So suggests Joshua Muravchik, in the LAT:
WE MUST bomb Iran.It has been four years since that country’s secret nuclear program was brought to light, and the path of diplomacy and sanctions has led nowhere.
This is madness. Currently we are dealing with serious military commitments in Iraq and Afghanistan and neither is going swimmingly. Indeed, the Iraq situation is a clear failure for US policy.
Even if we assume that we have the political and military might to launch an attack on Iran, there are serious questions as to the efficacy of a bombing campaign aimed as disarming Iran.
Still, Muravchik argues:
Our options therefore are narrowed to two: We can prepare to live with a nuclear-armed Iran, or we can use force to prevent it. Former ABC newsman Ted Koppel argues for the former, saying that “if Iran is bound and determined to have nuclear weapons, let it.” We should rely, he says, on the threat of retaliation to keep Iran from using its bomb. Similarly, Newsweek International Editor Fareed Zakaria points out that we have succeeded in deterring other hostile nuclear states, such as the Soviet Union and China.
Of course, there is the question of how long it will take Iran to develop nuclear weapons, how many they can produce and what type of delivery mechanism they have/can develop. As such, the future is a tad less clear than Muravchik makes it out to be.
And the notion of deterring Iran is not an unreasonable one.
Muravchik concludes:
Finally, wouldn’t such a U.S. air attack on Iran inflame global anti-Americanism? Wouldn’t Iran retaliate in Iraq or by terrorism? Yes, probably. That is the price we would pay. But the alternative is worse.
There is little doubt that there are times when the US has to do what it thinks is in its best interest even if it angers other states. However: in the current climate, can we really afford to alienate large parts of the world? Will we really be safer if we go that route? And speaking of safety, if such an attack would unleash a series of terrorist attacks on the US, would it not be counter-productive? Isn’t the main security problem facing the US at the moment protecting the homeland against new 9/11s? If bombing Iran would lead to a series of dedicated attempts to replicate 9/11 over and over, then would it really be in our national interest?
Further, what would happen to the global oil market if we bombed Iran? And from there, what would happen to our economy?
Bombing Iran would lead to 1) more terrorism, 2) radically higher oil prices, 3) greater tension with our allies, and 4) even more instability in the region. Take all of that and realize that the bombing might well not lead to the destruction of the Iranian nuclear program and one has to conclude that it is a gamble not worth taking.
Further consider the following: if we bomb Iran, cause all the problems noted above and fail to stop their nuclear program have we increased or decreased the chances that Iran might use a nuke once they develop it?
Update: some needed copy editing done (thanks to Jan Cooper)
Sphere: Related Content
I just heard Muravchik on the radio last week saying we need to increase the troop levels in Iraq. The guy is crazy
In today’s New Yorker, Sy Hersh quotes Murvachick as saying neoconservatives “need to pave the way intellectually now and be prepared to defend the action when it comes.”
It seems pretty clear that Muravchik’s ramblings are part of some domestic psyops effort to influence the political envrionment.
Interestingly, Hersh reports of a CIA assessment that offers no clear evidence of an Iranian nuclear weapons program, so what in the hell would the US bomb anyway?
Hersh’s article is worth a read: http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/articles/061127fa_fact
Comment by Ratoe — Monday, November 20, 2024 @ 10:14 am
I notice that he is listed as a “resident scholar”. Scholar of what, I’d like to know. I don’t see how it could possibly be political science or international relations. . .
Comment by Jan — Monday, November 20, 2024 @ 12:51 pm
So, Muravchik sees two options:
We can prepare to live with a nuclear-armed Iran, or we can use force to prevent it.
But as Steven’s last paragraph notes, there is actually an option 3, and it is, in fact, the option Muravchik is advocating: Bomb, and then still have to live with a nuclear-armed Iran.
Comment by Matthew — Monday, November 20, 2024 @ 6:28 pm
Of course, if we took out their pitifully inadequate oil-refining capability, they might collapse of their own weight, or at least have a lot less money to spend supporting wars by proxy because they’d have to repress people at home all the harder.
