I have to admit that I have been getting my jollies watching the negotiations between the European Union and Iran:
Iran on Saturday rejected Europe’s proposal for ending the standoff over Tehran’s nuclear program, calling the package ”unacceptable” and not up to Tehran’s ”minimum expectations.”
Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi said the government would send its official rejection to the Europeans later Saturday or Sunday.
”The European proposals are unacceptable … the package is against the spirit of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and against the provisions of the Paris agreement,” he said on state radio. ”The proposals do not meet Iran’s minimum expectations.”
The Paris Agreement was reached between Iran and the three European countries negotiating on behalf of the 25-member European Union. Under the deal, signed in November in Paris, Iran agreed to continue suspension of uranium enrichment and all related activities including uranium conversion until negotiations proceed for a political settlement.
Iran has accused Europeans of wasting time, saying continued suspension depended on progress in the talks. Tehran says failure to make progress in talks doesn’t prevent Iran from reopening the Isfahan uranium conversion facility.
At some point, the dim bulbs in the EU are going to recognize that any attempts to restrain these guys through diplomacy will fail. Iran does not want to negotiate, they want what they want, which in this case is to become a nuclear power.
The only upside to all of this is trying to figure out how future Josh Marshall’s will blame this on Bolton, Bush, and the US. They might start by getting the NY Times in line and on message.
Bob
So, no diplomacy, eh? Is the 101st Airborne free next Saturday?
I’ve heard they raised the age limits, Mr. Cole. Go ahead and personally explore your “no diplomacy” option.
There is no option other than diplomacy now. The US cannot mount a ground war against Iran, no one else can either. An air strike against their hardened targets will only convince Iran to bolster their arsenal against the satanic West. In other words, an attack against them will convince them to do what the US doesn’t want them to do.
Think of Iran’s military options in the event of an attack. Unlike Iraq, they actually have an air force, and they have anti-aircraft defenses. They have lots of weapons. They will have plenty of targets for their Russian-made cruise missiles. US warships, for ex. Think of what a couple sunken oil tankers could do in the Straits of Hormuz?
In other words, if the US attacks Iran, we could stop the flow of oil out of most of the Middle East. You want to stop Islamic radicals from blowing themselves up near Americans? Think of how many volunteers would step forward world-wide after an attack on Iran? Don’t you think that the leadership of the oil-producing countries might have a problem with their locals regarding any show of friendship towards the US after another attack on an Islamic nation? (Are they playing the clip of that asshole congressman calling for us to bomb Mecca on tv over there?)
Sixty bucks a barrel? Try 100, or 200. The dollar won’t be worth a damn anyway. A significant disruption of Mideast oil could bring us a world-wide depression (thus completing all Bush-Hoover comparisons). Our industry here would grind to a halt. Everything stops. Our military in Iraq would become sitting ducks, the whole world would really, really hate us then, and the hungry, wild-eyed raging crowds in New York City would have Bolton’s head on a stake in front of UN Plaza. The oil companies, while making even greater profits, will have to move their headquarters to countries with functioning militaries, abandoning their 100-year relationship with Patsy America.
So maybe diplomacy’s not such a bad thing.
Tim F
Negotiations with DPRK are going so much better.
Stormy70
It’s too early for this kind of crap.
The EUnichs will be ineffective, the sun will come up in the East, and grass will be green. Iran will continue doing what they want since no action taking by the EU will amount to a hill of beans. The EU is better at making useless rules about kid’s rights to not be grounded.
ppGaz
Well, let me help you out, John. Perhaps the squandering of military and diplomatic capital on a useless war in Iraq will put us in two bad positions:
It puts Iran in a position of strength that it did not otherwise have, in that region. By wasting America’s will for war on a campaign that will ultimately not help, and probably will harm, and putting us into a military situation that has no capacity now to take on Iran, we’ve weakaned ourselves for any future fight with the latter country … the country that represents now, and did three years ago, a much greater threat to the world and to us than Iraq ever did.
Meanwhile, you can sit back and watch now while Iran mines the situation we’ve created there for every advantage it can. Our bungling in that region might very well create, in the not-too-distant future, an Iran-Iraq alliance that will screw our foreign policy efforts in that area, tie up a major chunk of the world’s oil reserves in a hostile mini-axis of power, and set the stage for a real — not imaginary — WMD crisis that ought to worry the hell out of us.
But, you know, that “World better off without Saddam” bs sounds really good on the righty blogs and on talk radio.
John Cole
Bwahahahahaha.
