Iran: Moving Toward a Final Solution

[Sandman]

Thanks for the great post, exploited.

You made two main points. Starting with #1, I'm guessing that one was more directed at Boris. Speaking for myself only, my biggest disagreement has never been that Iran is an irrational actor that, as Michael Caine might say, just wants to "watch the world burn". Although, if pressed, I'd probably agree with Boris that it's impossible to call any authoritarian theocracy a truly "rational state". After all, I did compare them to crazy goth kids, lol. But I didn't rest my case on them being any more or less rational than any other nation on earth. If anything, my whole argument has been that they ARE very much rational, and have been rationally engaging us in a way that is, at best, making it impossible for our diplomatic efforts to succeed, and at worst, giving the more hawkish types in our military and congress a legitimate reason to screech.

The president and his military/intelligence advisers in his security briefings are probably not spending too much time talking about the likelihood of a hypothetical future strike from some hysterically-envisioned Iranian boogeyman. They're more likely having very calm and measured discussions about Iran's continuing role in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and all the destabilization and probable expansionist power plays that would arise from a nuclear Iran (which I'll get to in a bit).

To paraphrase something I said earlier in the discussion, being a rational actor just means you have an infinite ability to rationalize your actions, with the US and Britain being fine historical examples. I keep going back to Pakistan as a cautionary tale, but only because I think it's worth the scrutiny. Although they sometimes don't act like it, Pakistan is basically a rational actor on the world stage. With nukes. And while that certainly tempers our dealings with them, we won't be able to avoid outright confrontation forever. We're essentially engaged in a low-frequency conflict with them right now, that neither side is openly talking about. We also see how cheap anti-american populism is used to mask more complex and calculating regional politics. Anytime Karzai is in Pakistan and thinks we aren't listening, he's telling news cameras that if the US attacks Pakistan, Afghanistan will be on their side. We're talking about two countries that couldn't possibly hate eachother any more than they do, and on top of that, one of their leaders (guess which) only remains breathing as long as we are there to keep the sucking black hole of his own nation's simmering civil war from swallowing him whole in two seconds flat. And yet, there they both are.........making dinner plans. Because of hopes of pipelines and other economic partnerships, or maybe because Karzai is more scared of the nukes next door. We can only guess the rationale. The point being, a nuclear Pakistan is a bit of an asshole, and their nuclear status hasn't so much made our relations better, only more neurotic and impossible to figure out. So we could probably reasonably expect a nuclear Iran to be an exponentially bigger asshole.

Now to your #2 point, which I think more directly concerns the things I've been talking about in this thread so far. I basically agree with A through F, with a few small points of contention here or there. But G...............this is where I could not disagree more. Iran going nuclear would have incredible strategic consequences to the region and the world.

In the interest of both thread space and my own Friday night, I'll condense the rest of what I see as some of the biggest strategic consequences of a nuclear Iran into relatively brief bullet points here, starting with the most obvious one:

- Saudi Arabia. They've made it crystal clear that if Iran gets weaponized nukes, they will get in on the action, too. The two nations have been engaged in a pissing contest of an arms race for years, so this is no surprise. This would not only drastically complicate our own relationship with Saudi Arabia, but it also would have a wider ranging destabilizing effect in the region as a whole. The tension between these two regional powers would boil over fairly quickly.

- The Strait of Hormuz. An emboldened nuclear Iran will almost certainly close off the strait of Hormuz. Our Naval interests there will be in immediate danger, and more broadly, the nation of Oman will be bullied out of their own stake in the Strait. Which they obviously won't like.

- Turkey. I've talked about this at length in other threads, but Erdogan has staked his nations' hopes of EU admittance on becoming the strongest and boldest voice against undue aggression and human rights violations in the region. Libya, Egypt, Iran, and now most notably, Syria. Turkey has been the loudest voice of condemnation against these nations, and in the last few years has begun to use very real military and diplomatic pressure in the region. This has put them head to head with Syria. Syria and Iran are still close allies. We can do the quick and dirty math and extrapolate how the power dynamics between Iran, Syria, and Turkey will change once Iran goes nuclear. I made this same analogy in another thread, but Turkey is like the young prospect trying to get into the biker gang. He's about to punch a member of another gang to impress us. He thinks he's just punching one guy, but if Iran goes nuclear, that's like the other gang showing up by the hundreds while the prospect is still standing at the bar alone. He's going to call us and be like, "Uhhhhh............I did this for you guys. You better get to this damn bar and help."

