THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA
An Online Journal of Political Commentary & Analysis
Volume X, Issue # 254, October 3, 2008
Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
Government Committed to & Acting in Accord with Conservative Principles
Ensures a Nation's Strength, Progress, & Prosperity
OBAMA OR MCCAIN, IRAN STANCE WON'T CHANGE
By Dr. Michael Rubin
HOW THE NEXT PRESIDENT OF THE U.S.A. WILL COPE WITH THE MOST IMMEDIATE FOREIGN POLICY CHALLENGE FACING
THE AMERICAN NATION, NAMELY, IRANIAN NUCLEAR DEVELOPMENT: WILL A CHANGE IN U.S. FOREIGN POLICY
TOWARDS IRAN BE ENOUGH TO ALTER THE INTERNATIONAL ENVIRONMENT IN WHICH THE U.S.A. HAS TO OPERATE?
DIVERGENT U.S. & IRANIAN ATTITUDES TOWARDS DIPLOMACY -- WESTERN UTOPIAN NOTIONS OF NEGOTIATION &
COMPROMISE VERSUS IRANIAN TAQIYYA & DECEIT -- U.S. NAVEL-GAZING VERSUS THE REALITY OF IRANIAN STRATEGIC
PLANNING
FULL STORY:
On November 4, 2008, Americans will go to the polls to elect their next President. But even as rival candidates Barack
Obama and John McCain spar over who can bring change at home and restore America's image abroad, on the most
immediate foreign policy challenge facing the next inhabitant of the Oval Office -- Iranian nuclear development -- there
will be no change.
In their first debate, both candidates said their administrations would negotiate with the Islamic Republic, albeit not at
the presidential level. Whether Obama or McCain authorises his Secretary of State or some lesser official is irrelevant,
however, as it takes two to tango. Too often, U.S. politicians and commentators navel-gaze: they assume decisions in
Washington, D.C., shape world events and that a change in policy will be enough to alter the international milieu.
Reality, though, is opposite. Washington more often reacts to international events, rather than leads them. Not so
Tehran. While American leaders play chequers, their Iranian counterparts play chess, planning strategy several moves
in advance.
Divergent U.S. and Iranian attitudes towards diplomacy show this clearly. Former Iranian President Mohammad Khatami
wowed the West when, at his 1997 inauguration, he called for a dialogue of civilisations. U.S. and European officials took
the bait. Between 2000 and 2005, for example, European Union trade with Iran almost tripled, as European leaders pursued
a policy of critical engagement. Simultaneously, Tehran reaped billions of dollars from the rise in oil prices. Rather than
turn moderate, however, the Iranian government took its hard currency windfall and invested almost 70 per cent of it in
military equipment and its covert nuclear program.
This nuclear deception was not a result of Iranian hardliners working behind the backs of their reform-minded counterparts:
the ruse was intentional. On June 14 this year, Abdollah Ramezanzadeh, Khatami's former spokesman, explained:
"The solution is to prove to the entire world that we
want the [nuclear] power plants for electricity.
Afterwards, we can proceed with other activities."
He criticised President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's provocations and suggested Khatami's strategy to lull the West with soft
words better achieved Iran's nuclear aims.
"We had one overt policy, which was one of negotiation and confidence building, and a covert policy, which was
continuation of the activities," Ramezanzadeh explained.
Dialogue may sound good in theory, but the diplomacy taught in Western academies and that taught in Iranian seminaries
bear no resemblance to each other. While diplomats in the U.S.A., Europe, and Australia seek compromise, Iranian diplomats
learn taqiyya, religiously-sanctioned lying.
Iranian deception worked, at least until 2002, when, confronted with damning satellite images, Iranian diplomats finally
acknowledged that the Islamic Republic had built a covert nuclear enrichment plant. While some Western academics
rationalise Iranian behaviour and say the Iranian nuclear program is motivated only by the presence of U.S. forces in Iraq
and Afghanistan, in fact, Iran's nuclear program predates either conflict.
Whoever next occupies the Oval Office will face overwhelming evidence of Iranian deceit. Unlike Bill Clinton and George W.
Bush in the run-up to the Iraq war, the new President need not rely on the veracity of CIA reports; the most damning
evidence comes from International Atomic Energy Agency inspections which, among other things, have found plutonium
residue and uranium metal contamination on Iranian equipment. Neither has any role in energy production, but both are
crucial to bomb-making. More damning, Iranian scientists have acknowledged work on polonium-210, which is used in
nuclear bomb triggers.
Nor will the next President have the luxury of time. With 6000 centrifuges -- Iran has already installed 4000 -- the Islamic
Republic can produce enough highly enriched uranium to supply a bomb in less than a month; that is, within a period
between IAEA inspections. Although many intelligence estimates suggest Iran is years away from a nuclear bomb, these
assume all weapons design work is domestic. But, as Syria's mysterious plutonium plant (destroyed by the Israeli Air Force
in September, 2007) demonstrates, all timelines are off when North Korea, Russia, or any other state provides assistance.
Only the most naive Democrat or isolationist Republican can ignore Iranian statements promising not only the acquisition
of nuclear weapons, but their use. On December 14, 2001, for example, Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, perhaps Iran's second
most powerful man and one often labelled a pragmatist by Western journalists, suggested that it may not be far-fetched to
envision use of nuclear weapons against Israel.
Amid chants of "death to Israel", he declared:
"The use of even one nuclear bomb inside Israel will
destroy everything. . . . It is not irrational to contemplate
such an eventuality."
