a half ago that the Iranians
should propose a global ban on nuclear weapons, and now they have.
OK, probably not because I suggested it. But maybe it helped. You never
know.
