Note that the NYT uses Sanger to make a vaguely academic,
determinedly confused, purposefully non-judgmental case for the
status quo ante in Sunday NYT, "Suppose
We Just Let Iran Have the Bomb."
Facts are inconvenient but required alongside the Sanger
wandering-around in the groves of think tanks masquerading as
anti-Bush Administration policy wonkhood.
1. The UN Charter is a large roadblock to the US doing anything
with regard Iran. The UN Charter Chapter 7, article 42, provides
for air, land, sea intervention in the event the UNSC votes to
sanction a member state as a war-maker. Violation of the NPT by a
signatory (Iran) decribes amply what is the UN's idea of
war-making. It will take months and perhaps years to get the UNSC
to such a series of votes and resolutions, but the process is
well-advanced, and history says that once the talk starts, the
permanent members get real antsy to get it over with either
way.
2. Iran is an aggressor state committed to battering the US and
its allies into confrontation. The nuke fuel cycle is a ploy by
Iran, not by the US or the UN. Iran aims to use the impotence of
the UNSC as a demonstration that it is a regional hegemon that has
ambitions to be a global hegemon.
3. The US is a Middle East regional hegemon because of Iraq. To
stand by and permit Iran to bully the UNSC into surrender would be
to toss the Iraq expedition into the ashheap. And Israel into the
ashheap. And Jordan, Kuwait, the Persian Gulf states. There may be
an American president who is willing to take the risk of turning
over the Arabian oilfields to a Tehran gangland, but not this
president, not ever.
4. Iran knows that time is on the US side. The longer Iran takes
to force a confrontation, the more likely something will happen
that weakens its hold on Russia, China, Syria and so forth kindred
of bullying. Now is the time for Iran to find maximum support. Any
US move will be regarded as an attack by the Crusader State and its
Zionist stepson, and this will rally the Ummah and swing Russia and
China to Iran's side.
5. Am specially struck by a fatalistic sourness from Sanger's
source, Biddle of the geniuses at CFR. "Iran has a return address,
and any state with a return address can be retaliated against."
Wrong on the facts. Iran uses surrogates routinely, and no
retaliation is on record.
Wrong on the facts. Iran aims to ride out the US counterstrike
with the Tehran regime in invulnerable bunkers and the TV showing
the depredations on the helpless populace of Tehran and so
forth.
6. This is an election year, and Iran regime has concluded that
the US cannot respond to a crisis in an election year. Wait one
year from now, with the Bush team through the midterms, and the
calculation of what the US national security apparatus may do will
be much more challenging to figure; e.g., how long would the
bombing continue until a demand for ceasefire from the
Europeans?
topics:
Iraq, Iran, Russia, Israel, NATO, Oil