Rafsanjani's statements soon became the rule rather than the exception. On February 14, 2005, Ayatollah Mohammad Baqer
Kharrazi, Secretary-General of Iranian Hezbollah, declared:
"We are able to produce atomic bombs and we will do
that. We shouldn't be afraid of anyone. The US is no
more than a barking dog."
And on May 29, 2005, Hojatolislam Gholam Reza Hasani, the Supreme Leader's personal representative to the province of
West Azerbaijan, declared possession of nuclear weapons to be one of Iran's top goals. "An atom bomb ... must be
produced," he said. "That is because the Koran has told Muslims to 'get strong and amass all the forces at your disposal.'"
The following February, Mohsen Gharavian, a Qom theologian close to Ayatollah Mohammad Taqi Mesbah-Yazdi, one of
the Islamic Republic's staunchest ideologues, said it was natural for Iran to possess nuclear weapons.
Whether Obama or McCain next occupies the Oval Office may be irrelevant, as far as Washington's policy towards Iran is
concerned, for the Iranian regime will soon disabuse the next President of any utopian belief in the power of diplomacy he
may have. On July 18 this year, the same day that President Bush reversed course and sent Undersecretary of State
William Burns to Geneva to discuss a broad incentive package to be granted Tehran, should it agree to abide by its UN
commitments, Mohammad Jafar Assadi, Commander of the Revolutionary Guards' ground forces, declared that the
concession proved that "America has no other choice but to leave the Middle East region beaten and humiliated".
With diplomacy doomed to fail, Obama or McCain will ratchet up sanctions within months of taking office. While
unconditional Russian support for Iran undercuts the utility of the UN action, the new President, European leaders, and,
hopefully, the Australian Prime Minister will pursue unilateral sanctions. For instance, the entire Iranian banking system
could be designated as engaged in deceptive financial practices, a move that, in effect, would remove the Islamic Republic
from the world's financial system. Meanwhile, efforts to contain Iran will increase, with weapons sales to regional states,
increased naval deployments, and, as a last resort, military strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities.
Ironically, an Obama win may well accelerate conflict as Tehran tests the young Senator, much as the Soviet Union's test
of the young John F. Kennedy set off a cascade of events that almost led to nuclear war. Here, the world may find its
notion of the Democrats' pacifism wrong. Much of the Democrats' anti-war rhetoric has more to do with politics and
anti-Bush sentiment than it does with ideological opposition to the use of force.
Obama's supporters argue that a McCain win would mean four more years of Bush policies.
What they omit is that, their utopian embrace of diplomacy disabused, an Obama win could mean eight more years of the
same.
LINKS TO RELATED TOPICS:
The Middle East & the Problem of Iran
American Foreign Policy -- The Middle East
Islamism & Jihadism -- The Threat of Radical Islam
Page Three
Page Two
Page One
International Politics & World Disorder:
War, Peace, & Geopolitics in the Real World:
Foreign Affairs & U.S. National Security
Page Two
Page One
Islamist Terrorist Attacks on the U.S.A.
Osama bin Laden & the Islamist Declaration of War
Against the U.S.A. & Western Civilization
Islamist International Terrorism &
U.S. Intelligence Agencies
U.S. National Security Strategy
Dr. Michael Rubin, a Ph.D. in History (Yale University) and a specialist in Middle Eastern politics, Islamic culture and Islamist
ideology, is Editor of the Middle East Quarterly, a senior lecturer at the Naval Postgraduate School, and a resident
scholar at the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research. Dr Rubin is author of Into the Shadows: Radical
Vigilantes in Khatami's Iran (Washington Institute for Near East Policy, 2001) and is co-author, with Dr. Patrick Clawson,
of Eternal Iran: Continuity and Chaos (Palgrave Macmillan, 2005). Dr. Rubin served as political advisor to the Coalition
Provisional Authority in Baghdad (2003-2004); staff advisor on Iran and Iraq in the Office of the U.S. Secretary of Defense
(2002-2004); visiting lecturer in the Departments of History and International Relations at Hebrew University of Jerusalem
(2001-2002); visiting lecturer at the Universities of Sulaymani, Salahuddin, and Duhok in Iraqi Kurdistan (2000-2001); Soref
Fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (1999-2000); and visiting lecturer in the Department of History at Yale
University (1999-2000). He has been a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, the Leonard Davis Institute at Hebrew
University, and the Carnegie Council on Ethics and International Affairs.
Dr. Rubin was principal drafter of the September 22, 2008, report of the Bipartisan Policy Center's taskforce on U.S. policy
towards Iranian nuclear development.
The foregoing article by Dr. Rubin was originally published in The Australian, October 3, 2008, and
can be found on the Internet website maintained by the Middle East Forum, a foreign policy think tank which seeks to
define and promote American interests in the Middle East, defining U.S. interests to include fighting radical Islam,
working for Palestinian Arab acceptance of the State of Israel, improving the management of U.S. efforts to promote
constitutional democracy in the Middle East, reducing America's energy dependence on the Middle East, more robustly
asserting U.S. interests vis-à-vis Saudi Arabia, and countering the Iranian threat.
(Article URL: http://www.meforum.org/article/1991)
Republished with Permission of the Middle East Forum
Reprinted from the Middle East Forum News
mefnews@meforum.org (MEF NEWS)
MEF News, October 3, 2008
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THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA
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Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
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