Containment for irrational Iranian religious bigots

Amir Taheri:

With President Obama struggling to explain his failure to slow, let alone stop, the Iranian nuclear program, apologists are rushing to the rescue. They harp on three themes, all apparently aimed at confusing the debate. 

The first is that we don’t know for sure that Iran is building a bomb. Well, no, we don’t — but only because the mullahs won’t let the International Atomic Energy Agency find out. Even then, in his latest report, IAEA chief Yukiya Amano states: “Iran has engaged in activities relevant to the development of nuclear explosive devices.”

There’s also the fact that, in 2003, Iran’s then-president, Muhammad Khatami, claimed that Tehran had stopped the military aspects of its project. If there’d been nothing to begin with, it would’ve been difficult to stop it. 

The second theme is that even if the mullahs are building the bomb, the United States can stop them through sanctions. However, we know that 30 years of sanctions have had no effect on Iran’s behavior on key issues, including the nuclear one. 

The third theme could be summed up thus: If Iran builds a bomb, learn to live with it. To back that advice, apologists recommend containment and deterrence, such as that practiced in the Cold War. 

The problem is that the immediate issue is one of proliferation, not deterrence or containment. As a signatory of the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty, Iran may not build a bomb. The UN Security Council has passed five resolutions demanding that Iran honor its treaty obligations. 

To allow it to violate the treaty would be a nod to the law of the jungle and a serious blow to international order. If Iran goes nuclear, half a dozen (some say up to 20) other nations might seek such arsenals, while the danger of terrorist access to nuclear material would rise dramatically. 

Nor are containment and deterrence the magic solutions the apologists contend. 

In practice, “containment” contained nothing. The US strategy was first outlined by George Kennan in a diplomatic cable in 1947. Within four years of Kennan’s cable, the Soviet Union had almost doubled its sphere of influence with communist victories in China and North Korea. It had also destroyed the last vestiges of democracy in Eastern Europe by imposing communist regimes on a dozen nations. In the following decades, the USSR mocked “containment” by sending tanks into Poland, Hungary and Czechoslovakia. 

The USSR also used proxy wars to render containment inoperable. France, then boasting NATO’s second-largest army, was bogged down in losing wars in Indochina and North Africa. The British were bled in Malaya, Cyprus and Aden. Everywhere, local rebels enjoyed moral and material support from Moscow. 

...

By adopting a containment strategy, a power renounces the rollback option. That gives an advantage to the power that refuses to be contained. 

The adoption of containment would remove the mullahs’ biggest fear: a clash with the might of “the Great Satan.” Reassured on that score, they would adopt even more aggressive postures. In fact, in recent years, the mullahs have decided that Obama wants a strategic retreat, not a fight against US enemies.

...

I do not agree with those who claim that Iran is a country with rational leaders.  They are messianic  Islamic religious bigots who believe that a nuclear war can spur the return of the 12th Imam to carry the true believers to paradise.  It is in fact irrational to let such people have nuclear weapons.