Northman
Diplomacy is always an option, even if its just a stall tactic until you can do something more. Intelligence estimates are that Iran is 5 to 10 years from being able to make an enriched uranium weapon, and even then, they don’t currently have a delivery system for such a bomb, which are far heavier than plutonium weapons like the North Koreans have been building.
Since the Iranians have voluntarily shut own their major enrichment activities while the talks with the EU continue, they can’t make any great progress for the moment. Figure out ways to keep them talking.
Talk is cheap, war is expensive. Bob above has illustrated some of the nightmare scenarios if Iran is attacked, though he managed to leave out the Revolutionary Guard-trained militias of the major Shiite parties in Iraq making life there more miserable than the minority Sunni arabs already have.
Letting the EU and Iran talk at each other untill their blue in the face doesn’t cost us anything. In fact, it buys time to get the situtation in Iraq under control, which would certainly help if there is to be any realistic military option with Iran. After all, for carrot and stick diplomacy to work, the other side has to believe you actually have a stick. And who knows, we might all be stunned and they might actually come to an agreement everybody but the bloody-minded extremists looking for war can live with.
John Cole
From the Department of missing the point…
ppGaz
Great answer.
Defense Guy
Ok, for those a little slow this morning. The entire reason that the EU will be so inneffective is that they do not have the ‘we will kick your ass’ card in their diplomatic deck. The Iranians know this, and the thing the Iranians want most are not the presents and concessions and blowjobs the EU is willing to deliver. They want the bomb.
ppGaz
And you know what they want most ….. how, again?
What makes you think that what they want most is not for the US to continue doing what it has done in the region for most of the last 20 years …. stumblin and bumblin? Cozying up to the craphead Saddam Hussein, then declaring him to be “Hitler”? Squandering its military capital on a war there that will probably accomplish nothing? Setting up the conditions that are perfect for Iran to link up with the future theocracy that will probably rule in Iraq? Employ the fuel available next door in Iraq to promote and facilitate terrorism? Encourage a rift between EU and US?
Not to worry. I’m sure the neocons have thought all this through.
BoZ the Rider
Agreed…
Oil disruption is exactly what those guys at the top want. It’s all about China. Am I the only one whose read “Rebuilding America’s Defenses” from the PNAC website?
A report from the International Energy Agency says:
The United States doesn’t get most of it’s oil from the Middle East anyway. Of the 10 million barrels we use a day, only 2.4 million are from the Middle East, and a lot of that has to do with politics such has being an ally to Saudi Arabia, who accounts for two-thirds of MidEast oil imported.
But this increase can only be sustained for a short period of time. The largest potential oil reserves are in the Caspian area, which means Iraq, Iran, and Afghanistan are good places to build pipelines (already started in Afghanistan, but that wasn’t hard since former Unocal board member Hamid Kharzi was put in power).
————————
As for the Iran nuclear talks, it doesn’t surprise me at all. The thing is, they are completely within their legal rights according to nuclear treaties signed what seem like ages ago. Do they need monitoring? Sure. Same could be said about the United States. But if they aren’t doing anything wrong then whats the problem? This is the point they’ve been trying to make all along, but apparently no one is listening, and thats what makes diplomacy fail.
I don’t think technically it’s illegal to build a nuclear bomb either. It’s just frowned upon like you would frown upon your 18 year old son buying a handgun. We didn’t invade Pakistan or India when they got the bomb did we? Or Israel? How about Britian when they supplied heavy water to Israel behind our backs? China? Russia?
BoZ the Rider
Oppenheimer’s line is from Hindu scripture. He didn’t make it up. Here’s the full quote from him:
Defense Guy
ppGaz
Do a little research. Iran has stated quite openly that if they ever do get a bomb they will use it immediately to take out Israel. They frequently end their ‘parlimentary’ sessions with chants of ‘Death to America’.
They simply must not be allowed to show everyone that they were not kidding.
ppGaz
After all those years of the Cold War, it’s hard to believe that one would swallow that kind of bluster hook line and sinker. Iran’s leaders would have to be something beyond stupid to “take out Israel” knowing that the West has a few nuclear devices of its own to employ against them in retaliation.
Do you really see the future over there as a series of mushroom clouds?
But let’s put aside the extreme nature of your assertion, and just focus on the imperative you stated.
WRT the blurb I quoted above …. how would you go about enforcing your rule? What’s the strategy?
