An Offer Iran Shouldn’t Refuse
Posted on June 22nd, 2009
by Patrick J. Buchanan |
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Given its monopoly of guns, bet on the Iranian regime. But, in the long run, the ayatollahs have to see the handwriting on the wall.
Let us assume what they insist upon — that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad won the June 12 election; that, even if fraud occurred, it did not decide the outcome. As Ayatollah Khamenei said to loud laughter in his Friday sermon declaring the election valid, “Perhaps 100,000, or 500,000, but how can anyone tamper with 11 million votes?”
Still, the ayatollah and Ahmadinejad must hear the roar of the rapids ahead. Millions of Iranians, perhaps a majority of the professional class and educated young, who shouted, “Death to the Dictatorship,” oppose or detest them. How can the regime maintain its present domestic course or foreign policy with its people so visibly divided?
Where do the ayatollah and Ahmadinejad go from here?
If they adopt a harder line, defy Barack Obama and refuse to negotiate their nuclear program, they can continue to enrich uranium, as harsher sanctions are imposed. But to what end adding 1,000 more kilograms?
If they do not intend to build a bomb, why enrich more? And if they do intend to build a bomb, what exactly would that achieve?
For an Iranian bomb would trigger a regional arms race with Turkey, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia seeking nuclear weapons. Israel would put its nuclear arsenal on a hair trigger. America would retarget missiles on Tehran. And if a terrorist anywhere detonated a nuclear bomb, Iran would risk annihilation, for everyone would assume Tehran was behind it.
Rather than make Iran more secure, an Iranian bomb would seem to permanently isolate her and possibly subject her to pre-emptive attack.
And how can the Iranians survive continued isolation?
According to U.S. sources, Iran produced 6 million barrels of crude a day in 1974 under the shah. She has not been able to match that since the revolution. War, limited investment, sanctions and a high rate of natural decline of mature oil fields, estimated at 8 percent onshore and 11 percent offshore, are the causes. A 2007 National Academy of Sciences study reported that if the decline rates continue, Iran’s exports, which in 2007 averaged 2.4 million barrels per day, could decrease to zero by 2015.
You cannot make up for oil and gas exports with carpets and pistachio nuts.
If Tehran cannot effect a lifting of sanctions and new investments in oil and gas production, she is headed for an economic crisis that will cause an exodus of her brightest young and quadrennial reruns of the 2009 election.
And there are not only deep divisions in Iran between modernists and religious traditionalists, the affluent and the poor, but among ethnic groups. Half of Iran’s population is Arab, Kurd, Azeri or Baluchi. In the Kurdish northwest and Baluchi south, secessionists have launched attacks the ayatollah blames on the United States and Israel.
As they look about the region, how can the ayatollahs be optimistic?
Syria, their major ally, wants to deal with the Americans to retrieve the Golan. Saudi Arabia and Egypt are hostile, with the latter having uncovered a Hezbollah plot against President Hosni Mubarak.
Hamas is laser-focused on Gaza, the West Bank and a Palestinian state, and showing interest in working with the Obama administration.
Where is the Islamic revolution going? Where is the state in the Muslim world that has embraced Islamism and created a successful nation?
Sudan? Taliban Afghanistan? Somalia is now in final passage from warlordism to Islamism. Does anyone believe the Al-Shahab will create a successful nation?
As for the ayatollahs, after 30 years, they are deep in crisis — and what have they produced that the world admires?
Even if the “green revolution” in Iran triggers revolts in the Gulf states, Saudi Arabia, or Egypt, can Iran believe Sunni revolutionary regimes will follow the lead of a Shia Islamic state? How long did it take Mao’s China to renounce its elder brother in the faith, Khrushchev’s Russia?
When one looks at the Asian tigers — South Korea, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia — or at the China or India of recent decades, one sees nations that impress the world with their progress.
