Big Mistake, Big Opportunity

If you look a little closer at the confrontation between the U.S. and Iran, you'll see something very interesting. The military forces of both countries are within spitting distance of each other, since Iran shares a massive border with Iraq, where our troops are currently soaking up the sun and the shrapnel. In fact, the U.S., Iran, and Iraq all share the same security problem, namely, the swirling vortex of crap that is the budding Iraqi civil war.

So a little lower down the bill from the nuclear posturing was a proposal for the U.S. and Iran to hold bilateral talks on the best way to stabilize the Iraq situation. Somewhat disingenuously, Iran's President Ahmadinejad (see? I got the name right) said today that there was "no need" because the Iraqi compromise candidate for Prime Minister, Jawad al-Maliki, was forming what Ahmadinejad called "a permanent government of Iraq."

Okay, I'll wait until you all stop laughing. Ahmadinejad (while crazy) is certainly not stupid, and obviously he realizes that a new government is not going to be able to turn on the lights, get the sewers working, and stop the festival of destruction that insurgents are constantly celebrating on the streets of Iraq. And since they can't do that, the security concerns that the U.S. and Iran share, are not going to go away. What this boils down to is, Ahmadinejad is just being a jerk. Go figure.

But in his statement on the need (or lack thereof) for bilateral talks on security in Iraq, Ahmadinejad said something very interesting on the possibility of sanctions against his country. Keep in mind, the Bush administration is publicly pushing diplomacy while busily preparing for all-out war. He said, "I think it is very unlikely for them to be so stupid to do that [impose sanctions,]" and continued, "I think even the two or three countries who oppose us are wise enough not to resort to such a big mistake."

In the words of Jon Stewart, "Whaaaa?" Ahmadinejad has claimed that his country has the right to enrich as much uranium as it wants (highly enriched uranium, by the way, is one of two excellent ways to make a nuclear weapon.) He's been testing nuclear-capable missiles equipped with countermeasures that could dodge Israeli air defenses. He's announced the production of a nuclear-capable torpedo that could take out one of our carrier battle groups. And he's saying that sanctions are intolerable?

Let's get this straight. Sanctions do not hurt us. Hell, we've had sanctions in place against Tehran since their fundamentalist college students decided to hold an Iranian frat party and invaded the American embassy. If we could convince other countries (not Russia, since they've got lucrative energy contracts with Iran) such as France, China, India, and Pakistan to impose sanctions, we might actually be able to shut down this lunatic's nuclear program.

What we're claiming is that Ahmadinejad doesn't have the right to a nuclear weapon. He's saying that he's not building one, and we're trying to take away his right to peaceful nuclear technology and that his country has the right to produce their own nuclear fuel. (Why a country that sits on a vast wealth of oil and gas reserves needs nuclear fuel so badly, I'll never know.) Of course, if we do attack him, he threatens all kinds of outlandish doom for America, most of which has a decidedly radioactive theme.

The real problem is that enriching nuclear fuel is the height of dual-use technology. Dual-use technologies are capable of being used either for peaceful or warlike purposes, like pesticide components that can kill bugs or (with a little tweaking) people, or fermenters that can brew beer or anthrax. Uranium, enriched to 3%, is effective nuclear fuel, and with a little extra time in a centrifuge, can be enriched to 90%, which is an effective core for a nuclear weapon.

Iran has no need for actual nuclear fuel. Its energy needs are more than met by its oil and gas reserves, and if it really wanted nuclear fuel it could buy it (at a substantial U.N. discount) from any other nuclear power in the world. What they clearly want is a bomb. The problem is, they want to build a bomb because they fear for their security- specifically, they fear an American invasion. Of course, we only really want to invade them if they try to build a bomb. Is this sounding circular?

The point is that every time we start beating our chests and saying Iranian nukes are "unacceptable" and practice dive-bombing missions in the Persian Gulf, we give them more of an incentive to build a bomb. And every time they get closer to a bomb, we get more nervous and ramp up our military posturing. In a poorly-covered press conference today, Ahmadinejad showed us that there are consequences Iran fears that don't involve invasion.

I'd like to see a carrot-and-stick approach being adopted (similar to what was previously attempted) but the old military stick replaced with a stick of unacceptably harsh sanctions. We address their security concerns- meet with them on low levels, quietly outline how badly we want to get out of Iraq, and maybe (God forbid) eat a little humble pie on our regional ambitions. One thing that is near-unacceptable to Rumsfeld, but would go a long way towards defusing the Iran situation, would be a quiet pledge to abstain from establishing permanent military bases in Iraq.

You're not going to see Iran giving up its nuclear program under any circumstances. But what we could work for (if President Bush weren't messianicly obsessed with the invasion of Iran and didn't see it as his "true legacy") would be a steady defusing of the nuclear tensions in the area and a return on the Iranian side to actually-peaceful nuclear power. This is not going to happen by addressing their energy concerns, it's going to happen by making concessions and working towards fixing their security concerns. Could America lose some military influence in the area? Definitely. But is avoiding that loss worth another war we can't afford, a war that would ignite global Islamic tensions and unleash a tidal wave of new terrorists? Definitely not.