Stormy70
Seems like our Airforce could launch lots of bombing runs from inside Iraq now (no flying over hostile territory anymore) or Afghanistan. Iran has a military ring around it now. You think they don’t see all the hardware sitting in Iraq? You think our Airforce couldn’t take on the Iranians in an air war? Come on, wake up and smell the military dominance we could bring to bear now in the region. We could do what must be done, if we were faced with no choice.
I think that intelligence estimate is as bogus as the estimates in the nineties that said North Korea wasn’t trying to get nukes. Not worth the paper it’s written on.
ppGaz
So, let’s see. You want to “light up” Palestine. We’ll have a little one-sided air war over Iran. Explain to me why I should not believe that your answer to everything over there is more war … leading to what? We subdue the Arab world by force? If that’s not your strategy, then what is? And if it is … are you nuts?
demimondian
Yep. And this is how I’d pitch it as the fault of the CoMB (Cabal of the Mediocre Bush) for Iran’s nuclear ambitions. Try this on for size:
Do I actually believe it? No. Would it work as a talking point? It depends. If CoMB continues to make a hash of Iraq, and the jobless recovery becomes a job-losing stagflation…yes, it would work.
ppGaz
But a nuclear capability is only an “efficient” force if you don’t use it.
If you use it (“you” being a minor power) then the retaliation essentially ends the game. You can’t win a nuclear pissing contest by firing the weapons if you’re Iran, or North Korea, or whoever. Surely by now the world knows that the one thing that would make the US go nuclear ….. is going nuclear. As long as that deterrence is at work, then their nukes are just props in a play. Knowing that, it isn’t very sensible to take their bait every time they put it out there. Words are cheap until the moment when somebody lights the fuse on his nuke firecracker. At that moment, if you’re Iran, the party is over. I personally will fly the plane to drop the nuclear retaliation on Tehran.
demimondian
You are absolutely right. But an efficient nuclear force is useful in limiting the aggressive acts of a third party, even if you never use it.
Look at the effectiveness of the Soviet Union’s nuclear capability during the Korean War. They could not have done any real damage, yet the existence of a nuclear capacity served to deter Truman from permitting MacArthur from crossing into the PRC. On the sixtieth anniversary of Little Boy, it’s important to remember that.
One of the real criticisms I have of the Bush Administration — this “can I blame them for Iran” stuff is cynical game-playing and nothing else — is that they ignored the key limitation of any offensive force. An offensive military force is only useful to the extent that you do not use it. Once you’re engaged in a truly offensive operation, you’re really trapped by circumstances. Afghanistan was essentially retaliatory; the Iraqi insurgency is currently essentially defensive. The (predominantly) Sunni terror campaign in Iraq is currently retaliatory — and they’ll lose when they try to become an offensive force.
CaseyL
There’s no upside for Iran to nuke Israel. I’m reasonable sure Israel has a doomsday scenario, and that the Arab countries know it. The geography there is so crowded, you don’t even need fancy delivery systems to make sure a doomsday barrage reaches your enemies.
And Islam, SFAIK, doesn’t have the same Armageddon/Apocalypse mentality that Christianity does: there’s no payoff to destroying the world, no Rapture, no Messiah to come sweeping in and make everything hunky dory again. So, there’s no theological justification for starting a doomsday war.
What this indicates to me is that Iran wants nukes for the same reason anyone else does: as a deterrent. It does not follow as the night follows the day that the minute Iran gets a nuke they drop it on Israel. I’m sure they wish they could – I’m sure Israel wishes it could nuke a few countries, too – but the blowback is too certain and too final.
That equation changes if the Bush Admin decides to bomb the shit out of Iran. At that point, the equation becomes, “Well, if I’m going anyway, I’m taking as many people as I can with me.”
Bush’s foreign policy has a funny way of creating the very conditions it’s supposedly trying to avoid. Iraq and the “GWOT” being the most prominent cases in point.
Nuclear non-proliferation is another policy area where Bush Administration inaction, neglect, and disinterest has produced opposite results.
So it wouldn’t surprise me at all if Bush’s Iran policy succeeds in producing another doomsday scenario.
ppGaz
Good point.
Good points again. Although I might quibble about the tag we put on the insurgency. However, I think your main point is “trapped by circumstances,” which is where we are at the moment, and if Bush is not to be blamed for that …. then who?
demimondian
in a ppGaz/Sojourour moment, I talk about
and ppG responds
I don’t put one tag on the insurgency. I hold that there’s a real insurgency, aimed (however stupidly) at driving the US out of the country by attacking coalition forces. There’s also a terror campaign, aimed at intimidating ordinary citizens. The former I can understand, although I’m not fond of it. The latter — no, there’s no tolerating it.