Iran under the mullahs has gone sideways or backward. Now, with this suspect election and millions having shown their revulsion of the regime, the legitimacy and integrity of the ayatollahs have been called into question.
Obama offers the regime a way out.
They may exercise their right to peaceful nuclear power, have sanctions lifted, and receive security guarantees, if they can prove they have no nuclear weapons program and will cease subverting through their Hezbollah-Hamas proxies the peace process Obama is pursuing between Israel and Palestine.
If Iran refuses Obama’s offer, she will start down a road at the end of which are severe sanctions, escalation, and a war that Obama does not want and Iran cannot want — for the winner will not be Iran.
COPYRIGHT 2009 CREATORS SYNDICATE INC.
Filed under: World
It seems that the regime is going to cling to power at whatever cost because it believes it is sanctioned by God, and it believes its destiny is to deliver both nuclear power and the Bomb to the Iranian people as a means of both self-protection and national greatness, and to preserve its natural resources for foreign export. It likely regards the protesters as naive youth more interested in iPods, the Internet, Hollywood movies and Western fashion than the best long term interests of the nation. And it has concluded it really doesn’t need to do business with the West because it’s got China to purchase its energy resources (see “Iran overtakes Saudi as China’s No.1 crude supplier’) and pipeline gas deals brewing with Russia and Pakistan.
I predict the regime will continue to pursue its nuclear program, and wouldn’t be all that unhappy if it were bombed for doing so, because it could then say to its rebellious youth: what did we tell you about these Western snakes you all were so infatuated with? I think it recognizes that an all-out American war resulting in the occupation of Iran is highly unlikely, although it runs the risk that a bombing campaign could result internal overthrow of the regime.
You say the Mullahs need to look around. And also with you, my friend (a Catholic saying).
Much of your thesis presupposes some US “deterrance” capability. Check out your own TAC website.
If Huston, Texas were to suddenly and unexplainably be turned to a big glass parking lot, and then if you came to TAC and started shouting you wanted to drop a bomb on either N Korea or Iran, then if you took a vote among the bloggers at TAC, they would be 4 to 1 against you.
You would find that the seeming “hawk”, Obama, with his buddy Rahm Emanuel, don’t want to waste “opportunities”, but this does *not* include dropping a “Big” bomb on somebody.
And I can guarantee you that the Mullahs have “looked around” enough to know that the US arsenal no longer includes the real threat of any “deterrance”.
We need to find a way to back Obama, as he tries to talk his way out of this on behalf of the US, even if we have no more control over him than do the people on the street of Iran have control over their Mullahs.
(But if we try to do to Obama, what the lefties and greenies were doing to Bush’s war effort, denigrating the US and it’s legitimacy on the World Stage, then a self-fufilling prophesy of failure will be built in.)
Somebody start a new blog thread, with the question, what should the US do if a major city is hit by a significant nuclear attack, that is at first unexplained? What if we never know for sure who did it?
Obama says, “we’ll take our chances, and try to talk our way out of it.” Will this comicbook approach lead to the pendulum swinging back all the way to another “Bush”, who would take a “Rahm Emanuel”-style approach to use the opportunity to “clean out” an Iraq, as long as we’re already in the area cleaning out an Afghanistan?
Wouldn’t we be better off “planning” the reverse swing of the pendulum, and put realistic definitions on it, without denigrating it into a pre-determined failure, or, some sort of armageddon-exaggeration?
From the Iranian point of view, the problem with PJB’s proposal is that they must throw themselves on the mercy of the US regime, which has not shown itself to be overly merciful. They must “prove” that they have no nuclear weapons program. I’m sure the Iranians have noted how well this proving of a negative worked out for Saddam Hussein. And they must cease “subverting” the Israeli/Palestinian “peace process” (lol) by their support of Hamas and Hezbollah. Of course, the main subverter of the “peace process”, as pointed out by PJB himself is the Israeli government currently headed by Bibi Netanyahu. Granted that Israeli/Palestinian relations are none of Iran’s business, but neither are they any business of the US. The US should just discontinue its support of nuclear armed Israel, re-establish normal relations with Iran, bring our troops home, and quit trying to micromanage the Mideast and the rest of the world.
