Iran: Crouching Tiger or Paper Tiger?

The recent National Intelligence Estimate which reported that Iran halted its nuclear weapons program in 2003 is both heartening and frustrating. The good news, of course, is that if the report is true then Iran is not moving in a nuclear direction; thus, the World War III feared by President Bush is a little bit less of an immanent danger, and the political climate has changed to such an extent that war with Iran is becoming much less likely. The Estimate is also frustrating, though; why is it that out of nowhere intelligence can surface which contradicts years of rhetoric and prior intelligence? In the pursuit of truth, mistakes will be made....that's a fundamental life lesson I've learned as a science student. In intelligence, the consequences of a mistake are so great that I can't help but worry about the overall state of America's ability to gather information on her enemies. It has become clear that the Iraq war was predicated on flawed intelligence. In the case of Iran, we don't know which intelligence assessment of Iran's nuclear weapons capability is really correct yet, but we do know that Iran either does have a post-2003 nuclear weapons program or it does not. I'm more inclined to believe the present assessment reflected in the most recent Estimate more because it is current and presumably based on an total intelligence picture that includes information gathered over many years, but can we really trust intelligence anymore in general? If intelligence is not consistently trustworthy, it can hardly be used as either a basis either for waging war or for making peace.

Although I am adamantly opposed to any war with Iran, I'm still very suspicious of Iran because of its past rhetoric and past actions. Cautious diplomacy is in order, I think...if a peaceful relationship between Iran and the United States can be established, the world will be a much better place, but I'm not too keen on the idea of bargaining with Iran at this point. Let's let the rhetoric cool down on both sides before there's talk of deeper economic cooperation. The time for investment and nuclear power collaboration is yet to come.

The Democratic candidates in the Iowa NPR debate seemed to largely be in favor new policy towards Iran in which diplomacy would be emphasized. While most of the candidates made it clear that they did believe Iran to still be a threat to some extent, they uniformly disagreed with President Bush's position that the National Intelligence Estimate should not change America's attitude towards Iran. Barack Obama was the first to mention Iran's support of Hamas and Hezbollah as an example of the continuing threat Iran still poses, which Hillary Clinton echoed. Mike Gravel was the only candidate to openly declare that he did not consider Iran to be any threat whatsoever; he even made an argument for Iran's right to fund Hamas and Hezbollah, comparing Iran's aid to those organizations to the United States' foreign aid to Israel. I'm glad that Gravel was bold enough to declare Iran as not being a threat; sometimes, I feel like Americans after 9/11 are way too easily frightened of countries and terrorist organizations that do not have anywhere near the resources that the American government has. Gravel isn't scared of Iran, and his contribution to the discussion was to me a reminder that, although Iran can do plenty of harm in the world, it's not as if an Iranian invasion or a nuclear holocaust is very likely to occur in the near future. America can be suspicious of Iran and treat it with caution, but it does not need to be so frightened of Iran that it acts impulsively and irrationally. Unlike Gravel, I do continue to consider Iran a threat, partly because of Iranian support for terrorist organizations such as Hamas and Hezbollah. There was a good deal of condemnation of President Bush's "rush to war," including some accusations that Bush intended to lead America into war with Iran in a way very similar to how he launched the war against Iraq. I thought Joe Biden was Bush's most eloquent critic in the Iowa NPR debate. He stressed that he was not simply opposed to a "rush to war." Rather, he made it clear that he was "advocating no war, no justification for war." Biden hasn't really established himself as an anti-war candidate in my mind; he does, after all, advocate that American troops in reduced numbers remain in Iraq, and he has a history of supporting intervention in other countries. In this debate regarding Iran, however, he seemed to out-Kucinich Dennis Kucinich!

John Edwards attempted to make a big issue out of Hillary Clinton's vote in support of declaring the Iranian National Guard a terrorist organization. I was a bit surprised when that declaration passed myself, primarily due to terminology...I'm still not used to considering a branch of a nation's military a "terrorist" organization, but considering that armies have surely terrorized many more people throughout history than shadowy organizations like Al-Qaeda have perhaps the designation is more than fair. Edwards' argument that Clinton's vote showed that there was a clear distinction between the Democrats -- that is, between Hillary Clinton and all the other Democratic candidates -- did not really hold water with me. Clinton has said she does not advocate war with Iran. She can still believe that the Iranian National Guard is a terrorist organization...those two viewpoints are not mutually exclusive. Edwards argued that in effect Clinton was giving the president the pretext to go to war, but that argument suggests that in order to inhibit Bush's power it is necessary for Congress to refuse to call a terrorist a terrorist. That's not a very satisfying state of affairs -- surely Bush can still be restrained from going to war without Congress losing its ability to condemn terrorist organizations. It would've required more votes than that cast by Senator Clinton to actually lead America into another war. For Edwards' argument to have been effective, I think the former senator would have needed to argue that the Iranian Revolutionary Guard was being mischaracterized -- that is, it was improperly labeled as a terrorist organization for ulterior motives and thus Clinton's vote was cast either because she is in league with President Bush on Iran or because she was too foolish to see through the subterfuge.