BoZ the Rider
Thats the general idea behind “Rebuilding America’s Defences.” In case you missed it the first time around, here are links:
“Rebuilding America’s Defences”
Wikipedia’s info on PNAC
Please people, learn about those who are in government positions too high for our own good.
ppGaz
Well, I was unclear. You seemed to be making a (valid) distinction between the offensive and defensive tableaus. I guessed that you were tagging the isurgency as a “defensive” one, and my response was (intended to be) that I’m not sure that I agree that the insurgency should be viewed that way.
I’m also not sure that an insurgency can be compared, at all, to a conventional military campaign.
It’s an arguable point, but minor. I hoped that I got your larger point.
demimondian
ppG comments:
Fair enough. I agree, my main point was that an attacker winds up constrained by circumstances (hence the success of the Powell doctrine), and that the current administration actively ignored that fact.
So, John, that’s one way that the left could blame Bush for the instability in Iran — and, you know what? I think it would stick.
ppGaz
I suppose this will have to be my last on this, lest we be indentified as a “tag team.” Anyway ….
I take Powell to be a really brilliant military mind. Mind you, I am not one who is himself a brilliant military mind. Brilliant in so many fields, of course :-) but not that one. But as an amateur student, I admire Powell. I’d have voted for him (me, a Blueyellow Dog Democrat, and all) for president had he run. How good a pres he’d have made overall, don’t know for sure. He might have too little stomach for the pit bull world of DC power politics. But one thing is for sure … we wouldn’t be in this stupid war.
The current administration didn’t just ignore Powell, they appeared to marginalize him for not toeing the party line. Just another credit on their long list …. these potatoheads shoved aside the best military man in the administration and went full steam ahead with their misguided plan. Un-f-ing believable. Seriously, I think that historians will look back on this and shake their heads.
BoZ the Rider
Just historians in the future? What about half the people around the world today?! I’ve been shaking my head so much my neck hurts and I think I’ve got a concussion…
JPS
ppGaz:
“Iran’s leaders would have to be something beyond stupid to ‘take out Israel’ knowing that the West has a few nuclear devices of its own to employ against them in retaliation.”
CaseyL makes a similar point.
Rafsanjani gave a speech some years back where he stated that the Iranian bomb will be the end of Israel. And he explicitly took into account what you consider to be a deal-breaker: the certainty of a nuclear response.
He stated that if two bombs went off over Israel, there would be no Israel left, whereas after the Israeli retaliation there would still be an Iran.
This guy is looking forward to wiping out Israel, calmly contemplating the deaths of perhaps 20 million Iranians in return, and concluding, “Sounds worth it to me!”
But hey: No one’s really that stupid, or that crazy, so it must just be bluster.
BoZ the Rider
The problem with his assumption is that only Israel strikes back. I’m pretty sure those folks in D.C. would “help out.”
After all, Iran just blew up their 60 year, +$100 billion investment.
Personally I don’t care what Israel and Iran do to each other, thats there business. So long as the US isn’t dragged into more war. Hey, we might be able to take that annual multi-billion dollar foreign aid package that went to Israel and instead feed and shelter the homeless, help schools, develop a socialist medical plan for all citizens, give our troops the benefits they were promised when they signed the dotted line, etc. And we wouldn’t have to worry about Israeli spies in the Pentagon anymore, or AIPAC buying off Congress… (the list goes on!)
You can scoff me for all this, but I don’t care because I’m tired of my country shielding one of the most corrupt nations on the planet. No other nation is in violation of so many UN resolutions (or does the UN only matter against Arab nations when you’re trying to justify a war against them?), and there are literally dozens of UN resolutions that the US (and only the US) vetoed as well. Call me Anti-Semite if you insist, but if you hate Arabs, then you’re one. As for me, I don’t care if you’re Jewish, Hindu, whatever… you’re actions are what matter the most. (Hint: look up “semite”) And remember, once you label me, you negate me. To label me as such is to say that, even if I speak the truth, you don’t have to listen because it’s Anti-Sematic. Thats all that label means, and thats all that label is designed to do.
blockquote>
“It is not anti-Semitic to criticize the policies of the state of Israel.” -Colin Powell “We are not afraid to follow truth wherever it may lead, nor to tolerate any error so long as reason is left free to combat it.” -Thomas Jefferson
Stormy70
Black Helicopter on the Horizon…whir, whir, whir. The Joos are coming to get you. LOL
You already exposed yourself as a conspricy dude, so this just adds to the overall picture.
demimondian
Ahh, BoZ. Your eloquence makes me think of another time, one where the left remembered that Israel, for all her faults, is a democratic nation which has offered all her citizens real improvements, and the right still clung to the dripping gobbets of Anti-Semitism.
