Decision ‘08

A Question I Find Myself Asking A Lot Lately…

…is also on the mind of Daniel Drezner, who contemplates Iran and finds an administration that (a) is not in favor of a purely diplomatic solution (i.e., what I call the “let Iran do what it wants and put the best face on it” ploy), (b) seems to rule out a gasoline embargo (I could care less about cheap gas if the price for it is Iranian nukes), and (c) seemingly lacks both the will and the manpower for war (unless, of course, it’s on the cheap - i.e., airstrikes). Actually, (c) is my own addition. Here’s how Drezner puts it:

…[T]here are administration efforts to sabotage the available diplomatic option, and the most powerful economic sanction has been rejected in the near term. I don’t think financial sanctions will bite as much as the secretary, in part because it always takes a long time to implement and after the 1979 asset seizures the Iranians have moved down the learning curve on evading those kind of strictures.

What’s left in the policy tool kit besides force?

Anyone?

I know there have been a flurry of recent stories about carrier groups moving into position, etc., but I frankly don’t see force as being in our toolkit, either. If I had to guess, and I hate to say this, but our willingness to let the UN protect Hezbollah is certainly a precedent, I’d say we’re moving towards (a). Iran gets the nukes, and we hear all sorts of baloney about how it was inevitable, etc.

God, I hope I’m wrong, but that’s the way I read the tea leaves…

3 Responses to “A Question I Find Myself Asking A Lot Lately…”

1 peter Says:
September 26th, 2006 at 6:27 pm
Iran is highly dependent on foreign investment to keep its refineries and economy working — see the article in today’s (yesterday’s?) Wall Street Journal —

However, even if foreign investment is identified as the chokepoint, getting the other countries to apply pressure in unison is the real problem –
2 The Real Sporer Says:
September 26th, 2006 at 9:16 pm
We need a lot less talk with Iran and a lot less action.

A good question, what would FDR and Churchill do? I think they’d engage in a some very significant operations along the Iraq Iran border to snag infiltrators.
3 Dennis Says:
September 27th, 2006 at 7:22 am
As long as Europe, China and Russia suspect they’re not the target of those Iranian nukes, they seem perfectly content to keep doing business with Iran. The diplomatic solution is rather useless because there isn’t anything we could offer the Iranians that would outweigh the advantage to them of having nuclear weapons, and the aforementioned powers clearly have no interest in giving up their profits.

A war is a possibility, but I’m starting to suspect the administration figures the nation doesn’t have the stomach for it, so they’ll probably go with the same option that’s been used with North Korea for the past two decades - let them have their toys, and hope they recognize that their use - in any fashion - will bring instant death to their nations.