You and the fellow quoting Sy Hersch (because his track record of prediction is excellent) remind me of people who thought the Soviet union ahd a more stable society than we do. Tehran’s writ does not run in 4-7 of it’s own provinces, but becuase it is an unfree society we don’t get reportage on that, so it seems stronger than it is. They’re losing a lot more than 3,000 troops per five year period holding their own country.
Though of course one Iranian soldier is worth less than one American, I figured someone out to consider that over ehre..
Comment by Honza Prchal — Monday, November 20, 2024 @ 7:02 pm
Honza,
I really am not sure what you are getting at. Regardless of whatever problems that Iran’s government may or may not have, it is rather difficult to argue that it would be less of a task to deal with than Iraq has been, and that has been far from a smashing success.
One would think that the Iraqi example would dissuade one from making the argument about how easy it would be to topple Iran’s government or to somehow have it be an easy task.
Destroying existing states and then replacing them with new and functioning one isn’t easy, so I am not sure at what you are getting at.
In regards to the Soviets–it isn’t as if a military strike would have hastened its demise (save in a nuclear dust cloud, with us along with it). It had to go its own route to collapse.
Comment by Dr. Steven Taylor — Monday, November 20, 2024 @ 8:41 pm
Here’s the fundamental problem: the choice is either the messy oversight process or letting presidents do whatever they want to do, on the proviso that they know best.
I ask in all seriousness: which is the more democratic option (or, for that matter, the more conservative in the sense of small government conservatism?)
Comment by Dr. Steven Taylor — Monday, November 20, 2024 @ 8:43 pm
[…] We might even succeed in toppling it simply by taking out it’s pitifully small oil refining capability. Doing such a thing would at least cripple it’s ability to provide for it’s dependents in the Lebanon, Syria, and elsewhere, much less hold down it’s own restless population. Don’t forget that Tehran’s writ travels less far than Baghdad’s does in it’s own country. Can we still afford to think Syria and Iran want to “talk” after this?Iraq the Model correctly says the Syrians are “not so much” interested in talking. Bombing, invading, or blockading (as I argued at some length last year), Iran may be our best bet if we cannot more completely subvert it from within. Our alternatives seem to me consist of a decision to lie back and do our best to get past it and hope the problem resolves itself (or someone else resolves it for us), or at least denuclearize and chasten, maybe topple, Tehran ourselves. For those like our own Dr. Steven Taylor, Poliblogger, who in all seriousness, think Iraq with it’s small expenditures and remarkably low loss of life is “a clear failure”, I respond by asking if a nuclear Iran being punished only after using it’s nuke (I do not think Iran can be deterred once it is nuclear, as I am convinced that the mullahs believe their own propaganda) is not far worse. Iraq is not much of a stretch by even Cold War standards. We are fighting an ideological conflict much like the Cold War here. The decrease in support for combat operations abroad has much to do with how little sense of direct threat most of our citizens feel at this point, which is good. Further, as I argue above, we need not commit to a functioning Iran the way we had to in Sunni dominated Iraq, bordered as it is by Syria, Palestinians (in Jordan), Iran and Saudi Arabia. If Pakistan, India, Russia and the House of Saud want to fight it out over the new order in Iran, I’ll refer them to how well that worked for everyone in Afghanistan, except, again, as I mentioned above, Iran won’t be proving much of a threat to us nor Europe in the meanwhile, cf Kurdistan. As for Iraq, Tehran out of the way will mean an end to probably half the supplies going to the Shiite and Sunni problems we face in Iraq as well. It’s not as though Damascus has the resources to project force out of itself without Iranian cash. As for their threats to the Persian Gulf and especially the Straights of Hormuz, well, we’ve fought that war a coupe of times since the 1980s already and did rather well. I doubt the third time will be the charm for Iran’s Nay of Air force, though their rocketry will obviously present a serious problem. […]
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