The Inevitable Nuclear Iran

From The New Ledger:

The Inevitable Nuclear Iranby Benjamin Kerstein








It is now all but certain that the American administration has more or less resigned itself to a nuclear Iran. At the very least, it appears to have decided to take no military action against the Iranian nuclear program, nor even to support or encourage – publicly or discreetly – the Iranian popular opposition to the Ahmadinejad regime. The Obama administration will likely continue to pursue its policy of promoting engagement, either out of cynicism or naiveté, while simultaneously busying itself with the diplomatic give and take of arranging international support for sanctions which are unlikely to be effective. It is entirely possible, moreover, that American exhaustion from a decade of war and its public’s concentration on pressing domestic problems will effectively vitiate any political damage that might result from the emergence of a nuclear Iran. This, at any rate, is likely what Obama and the doves in his administration are counting on.



At first glance, this appears to be a disastrous state of affairs. But it need not be so. A nuclear armed Iran may be considered the lesser of possible evils by the United States, but it cannot be seen this way by others. To many Americans, the Iranian threat appears to be comfortably distant. This is something of a willful illusion, of course, but it is a politically influential and perhaps decisive one. For Iran’s neighbors, however, as well as many nations on their periphery, the threat is far more immediate.



Israeli concerns are naturally the most intense, given the Iranian president’s openly racist and genocidal attitude toward the Jewish state. But Israel is hardly alone in its concerns. If, as many suspect, the ultimate goal of the Iranian theocrats is the establishment of Iranian hegemony in the Middle East and thus the de facto seizure of the leadership of the Muslim world, then almost everyone in the region and many beyond have an interest in preventing such an outcome.



The Arab nations (Iran, it should be remembered, is not an Arab state) have squabbled among themselves for decades over leadership and hegemony, with the prize generally going to Egypt. Saudi Arabia, however, home to the most sacred sites and objects of Islam, as well as vast oil wealth, has long harbored its own sense of ancient entitlement. Jordan’s interest remains solely the stability and survival of its anachronistic monarchy. Iraq, still in the throes of its post-totalitarian regeneration, is Iran’s longtime rival, and its large Sunni and Kurdish minorities are unlikely to encourage Iranian dominance on Iraqi borders. These are only a few examples, but they serve to demonstrate the degree to which a newly hegemonic Iran would frustrate and threaten many of the most powerful players in the Middle East. Even Syria, which has established a cordial unofficial alliance with Iran in service of its continuing domination of Lebanon through Hezbollah terrorism, might find itself having second thoughts in the face of an Iran suddenly become much more powerful than Syria itself.



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Such concerns are even more prominent outside the Arab world. India is far away from the Middle East, but radical Islamic terrorism has taken many Indian lives, and the prospect of a nuclear armed Islamic republic and its possible galvanization of Islamic movements in and around India – especially in its longtime rival Pakistan – cannot be a particularly sanguine prospect. To the north, Russia is currently in the midst of an attempt to resurrect its own regional hegemony while simultaneously fighting its own long war against domestic and foreign Islamic radicalism. China, while perhaps hoping to remain aloof from a region it considers outside of its sphere of influence, is having its own problems with a burgeoning Islamic movement. Turkey, as has been amply demonstrated in recent weeks, is currently moving toward some kind of alignment with Iran, but the ruling AKP party has a large and by no means dormant secular opposition, and they likely do not desire to see their rivals strengthened by the emergence of a hegemonic Islamic theocracy.



Europe, ironically, has recently been far more proactive than the United States on this issue, and there are some fairly obvious reasons for this. There is not only the threat of radical Islam both outside and inside European borders, but the realization that, missile technology being what it is, an Iranian nuclear bomb could eventually threaten Europe as easily as the nations of the Middle East. A few years ago, no one could have anticipated that France, for example, would be ahead of America on this issue, but in many ways it makes sense, if only because of the brute facts of physical proximity. While there is and will remain a large and powerful European lobby in favor of appeasement, Europe nonetheless seems to be waking up to the realization that on this matter they may well be left to fend for themselves.



Paradoxically, then, this confluence of interests has at least the potential to overcome the Obama administration’s policy of resignation and successfully avert the Iranian threat. It is impossible, for course, for such disparate interests to band together in any formal way, but a quiet, tacit alliance of convenience – and, perhaps more importantly, fear – is by no means unthinkable. While any military action against Iran will almost certainly be solely Israeli, the lead up to any action and the subsequent fallout will certainly involve many of the parties mentioned above.



In the context, it is important to note that it is not merely likely that the Obama administration will not support an Israeli strike on the Iranian nuclear program, but it seems increasingly clear that it will actively oppose one and perhaps try to prevent it from occurring. If this does prove to be the case, then the influence of other nations will prove to be decisive. A careful indifference on the part of the Arab states, for example, or a round of denunciations concealing a policy of inaction, would eliminate Israel’s worst fears of sparking a regional war. Similarly, a tacit silence on the part of Russia, India, and China would do a great deal to deter the Obama administration from taking active steps to prevent a strike or to punish Israel should one occur, especially considering the administration’s active fetishization of maintaining good public relations in these emerging (or in Russia’s case, reemerging) superpowers.



It is impossible, of course, to imagine that Europe will openly come out in favor of an Israeli military strike, but a concerted effort on the part of anti-appeasement forces on the continent could serve as a countervailing force both to its own domestic opponents and to the Obama administration. Even a split within the European establishment on the question would allow Israel considerable room to maneuver, and render diplomatic attempts at obstruction or punishment largely ineffective. Considering American public opinion on the issue, it would also be difficult for Obama to take an openly anti-Israel position without unanimous European support. His only supporters would likely be in the media, and while they can make a great deal of noise, they are nonetheless always destined to be the dogs barking while the camels pass. A president of the United States cannot afford to be loved by the BBC and no one else, though there are indications that this president may well think he can.



The point of all this is not to engage in hypothetical scenarios or wishful fantasies. It is simply to emphasize that the emergence of a nuclear Iran is not inevitable. That is, the basic concept behind Obama’s foreign policy on Iran – that there is nothing we can do about it and we might as well resign ourselves to the inevitable and make the best of it – is not merely a self-fulfilling prophecy but also simply untrue. It is simply defeatism dressed up as realpolitik.



The truth is that even a cursory look at the big picture reveals a strong majority of nations whose interests stand to be damaged by the emergence of a hegemonic Iranian theocracy. And the possible negative repercussions of attempting to exploit this confluence of interests appear to pale in comparison to those that will follow Iranian acquisition of nuclear weapons. With a little creative diplomacy, this fact can be turned to the advantage of all these nations, but only if they are prepared to move beyond the idea that the United States must take the lead in all such crises.



And this is perhaps the saddest aspect of the entire situation. If the Iranian nuclear program is successfully stopped, it will only be because Barack Obama should have been more careful in wishing for a post-American world. He will have gotten it, but not in the way he would have liked. The tragedy of Obamaism is painfully obvious when one considers that, as long as Obama is president, a nuclear Iran is avoidable only if concerted opposition to it is undertaken without the United States.



Benjamin Kerstein is Senior Writer for The New Ledger.



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