"Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad --- who has sparked international outcry by referring to the killing of six million Jews in World War Two as a "myth" and calling for Israel to be "wiped off the map" ---told delegates at an international conference that the Jewish state would be extinguished. 'Thanks to people's wishes and God's will the trend for the existence of the Zionist regime is downwards and this is what God has promised and what all nations want,' he said.' Just as the Soviet Union was wiped out and today does not exist, so will the Zionist regime soon be wiped out.' " [The prose in this Iranian dispatch --- at any rate, the first sentence --- has been slightly altered by prof bug to correct its illiteracies. Ahmadinejad's quoted words in italics appear here exactly as in the original dispatch.]
This, the 8th article in a series on Iran and its nuclear ambitions --- more specifically, on whether a nuclear-armed Iran could be effectively deterred from aggressive foreign and military policies, not least massively stepped-up support for jihadi terrorists worldwide --- nudges the lengthy series fairly close to its end with a fistful of conclusions, each and every one tentative, alas. Why the proviso? Veteran readers of the buggy series will immediately understand the reasons why. In a few moments, those of you new to the series will find some fairly long clarifing remarks, and hopefully they will prove illuminating for you veterans too.
This, the 8th article in a series on Iran and its nuclear ambitions --- more specifically, on whether a nuclear-armed Iran could be effectively deterred from aggressive foreign and military policies, not least massively stepped-up support for jihadi terrorists worldwide --- nudges the lengthy series fairly close to its end with a fistful of conclusions, each and every one tentative, alas. Why the proviso? Veteran readers of the buggy series will immediately understand the reasons why. In a few moments, those of you new to the series will find some fairly long clarifing remarks, and hopefully they will prove illuminating for you veterans too.
How Today's Article Will Unfold
Specifically in four distinct parts, not all of which, come to think of it --- once prof bug's hands start banging away at the keyboard with bursting energy --- will fit into the space allotted for today's argument . . . or so we can safely wager.
1. In the first part, prof bug will elaborate on some key points that appeared in the series' first article that were posted on the buggy site back in late June 2006 --- or was it 1906? Frankly, hard some times for prof bug to keep the chronology clearly in mind . . . with the days, weeks, months, and even years drifting by now and losing themselves in a jumble of ghostly mists that linger ever more confusedly in a dark subterranean mental realm.
No matter. Time to press on. The major point that will be unpacked in this initial part is the inevitably speculative nature of any analysis of Iran's nuclear ambitions; and more pivotally --- seeing that Tehran's clerical-fascist regime is determined to develop and deploy nuclear weapons on various range missiles --- whether or not a terror-state led by Shiite clerics who yearn to make Iran a great power and put it at the head of the world Islamist movements can be reliably deterred and contained. Reliably meaning what exactly? Meaning more or less the way the US and its allies deterred and contained the Soviet Union in the cold war, putting pressure on its expansionist tendencies until ---in 1991 --- that nasty evil empire imploded, all its institutionalized irrationalities and contradictions blowing that homicidal Communist system clear apart and hurling its scattered relics into a deservedly vast historical dark hole.
Enter what's new in this first part of the article:
Even the best intelligence agencies in the world, you see --- whether they're American, British, Israeli, possibly French, or friendly Arab ones --- face a slew of information-gaps and hence uncertainties when it comes to making sense of Iran's susceptibility to effective deterrence and containment . . . and precisely because the gaps and speculative nature of any intelligence assessment part and parcel of the closed, secretive nature of Iran's policymaking nature and its reckless support for Islamist terrorist groups like Hezbollah and Hamas abroad. The huge secrecy is a problem that democratic countries have repeatedly encountered since the origins of modern totalitarian systems based on radical secular or religious ideologies in the aftermath of WWI: how, tersely put, to fathom the motives, overall grand strategy, weapons for carrying it out, and the concrete policymaking processes in such systems.
The result? A long history of grave intelligence failures and outright blunders has ensued, starting with Hitler's Germany and Imperial Japan before WWII and continuing throughout the cold war and ever since.
