Nader Mousavizadeh: Bringing Iran In From the Cold
[The writer, a special assistant to U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan from 1997 to 2003, is a consulting senior fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies.]
A fateful consensus is forming around the proposition that war with Iran is inevitable. The failure of the past eight years' non-diplomacy has resulted in a worst-case scenario whereby Iran, most experts agree, has passed the point of no return in terms of technical nuclear weapons capability without violating its legal obligations under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
Witness, then, the remarkable display of Arab-Israeli unity at the White House: Monday's message from Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu about existential threats echoing Arab warnings about the Persian menace on the horizon. Palestine is passé, Iran is in -- and the great debate, we are now to believe, concerns whether the road to Tehran runs through Jerusalem or vice versa.
As a rising regional power with a record of sponsoring Hezbollah and Hamas as agents of influence, Iran is using every weapon -- symmetrical and asymmetrical -- to disrupt the established order. Answering this challenge without war will require a diplomatic shift beyond mere engagement.
By focusing on the means of Iran's ascendancy -- its pursuit of a nuclear weapons capability and its support for Hezbollah and Hamas -- we are avoiding the vital question of ends. Concentrating on capabilities instead of intentions, we are missing the far more consequential opportunity to challenge the Iranian regime to a real debate about the country's legitimate place in the regional security architecture and the deeply illegitimate ways Tehran seeks to achieve it.
In other words, it's not about the bomb.
And yet preventing Tehran from gaining nuclear weapons status has gained dangerously totemic status as a national security aim of the United States and its allies. Leave aside the possibility that an Israeli government disinclined toward a two-state solution would find reason to direct the world's focus away from Gaza. Ignore, too, the likelihood that Arab regimes struggling to justify their rule may be keen to change the subject. The United States remains captive to three decades of Cold War thinking where Iran is concerned, and nothing in the new administration's policy suggests a shift as fundamental as the one required.
While the Obama administration appears likely to resist the near-term pressure for military action (not least because of its preoccupation with the creeping Talibanization of Pakistan, Iran's already nuclear-armed neighbor to the east), its mix of rhetorical innovation and policy continuation is unlikely to produce a different outcome...
Read entire article at WaPo
A fateful consensus is forming around the proposition that war with Iran is inevitable. The failure of the past eight years' non-diplomacy has resulted in a worst-case scenario whereby Iran, most experts agree, has passed the point of no return in terms of technical nuclear weapons capability without violating its legal obligations under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
Witness, then, the remarkable display of Arab-Israeli unity at the White House: Monday's message from Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu about existential threats echoing Arab warnings about the Persian menace on the horizon. Palestine is passé, Iran is in -- and the great debate, we are now to believe, concerns whether the road to Tehran runs through Jerusalem or vice versa.
As a rising regional power with a record of sponsoring Hezbollah and Hamas as agents of influence, Iran is using every weapon -- symmetrical and asymmetrical -- to disrupt the established order. Answering this challenge without war will require a diplomatic shift beyond mere engagement.
By focusing on the means of Iran's ascendancy -- its pursuit of a nuclear weapons capability and its support for Hezbollah and Hamas -- we are avoiding the vital question of ends. Concentrating on capabilities instead of intentions, we are missing the far more consequential opportunity to challenge the Iranian regime to a real debate about the country's legitimate place in the regional security architecture and the deeply illegitimate ways Tehran seeks to achieve it.
In other words, it's not about the bomb.
And yet preventing Tehran from gaining nuclear weapons status has gained dangerously totemic status as a national security aim of the United States and its allies. Leave aside the possibility that an Israeli government disinclined toward a two-state solution would find reason to direct the world's focus away from Gaza. Ignore, too, the likelihood that Arab regimes struggling to justify their rule may be keen to change the subject. The United States remains captive to three decades of Cold War thinking where Iran is concerned, and nothing in the new administration's policy suggests a shift as fundamental as the one required.
While the Obama administration appears likely to resist the near-term pressure for military action (not least because of its preoccupation with the creeping Talibanization of Pakistan, Iran's already nuclear-armed neighbor to the east), its mix of rhetorical innovation and policy continuation is unlikely to produce a different outcome...