The Iran Dilemma

Well, my first impulse after reading Strategic Forecasting's attempt to untie the Mullahs' Gordian Knot was that the Geneva Convention should have banned tortured logic. The author of the report, George Friedman, believes that Iran isn't actually serious about developing a nuke. They're faking it for strategic reasons. Friedman's conclusion in the Stratfor piece, that Iran's new belligerence is intended to reclaim their mantle as the supreme leader of the Islamic Revolutionary Movement, inappropriately bestowed on those Al Qaeda pikers, has the same kind of appeal as our apparent misread of Saddam's intentions. Well, the truth is I don't really understand the totalitarian mind very well, and I certainly missed the boat when Saddam chose to act as though he was concealing WMD even though he didn't actually have diddly. So maybe I'm misreading the Iranians in the same way. I really hope he's right, but just can't quite swallow the pill. For one thing, the analysis rests on the following dubious premise:

Having enticed Iran with new opportunities -- both for Iran as a nation and as the leading Shiite power in a post-Saddam world -- the administration turned to Sunni countries like Saudi Arabia and enticed them into accommodation with the United States by allowing them to consider the consequences of an ascended Iran under canopy of a relationship with the United States. Washington used that vision of Iran to gain leverage in Saudi Arabia. The United States has been moving back and forth between Sunnis and Shia since the invasion of Afghanistan, when it obtained Iranian support for operations in Afghanistan's Shiite regions. Each side was using the other. The United States, however, attained the strategic goal of any three-player game: It became the swing player between Sunnis and Shia.

I know that Iran had agents in southern Afghanistan and that they were nominally opposed to the Taliban, but they've also had players in Central Asia for quite awhile according to Robert Kaplan, and have sought, themselves, to play the "swing" role in the region in order to become a major regional power. Whether or not this is entirely commensurate with Friedman's analysis I'm not sure, because I can't follow the strands all the way the ends. It may be that Iran gave up trying to play the swing role, having been outclassed by the US... which begs the question of why they adopted that strategy in the first place. Doesn't seem all that savvy to me. What it suggests is an internal struggle within the country's elites very much like the one that was going on in China during Tiananmen. However, I'm not sure the battle between the moderates and hard liners in Iran was ever much of a contest. I could be wrong. Hope so.

Friedman goes on:

Tehran spent the time from 2003 through 2005 maximizing what it could from the Iraq situation. It also quietly participated in the reduction of al Qaeda's network and global reach. In doing so, it appeared to much of the Islamic world as clever and capable, but not particularly principled. Tehran's clear willingness to collaborate on some level with the United States in Afghanistan, in Iraq and in the war on al Qaeda made it appear as collaborationist as it had accused the Kuwaitis or Saudis of being in the past. By the end of 2005, Iran had secured its western frontier as well as it could, had achieved what influence it could in Baghdad, had seen al Qaeda weakened. It was time for the next phase. It had to reclaim its position as the leader of the Islamic revolutionary movement for itself and for Shi'ism.

Is this narrative rigorously accurate? I guess my primary problem with this line of thinking is that I've assumed for some time that Dan Darling was right that Bin Laden and Zawahiri are cooling their heels as honored guests of the Mullahs. However, the recently intercepted message from Zawahiri to Zarqawi suggests that Al Qaeda is strapped for resources. This would not be the case if they had Iranian benefactors, unless the Iranians had been sheltering the Al Qaeda leaders in order to deceptively constrain them. (Bicycle racers sometimes use this strategy of "helping to hinder," so it's not all that "foreign.") And that might even explain why Zawahiri's message got intercepted.

Ultimately though, although I think this line of thought is worth pursuing what bothers me about it is that, like most conspiracy theories, it's non-falsifiable. It is certainly the case that Al Qaeda leadership is constrained, but the primary reason is probably not Iranian trickiness, so their role as a brake on Al Qaeda doesn't really seem necessary. In fact many analysts figure Iran to be the primary benefactor of the Sunni insurgency in Iraq. Again, this could mean they seek to control it and make it subservient, but in that case why is Zawahiri asking Zarqawi for money? Wouldn't they basically have the same resources? This snake just keeps wriggling out of my grasp. It doesn't fit.

Ultimately I think Friedman is giving the Mullahs too much credit. The fact is that there's a history in the Middle East of misconstruing US intentions. Where we have something of a mote in our eye regarding the inscrutibility of totalitarian thinking, their misunderstanding of our motivations is more like an enveloping cataract. Where our vision is distorted, theirs is blind. The truth is that the Mullahs may simply feel invulnerable, and given that so many of our own analysts have the same opinion there's no need to presume the Iranians are crazy to harbor those beliefs. They don't think we can ultimately hurt their WMD industry for logistical and strategic/economic reasons. So, if that's the case, they might as well make a bid for Revolutionary leadership. In their eyes the costs are likely to be small and the benefits huge. They aren't pretending to be on the verge of having nukes. That sort of deception doesn't get them anything.

Their belligerence therefore reflects the kind of confidence that Hitler felt just before he "broke out" in the late 1930s, when he know that no one had the will to stop him, even if they had the capability. It's a simple rational calculation. Besides, regarding all the Saddamite calculations that we supposedly misread, I'm not totally convinced that Saddam didn't have a WMD program that was carted off to Syria at the last minute. Maybe I'm just stubborn, but if Austin Bay is correct and Syria is the next domino to fall in the Middle East we may no longer have to speculate.

Nor, if this reference by Tony Blankley to Seymour Hersch's revelation of a covert operation by the US, is true are we in the same "cloud of unknowing" that deceived us in Iraq. We have reliable eyes on the target, and know whether or not their nuclear program is real or feigned.

(Cross-posted to Demosophia)

Posted by: Demosophist at 02:49 AM | Comments (12) | Add Comment
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