Marble Composition

Iran

I take a great interest in United States foreign policy, so let's have it for a bit.

Seymour Hersch, America's preeminent investigative journalist, wrote an article back in January for The New Yorker that the U.S. is going to invade Iran by June of this year. As provocative as that assertion might be, I would argue the Pentagon has plans to invade Eretria, the Congo, and even stages war games based on a war with China. That's their job. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld went ahead and created a plan to make Special Forces units more plentiful, agile, and mobile in combating terrorist groups, and that's a plan I happen to agree with. The only problem is that he failed to share his ideas with Congress, which I believe is really stupid. If you have a good idea, why not share it? In any case, the military has plans to do things the average American couldn't even fathom. The question is, does the U.S. intend to force some sort of regime change in Iran by June, or anytime by the end of the Bush administration, and whether or not that sort of policy makes any sense.

Given what the U.S. public, and the world for that matter, was told by the people that got us into the current war in Iraq, I'm sure they thought they would've had a really easy shot at regime change in Iran after all those flower pedals and pieces of candy showered U.S. troops in Baghdad. These are the people that predicted that we'd only have 30,000 troops in Iraq right now at most. Geographically, Iran sits right in between Afghanistan and Iraq, so it was easy to see who was number one on the guess-who's-next list. Now, with the very real limitations on American military's current options so apparent, and all those rosy scenarios having been swept away in the sand, even the special thinkers who made up the Office of Special Plans must be reassessing the Iranian situation. If ever you hear some retired military person on TV say we should change the Iranian regime by force, just ask, "with who's army?".

Another key issue in play here is that the Iranians have an extremely well-funded military that, if invaded, will actually fight instead of melting away into the population like their former adversaries next door. According to GlobalSecurity.org, the Iranians have 350,000 infantry, and an actual air force, albeit in fairly shabby shape, and all kinds of other military gum balls. Let's posit a scenario where the U.S. orders an air strike on Iran's nuclear facilities. Forget about the fact that we don't have the types of "bunker buster" bombs to even penetrate their development shops, we're not even sure where they all are because they are so spread out. How might the Iranians react? Probably not overtly, like, say, having 200,000 soldiers and artillery pour over the border into Iraq, but covertly by making things much, much messier there than they already are. Remember, we were told that Iraq would be a "cakewalk" by Kenneth Adelman (a man worthy of his own post). One wonders how an invasion or even an air strike would be characterized at that point in time. Tiny Tim? Care to share?

Let's concede that no one wants a bunch of religious fundamentalists with the capability of deploying the most destructive weapons ever invented wherever they might fancy. Would you want 1988 presidential candidate Pat Robertson, a man that thinks the American judiciary is worse than Al Qaeda, having his own set of nuclear tipped missiles? Probably not. So the U.S. needs to negotiate with Iran. Unfortunately Secretary of State Rice hasn't seemed too enthusiastic to fully jump into the talks Germany, France, and England have been engaged in with Iran. Here's the rub, with all the wisdom Condi must have garnered in her role as Provost at Stanford University, she probably has figured out that Iran can effectively say, "who needs you?". If you were supreme leader of Iran you'd quickly realize, "hey, wait a second here, I'm the one with all the OIL!". Americans hate thinking about things in this shoe-on-the-other-foot way. If the U.S. was beset on both sides of its orders by a sworn enemy that was threatening American regime change, you can bet your ass that Richard Cheney would be declaring that America has a right, and these days God given, to possess and deploy nuclear weapons. As to the negotiations, oil is most certainly what "the big three" is after: all that yummy goodness that just happens to reside right under Iranian soil. The main U.S. dog in this fight is protecting the military base that's lodged right between the Jordan River and the Mediterrian Sea.

Obviously multilateral talks are a positive step forward, and the U.S. should engage in lieau of its own interests. These kinds of negotiations can bear the fruit of exchanges of oil, economic incentives, and most importantly, warming of relations. It's akin to "we'll forget about you taking 44 of our embassy staffers hostage for a year and change if you forgive us for toppling your democratically elected government in 1953." I don't know, seems fair enough to me.

When I look back to the time of the Iraqi invasion, I often think that Mr. Marshall was right: Chaos could've been what they were after all along.

You know what, as my friend Jimmee Cracked Corn rightfully says, forget the whole God damned thing. This guy knows a lot more about this stuff than I do.

posted by FuzzFinger @ 4/30/2005 06:57:00 PM