By contrast with Hitler's reckless high-risk aggression --- animated as it was by a death-loving, genocide-dealing racist ideology --- Communist Russia was never wildly and heedlessly rash and recklessly venturesome in its foreign policies. Yes, it was aggressive at times ---- though only when it was certain it wouldn't meet head-on armed resistance directly from the US and its western allies; and on top of that, not even Stalin was willing to let Communist ideology dominate his policymaking abroad. Soviet leaders from Stalin on frequently abandoned Communist allies and movements outside the Soviet Union's imperial orbit and almost always used governmental proxies, not guerrilla movements, let alone terrorist groups, as the major way to encourage Communist expansion in Asia or Africa. For that matter, it was happy to side with Arab or African governments that were busily destroying local Communist parties . . . provided such allies were sufficiently anti-Western as, say, Nasser's Egypt was after 1955 and then, from the late 1960s on, Assad's Syria and Saddam's Iraq.
In the end, not surprisingly, the post-Stalinist leaders of the Soviet Union came to fear Maoist China more than they did the US or NATO. Come to that, neither was it surprising that from 1972 on, Communist China emerged as an unofficial American ally in containing Soviet influence in Asia. It even invaded and fought a brief war in 1979 with Vietnam, a Soviet ally at the time.
By contrast with Hitler's reckless high-risk aggression --- animated as it was by a death-loving, genocide-dealing racist ideology --- Communist Russia was never wildly and heedlessly rash and recklessly venturesome in its foreign policies. Yes, it was aggressive at times ---- though only when it was certain it wouldn't meet head-on armed resistance directly from the US and its western allies; and on top of that, not even Stalin was willing to let Communist ideology dominate his policymaking abroad. Soviet leaders from Stalin on frequently abandoned Communist allies and movements outside the Soviet Union's imperial orbit and almost always used governmental proxies, not guerrilla movements, let alone terrorist groups, as the major way to encourage Communist expansion in Asia or Africa. For that matter, it was happy to side with Arab or African governments that were busily destroying local Communist parties . . . provided such allies were sufficiently anti-Western as, say, Nasser's Egypt was after 1955 and then, from the late 1960s on, Assad's Syria and Saddam's Iraq.
In the end, not surprisingly, the post-Stalinist leaders of the Soviet Union came to fear Maoist China more than they did the US or NATO. Come to that, neither was it surprising that from 1972 on, Communist China emerged as an unofficial American ally in containing Soviet influence in Asia. It even invaded and fought a brief war in 1979 with Vietnam, a Soviet ally at the time.
2. In the next part, the specific information gaps and uncertainties are laid out again . . . along with the likely concrete threats that a nuclear-armed terror state will pose to the US and its allies and friends. We can be fairly brief here, mainly because these issues were also dealt with in earlier articles . . . though, come to think of it, the comments there will expand on the nature of these likely threats.
3. Part three will unpack some new, fairly weighty issues: above all, why the use of any analogy with deterrence and containment of the Soviet Union in the cold war --- yes, even in the Stalinist era down to 1953 --- is very likely misguided and a faulty source of comfort when it comes to Iran.
This is the case, note quickly, even if Mahmoud Ahmadinejad --- the fanatical, half-crazed president whose megalomaniacal mind crackles with apocalyptic mumbo-jumbo of a frenzied Islamist sort --- is kept from dominating Iran's diplomatic, military, and terrorist-supporting policies in the years to come. And that analogy from the cold war era will be doubly misguided if that manic, fantasizing zealot manages to outmaneuver and prevail over his more traditional clerical-fascist opponents within the inner circles of Iran's ruling mullahs and ayatollahs . . . all of them, note quickly again, corrupt, domineering clerics who yearn, like Ahmadinejad, to make Iran a great power and leader of the world's Islamist revival and jihadi movements, but do worry, it seems, about his rash rhetoric, his motor-mouth diplomacy, and his messianic credo that have so far isolated Iran and caused concern or alarm all over the Middle East, Europe, and elsewhere.
4. The final part will set out some specific recommendations, tentative and speculative as they inevitably are, for dealing with the mushrooming Iranian threat. As you'll see in the introduction that will unfold in a moment, some of these buggy recommendations will no doubt surprise some of you.
PART ONE:
INEVITABLE SPECULATION, INTELLIGENCE AGENCIES, AND INTELLIGENCE FAILURES
Why Any Assessment of a Nuclear-Armed Terror-State That Rules Clerical-Fascist Iran Is Invariably Speculative
A Reminder
As the initial buggy article in the series cautioned back in July 2006 --- at any rate, some time after Columbus sailed to the New World --- there're too many uncertainties and information-gaps that infest the entire topic of Iranian policymaking and the distribution of political power in the era of the new, theocratically fanatical Mahmoud Ahmadinejad presidency for anyone to be sure whether a terror-state like Iran, armed with nuclear weapons, could be effectively deterred and contained the way the Soviet Union was in the cold war.