@ Kirt Higdon: “the main subverter of the “peace process”, as pointed out by PJB himself is the Israeli government currently headed by Bibi Netanyahu.”
One also might add that the Israel lobby via its influence over the US Congress, and the corrupt US Congress itself (which gives Israel a blank check to continually poke the Palestinians in the eye with its bombardments and settlers) are also guilty of subversion of the peace process.
All of which begs the question: what moral authority does the US have, especially in the post Iraq war era, to make demands upon anyone? Over the last two generations, the US has been so corrupted, mismanaged, and squandered its integrity and political capital to such an extent that Obama isn’t in a position to make demands upon anyone other than through leveraging the threat of force. And if he does that, what more “legitimacy and integrity” does the US have than the ayatollahs?
America needs to retrench until the epically selfish and incompetent Baby Boomer generation/regime passes into the pages of history. Thus far, they’ve screwed up everything they’ve touched.
This is one time I disagree with Pat Buchanan on Iran.
First iran has become modern because it broke from the Shah and American influence. Under the present leaders Iranians have got richer, educated, and modern with even elections.
I don’t know if fraud was done enough to change or disqualify the election.
I want them to be democratic but more I want stability of institutions and legitimacy of government.
The opposition is not representive of Iran and hasn’t proved its point.
Iran doesn’t need people or revolutions in the streets. Iran needs to show the common man they elites don’t decide the outcome of power but rather tried methods.
Iran needs advive from the Burkes of the world and not French revolutionarys.
Iran has not been proven to do anything wrong or wanting nukes. Which is their national right anyways.
Iran should be advised to go slow like old England and not fast like disaster France . Reform slowly so as to maintain passions and legitimacy in the nation.
Young people don’t know everything. The ’60’s showed that.
Pat is usually right but here should be supporting the legitimacy of foreign governments. prove first the election was wrong.
if street protests are king then anyone can take control of the street and in that world that can be anyone.
I would say that pat buchanan of whom I am a great admirer and normally agree…is only seeing one side of the picture.
The US is near bankrupt with debt approaching 100% of GDP. We are fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan and Pakistan at the demands of Israel to secure the spread of nuclear weapons out of North Korea and Pakistan.
Deligitizing, promoting regime change, bombing, invasion in Iran could destabilize the entire swath from Lebanon to Afghistan/Pakistan…and nuclear weapons could spread without active control by any strong central government. Is the US to invade, police and nation build with our bankrupt treasury the entire Shiite swath from Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Iran, Pakistan and Afghanistan? If so for how long?
Isreal may want this but no other nation in the world is willing to spend their sons lives and their taxpayer money for this kind of foreign folly.
The path to peace in the middle east comes from the paranoid Israelis who want total domination of the middle east and sole monopoly of nuclear defenses while continuing their settlements and ethnic cleansings for a jewish theocratic republic…financed in large part by political and monetary control by the american jewish community…to which…pat buchanan has often question their dual loyalty since they oftem promote the interests of Israel at the expense of the US.
If Israel is the target of hostilities in the Arab and Persian world, then its time Israel looks in the mirror for they have had the power all along to make peace with their neighbors but why make peace when you have goliath (US) to fight your battles. Israel will never make peace … as long as the US is there with money, weapons and UN deflections.
Dont get me wrong…the world would love to see an Iraq and Iran free from the tryanny of Islam, of which the world would be wise to remember the richness of culture that existed long before Islam and still exists today within their Islamic religion.
But the US needs to stop listening to Israel and to jews and tread carefully before our bankrupt nation is responsible for wars with 2-3 more middle eastern nations…and another 10-20 years of military occupation.