nhaler

Someone Explain Iran Dynamics to Us

jakke:

thecallus:

Something does not add up.

Iran wants to make nuclear weapons and energy systems. The United States and many of its international partners do not want this to happen. After initial diplomacy and quite a bit of spy-work, the international Western non-proliferation bloc is essentially locked in cold contest with Iran and its Eastern allies. In our view Iran has become a Rorschach test for growing tensions between the West, Russia, and China.

Our question is mostly where it ends up. The strategy for American and its allies up until this point appears to have been playing intelligence games behind the scenes to delay Iran’s progress while attempting to break the nation with harsh economic sanctions. But nuclear technology is, quite simply, waiting out there to be discovered; there is no end-state in which the secrets of nuclear power do not proliferate. Knowledge cannot be suppressed forever.

But nuclear technology also requires significant facilities and installations. This seems to be where we’re headed: destroying those. Of course, how long Iran is willing to tolerate literal destruction of its military facilities after years of subterfuge and sabotage without retaliation is anyone’s guess. After all the recent demonstrations in the Strait of Hormuz appear to be a clear indication on the part of Iran’s military that playtime is over.

Using the WMD thesis that brought America to war with Iraq, we’ve already justified armed conflict with Iran. They have stated clearly their intentions to develop nuclear technology and supporting facilities to the worldwide community. Of course, we have a new President for the latest round with Iran, but this President has not shown any significant deltas from the previous vis a vis wartime policy.

So…isn’t the only remaining question for the coming Iran war when, not if?

Firstly, it’s a little unreasonable to conflate the ability to enrich uranium for fuel with the ability to enrich uranium for weapons. Uranium enrichment for fuel requires a concentration of around 4% of the more unstable isotope U-235, whereas enrichment for weaponry requires a concentration of around 90%. (Naturally occurring uranium is less than 1% U-235.) Enriching uranium the way Iran is doing it is a tricky and energy-intensive process that uses a series of centrifuges to separate uranium hexafluoride gas with U-235 from gas with U-238 by the less than 1% difference in density. Getting to weapons levels of enrichment would be hugely expensive and take many years, assuming the Iranian government has sufficient technical knowledge at all.

Also, it’s probably best to consider Iran’s motivations in terms of bargaining. Things are really not going well for the government; sanctions have driven the rial down 66% against the US dollar in the last year, and the EU is considering stricter sanctions on Iranian oil. Loudly proclaiming their success and enriching uranium and testing long-range missiles and threatening to mine the Strait of Hormuz is a way of exerting pressure on the EU to attempt negotiations before further sanctions. The Iranian economy is super dependent on oil, for such a large country - it constitutes 80% of exports by dollar value. Therefore if the Iranian government can credibly convince the EU that sanctions would just make a dangerous country mad, they can avoid sanctions that would totally kill their economy. (This is not too dissimilar to strategies that have worked for Israel, honestly.)

Going to vigourously argue that Iran will not mine the Strait of Hormuz and that there will be no actual military confrontation. This would be hugely expensive and disruptive to the economy and likely to be super unpopular at home in Iran as civilians were killed. (And civilians would get killed, because the US and its allies have not been able to avoid those even when they’re ostensibly trying very hard to be careful, like in Afghanistan.) It’s all just posturing, and it will get dramatically scaled back once the EU goes to negotiate with Iran.

(Personally I’m doubtful that the EU itself is in any state to agree to a coordinated response to anything, but this is an entirely different topic.)

I bolded the part concluding what any rational person who responds to US rhetoric would be thinking; however, in addition to jakke’s particularly insightful comments, I believe a couple of notes on diplomacy and regional politics are in order.

It should be noted that the US will not start war with a country that has a partially-modernized military, is backed back by both Russia and China, and that supports, with its own resources, the US’s biggest economic rival; Iran is also not a formal enemy of the EU. And unlike Iraq, it is on friendly diplomatic terms with a number of regional powers. Where the US invaded Iraq, who had a population under the thumb of a US-installed dictator and was already crippled after a decade of sanctions and a number of wars, Iran has had it comparatively easy. Ahmedinejad is far less likely to bow to US demands, not having been installed by them. (Edit: A parallel here may be drawn with Qaddafi, who, while not exactly enjoying popular support, certainly enjoyed popular tolerance—as many tyrants did and do—and was deposed once immediately convenient. A retrospective analysis of what I wrote here leads me to suggest a similar possibility for Ahmedinejad.)

Secondly, a US invasion would be as unpopular as the Iraq or Viet Nam invasions: to quote Selig Harrison, “The nuclear negotiations between Iran and the European Union were based on a bargain that the EU, held back by the US, has failed to honour. [The bargain] in question was one in which Iran would suspend uranium enrichment, and the EU would undertake “security guarantees”. The language of the joint declaration was “unambiguous”; ‘A mutually acceptable agreement’, it said, would not only provide ‘objective guarantees’ that Iran’s nuclear programme is ‘exclusively for peaceful purposes’, but would ‘equally provide firm commitments on security issues’ “. 

Continuing via Chomsky, he notes that the phrase “security issues” refers to threats by both the US and Israel—who both have their own nuclear programme—to bomb Iran, and preparations to do so. (Precedent for this anxiety exists in the 1981 bombing of Iraq’s Osirak reactor, and the recent US cyber-attack which did devastate an Iranian reactor.) In addition, unlike the EU, China will not back down in the face of US threats. China, and her support of Iran, currently exist as pretty legitimate deterrents to US threats against Iran. There are also private allies of Iran who are less sensitive-to and dependent-upon US support than they let on, such as India, who despite public condemnation of Iran as a member of the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency), nonetheless held numerous secret agreements, even in the face of US threats for doing so. India, as it turns out, is also an active participant and partner with China in Asian energy exploration, much of which—fancy this—is done in and with Iran. 

If there is any US war against Iran, it is already being waged. As the US media continues to build popular support [against it], and the US continues enforcing sanctions, it may eventually turn Iran by 2023 into the Iraq of 2003, unpopular and weakened enough to justify a US invasion from her leader’s standpoints. By then, however, the rationale may not be “Islamofascism”, “terrorism”, the “nuclear threat”, or whatever is making the rounds today; it will certainly be something convenient, though. 

I believe in the speculation of others, who posit that instead of a US invasion, it will simply be a series of ‘independent’, ‘covert’ Israeli air-strikes (under US directive, or with tacit support, of course) against key Iranian targets. This is politically far safer, cheaper, and more expedient to US interests, as well as defensible under some banner of Iranian→Israeli-Jewish persecution. This scenario, therefore, is also achievable far sooner than 2025, which increases the likelyhood of it happening as such. (Edit: And it seems such a thing has just happened, with what appears to be the professionally-executed bombing of a high-ranking nuclear physicist in Iran, who many have already widely presumed to be an act perpetrated by the West.)