That's the chief question that hangs over the entire topic. What's more, it's a question that any American administration, Democratic and Republican, will have to ponder carefully for years to come . . . and maybe longer, perhaps a decade or so. Right now, nobody can be certain . . .
1) when Iran can or will deploy a few nuclear-armed missiles;
2) or what will ensue in its diplomatic, military, and terrorist-supporting policies afterwards;
3) or, for that matter, just how powerful and influential Ahmadinejad and his followers are in shaping these policies at present, let alone predict what that influence will likely be in the years to come.
2) or what will ensue in its diplomatic, military, and terrorist-supporting policies afterwards;
3) or, for that matter, just how powerful and influential Ahmadinejad and his followers are in shaping these policies at present, let alone predict what that influence will likely be in the years to come.
Nor Is That All
The hard truth is, the information-gaps and the numerous uncertainties that they generate about Iranian policymaking --- its nuclear ambitions, the balance of power among different political factions, and more to the point, the influence that Ahmadinejad's fanatical apocalyptic mumbo-jumbo will have on shaping military, diplomatic, and terrorist policies --- are unlikely to give way to harder, empirically grounded knowledge any time soon. The upshot? Any American administration, including the one in power, has to adopt something of a wait-and-see attitude . . . at any rate, it has to unless either this country or Israel decides to launch an effective pre-emptive strike on Iran's nuclear R&D programs. Short of that option, only speculation will prevail about Iran's nuclear ambitions and policymaking.
Right off, note two things. First off, a wait-and-see attitude in Washington D.C. toward these matters doesn't entail wait-and-see policies toward Iran --- very much to the contrary, something you'll understand a little better in a moment or two.
And second, to say that the various information-gaps and uncertainties they generate about Iran's policymaking, now or in the future --- at any rate, in diplomatic, military, and terrorist policies --- is not to say that all speculation about nuclear-armed Iran is equally futile or worthless.
This Second Point Clarified
Enter the Work of Intelligence Agencies
From what we can reasonably infer, to throw some light on this point, there're probably a dozen or two specialists in US, British, and Israeli intelligence agencies who combine a solid knowledge of Iran, of general diplomatic history and theories of negotiating tactics, and of military affairs ---the latter including such pivotal topics as nuclear weapons, deterrence theory, arms control, and the use of coercive sanctions for either deterrence or compellence (the latter often called "coercive diplomacy"). Obviously, their intelligence analyses --- which are kept secret --- will probably show more sophistication and a better grasp of the dominant realities and future trends in Iran affairs than what journalists or a few scholarly specialists are able to come up with. (For some information about one of these work groups in the US government --- the ultra-secret ISOG (Iran Syria Policy and Operations Group) --- click here. ) Nor is that all. From what we can also reasonably infer, there're no doubt ongoing exchanges of information and views among American, British, and Israeli agencies . . . plus, let us not forget, whatever useful information some of our Arab and NATO allies might come up with on their own.
All this is reassuring, yes? On the other hand --- and in such complex matters as those dealing with Iran's nuclear ambitions and future behavior, there is always "another hand" at work --- their work is not likely to be totally reassuring . . . just the opposite. Why the proviso?
Well, For a Couple of Reasons
The first of these is that such expertise is highly secretive, and so it doesn't help the rest of us much, if at all --- us, you understand, meaning the informed public whose minds aren't driven by ideological dogmas and America-Is-Always-the-Culprit PC-pap. That's obvious, right? Enter the second, far more significant reason for our concern: the record of intelligence failures in even the best of intelligence agencies --- with the most talented analysts and agents --- when it comes to dealing with secretive dictatorial regimes, and for seven decades now.
Note the stress on secretive dictatorial regimes, especially those whose leaders regard themselves as Men-of-Destiny and are inspired by bursting megalomania and extremist ideologies. The record of major blunders --- no other word will do --- started with British and French intelligence failures before WWII to grasp the nature of the Nazi regime's intents, its Grand Strategy for victory, its operational military tactics, and its weaponry.