- Iraq. This one almost deserves it's own completely different thread, but I'll be quick. We all know that one of the more unfortunate unintended consequences of our little forced regime change in Iraq has been that we took out Iran's biggest headache in the region, the Baathist Sunni regime. Ever since the fall of Saddam, Iran has moved into Iraq and been their best friend, in terms of economic investment and diplomatic posturing. This new found ease of movement in a former enemy country allowed Iran to undermine American attempts to build stability there before we pulled out, but it also could backfire on Iran if a new, strong Shia-led regime doesn't cement their place soon. There are definitely some wahhabi groups gaining ground there that are just as anti-Iran as they are anti-America. But hypothetically speaking, a newly emboldened nuclear Iran could make some real power plays in Iraq, put some real weight behind the type of regime they want to be friends with, and boom..................all the dominoes start to fall in place, in the worst way.

This last one, Iraq, is the one that could potentially set things off in a huge way in the region. Almost overnight, you'll have an axis of Iran, Iraq, and Syria, against another axis logically consisting of Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Israel, and a laundry list of potential others (as I pointed out, Oman wouldn't be very happy campers).

There are many other (increasingly more nuanced) strategic consequences of a nuclear Iran, and none of them are conceivably good for the United States. If you want to make a libertarian, non-interventionist case against even having interests in the middle east in the first place, I'd greatly enjoy that discussion and probably come out the other side agreeing on most points, at least philosophically. But to flatly say that there are NO strategic arguments against a nuclear Iran is demonstrably wrong, and it certainly will throw off the entire balance of the middle east.............to the extent that it has any balance at all right now anyway, lol.

In the end, neither of your two bolded points, nor the full breakdown of the second one, deal with my main argument, which is that Iran is already politically and militarily engaging us, which is directly resulting in the deaths of NATO personnel right now, presently, as we speak. If someone is punching you in the face, whether or not they get their hands on a knife or a gun becomes a bit irrelevant. You're not gonna want them to have either one, and you'll be within your rights to prevent them from getting either one. Nukes are ostensibly just weapons, like a gun or a knife. The scale of the damage they can inflict is obviously much larger than most other types of weapons, but if you were the president and someone asked you if Iran should even get their hands on a new fleet of tanks or F-16's, you'd still say, "hell no". Nukes are, I think, worse than tanks and fighter jets. So is it not reasonable for us to prevent Iran from getting weaponized nukes? I say yes. Of course, we should exhaust all peaceful diplomatic options. Of course, we should be conciliatory in our diplomacy, and admit our past mistakes in the region, and specifically with Iran themselves. But does that mean we concede our right to self-defense and pretend that Iran isn't already engaging us with force? I think that's a mistake. The two can be mutually exclusive. We agree that sanctions aren't working, and we agree that a pre-emptive strike won't have the desired effect, and we agree that the Iranians aren't irrational neo-nazis. As I've said over and over again, the bottom line for me is that there IS a way for the United States to be fair and honest in our diplomacy with Iran, giving them every chance for peace, while still setting firm limits on how much of a direct threat we'll allow them to be, given that they are already happily presenting themselves as a threat.

[The Dharma Bum]

The point you keep completely ignoring is that Iran is not coming over to the US and f**k with us. We are going over to Iran and f**k with them. And then when they attempt to defend themselves against this disturbance we call it an act of war and a threat.

lol

[Breakage]

[Sandman]

[The Dharma Bum]

It's not a chicken and egg argument at all. We started it when the CIA instigated a coup in their nation and replaced their democratically elected government with a murderous dictatorship that was friendlier to our interests.

We've been screwing with them ever since. Now we are currently starving them to soften them up for invasion ala Iraq.

[Sandman]

[The Dharma Bum]

[Sandman]

Nothing wrong with your historical facts. They don't explain Iran's actions in 2012, and if you think they do, then this might not be the best thread for you to poke your head in. I treat you dismissively because you live in a world where you think you can explain complex geopolitical affairs with two vapid sentences about America "screwing" with people before your parents were born. I'm sorry I made fun of you. Now go away.

[The Dharma Bum]

[Breakage]