Clinton, Obama and Iran
by Texas Nate, Mon Apr 28, 2008 at 08:18:07 AM EDT
Responding with understatement to a question in the British House of Lords, the foreign minister responsible for Asia, Lord Mark Malloch-Brown, said of Clinton's implication of a mushroom cloud over Iran: "While it is reasonable to warn Iran of the consequences of it continuing to develop nuclear weapons and what those real consequences bring to its security, it is probably not prudent in today's world to threaten to obliterate any other country and in many cases civilians resident in such a country."
A less restrained reaction came from an editorial in the Saudi-based paper Arab News. Being neighbors of Iran, the Saudis and the other Gulf Arabs have the most to fear from Iran's nuclear program and its drive to become the dominant power in the Gulf.
But precisely because they are most at risk from Iran's regional ambitions, the Saudis want a carefully considered American approach to Iran, one that balances firmness and diplomatic engagement.
The Saudi paper called Clinton's nuclear threat "the foreign politics of the madhouse," saying, "it demonstrates the same doltish ignorance that has distinguished Bush's foreign relations."
The Saudis are not always sound advisers on American foreign policy. But they understand that Rambo rhetoric like Clinton's only plays into the hands of Iranian hard-liners who want to plow ahead with efforts to attain a nuclear weapons capability. They argue that Iran must have that capability in order to deter the United States from doing what Clinton threatened to do.
Obama was quick to hit Clinton for her language:
I have said I will do whatever is required to prevent the Iranians from obtaining nuclear weapons.
I believe that that includes direct talks with the Iranians, where we are laying out very clearly for them: Here are the issues that we find unacceptable, not only development of nuclear weapons, but also funding terrorist organizations like Hamas and Hezbollah, as well as their anti-Israel rhetoric and threats toward Israel.
I believe that we can offer them carrots and sticks, but we've got to directly engage and make absolutely clear to them what our posture is. Now, my belief is that they should also know that I will take no options off the table when it comes to preventing them from using nuclear weapons or obtaining nuclear weapons.
And that would include any threats directed at Israel, or any of our allies.
"And I think deterrence has not been effectively used in recent times. We used it very well during the Cold War, when we had a bipolar world. And what I think the president should do and what our policy should be is to make it very clear to the Iranians that they would be risking massive retaliation were they to launch a nuclear attack on Israel.
"In addition, if Iran were to become a nuclear power, it could set off an arms race that would be incredibly dangerous and destabilizing, because the countries in the region are not going to want Iran to be the only nuclear power. So, I can imagine that they would be rushing to obtain nuclear weapons themselves.
"In order to forestall that, creating some kind of a security agreement, where we said, no, you do not need to acquire nuclear weapons. If you were the subject of an unprovoked nuclear attack by Iran, the United States and hopefully our NATO allies would respond to that as well."
This belligerent course is neither wise nor as American Security Project policy expert Bernard Finel posts, likely to be effective:
Diplomacy does not always rely on implicit threats, and even when it does rely on threats, those threats need not be military. And strategic ambiguity is not particularly useful when it unquestionably strengthens extremist demagogues in Iran by seeming to support their rhetoric. Just like Chekov's gun which if placed on the mantle in act one must be used by act three, placing the threat of force on the bargaining table also increases the likelihood it will be used. As a general rule, people don't like to make concessions at the point of a gun, and any concessions they make under such circumstances will likely be overturned at the first opportune moment. There would undoubtedly be some emotional satisfaction in lashing out at Iran, but there is no coherent long-term strategy sustaining that course of action. As a wag once argued, "the only thing worse than a nuclear Iran is a nuclear Iran that we recently bombed."
There are many time when force is a reasonably option. Today we are still deeply involved in Iraq and not deeply involved enough in Afghanistan. The use of force is a bad idea in this circumstance, and the threat of it is not much better.
Sometimes I wonder if the primary campaign between Clinton and Obama hasn't become so vicious because the differences between them are so small.
Tags: clinton, Iran, obama (all tags)
-----------
myDD - skin
-----------
92 Comments