BoZ, I congratulate you on your unique perceptions. I’ve heard that anti-psychotics can limit them.
Stormy70
Disregard all spelling mistakes, I was laughing when I wrote the post. Since it is after six, I think it’s time for the liquor to flow.
BoZ the Rider
You only prove my point. Did you ever stop to think that maybe there’s truth behind that which you dismiss? Did you ever stop to look?
Like the madman with the lantern, I come too early.
JPS
BoZ:
Israel is, for all its flaws, a democracy (as Demimondian nicely points out). Those large sectors of the Arab world that vowed Israel’s destruction the day it was founded were pro-Nazi during WWII and pro-Soviet during the Cold War.
I’m an American. Period. And I for one don’t need to be bought off (where’s my money?) or part of a conspiracy to know which side I favor, until someday there’s peace.
Incidentally, I don’t think you’re necessarily an anti-Semite (“Arabs are semites too” is a specious sophistry; the term was coined by someone who wanted to sound more intellectual in describing his hostility to Jews), but every genuine Jew-hater I know has uncorked a rant very much like yours at some point.
Kimmitt
Well, yes, it is Bush’s fault, John. Bush told Iran very clearly that if it doesn’t get a nuclear deterrent, we are going to invade it. So Iran now views nuclear weapons as absolutely necessary for its territorial integrity.
John G. Spragge
Back in the day, I made the unremarkable observation that the democracy movement in Iran offered the best hope for defeating the Salafist Jihadists, because I don’t think many people will agree to get killed for a form of government that can’t survive its own population more than thirty-two years. I also noted that an unfriendly army on the border has given many an unpopular autocrat an excuse to rally the population around “the flag”.Today, a new president, a populist hardliner and a nuclear enthusiast has taken office; the voices of mass protest, as well as the quieter voices inside government who had spoken cautiously of reform have fallen silent (or at least off the global media radar screen. All this dismays me; I consider it a major setback both for the Iranian people and for the West. Do I blame the architects of the war in Iraq? Not exactly, because we can’t know what would have happened in Iran if the US had not gone into Iraq. Perhaps the Mullahs would have clung to power whatever it took, and whatever the Americans did. But the fact remains that, since the invasion/liberation of Iraq, the situation in Iran has steadily grown worse and worse from the point of view of the West.I certainly see no excuse for blaming, or sneering at, the Europeans, who have done the best they can with very limited leverage. I hope that events have not sidelined the Iranian democracy movement, because without them, neither the Europeans, Americans, nor anyone else have much hope to induce change in Iran.
Kira Zalan
Iran has declared that it will resume nuclear conversion at Esfahan within one or two days. Europe has requested an emergency meeting of the IAEA to pressure Iran not to resume nuclear fuel cycle work. Israel is pressuring Ukraine to demand from Iran the 12 nuclear-capable X-55 cruise missiles that were smuggled there four years ago.
All of this is happening as the talks with North Korea are drawing to a crucial, and so far unpredictable, end.
So is World War III imminent? Hardly.
Over reaction is exactly what these unlikely allies are fishing for. The coincidence of declared threats by both countries is a bit too convenient. By cranking the nuclear threat pressure simultaneously, both North Korea and Iran are hoping to walk away with the most handouts.
BoZ the Rider
Alright, thats fair enough as Jew-Haters would say things like that. Understand I’m not a Jew hater. I’m friends with Jews and I’ve world for Jews. I don’t if they’re Jewish; I see them as “the guy I eat lunch with” and “my boss.”
I guess I should show a good example of what I mean about the labelling setup to marginalize people.
They aren’t making an anti-Semitic move, they’re making a policial one. It has nothing to do with targeting Jews, it has to do with a national policy towards Palestinian lands.
This goes all the way back to the late 1940’s when the UN took land in the Middle East to make a Jewish state. The Jews and Arabs have hated each other for 4,000 years, and probably always will. This should have been the first clue the idea of making Israel was a bad one that could have consequences. Then again, we’re talking about “the West (aka America and Europe)” who only saw the rest of the world as something they could exploit.
Most people here in the West don’t really understand why there is so much conflict, but a lot of it has to do with what the UN did. If the situation was reversed and lands were taken from Christians to give to Muslims, it would have the same effect; there would be hostility.