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Marco Rubio on the Iran Deal
A few days ago, Jeffrey Goldberg published the transcript of his interview with Marco Rubio in the Atlantic. I won’t try to summarize it, because I found the whole thing interesting — which is noteworthy in itself. It isn’t easily reduced to a soundbite, because he’s actually making arguments.
I don’t want to prejudice your views unduly, but there’s no reason for me not to say that Rubio seems to me in much better touch with reality than the other candidates have so far. He’s not saying things that make him (and by implication America) sound insane. He’s not scoring cheap points. He’s not talking about himself. He’s answering the questions directly. He’s obviously aware what he would inherit if he were elected.
The interview goes well beyond the Iran deal. Here’s the final paragraph:
[Obama] is the guy who was going to get us out of these conflicts, but now he has been pulled back in, and he’s trying to do it in the most limited way possible. But this is ending up making it worse, not better, because what’s happening now in Iraq is people are looking at these limited air strikes and saying, “This is not American power. We know what American power really looks like, and this isn’t it.”
I read this interview; I didn’t watch it. So I’m fairly sure that I’m responding to something beyond his looks and his charm. What he’s saying makes sense.
Read it and tell me what you think.
Published in Elections, Foreign Policy, General
That looks like a better-conducted poll than this one, although this is more recent. We’re looking at very close numbers on the more recent one, but I don’t know how good their polling is.
The Quinnipiac poll is quite interesting on other questions. Looks like Americans are feeling the Bern.
I hear he is leading now in Iowa, and of course as a Vermonter I would imagine he has a strong base in New Hampshire too. Can Bernie sweep? Can he be our first old Jewish socialist president? We know how much the Dems love firsts.
You know, at this point, it wouldn’t surprise me.
This election will defy all expectations as in November 2016 America is left to wonder how it came to the choice between Trump and Bernie.
I’m marvelling at this thought — it isn’t out the realm of possibility, is it? — and wondering how on earth this happened.
It’s Racing Season Again
Regards,
Jim
Well if it does you will write the book on it to explain it to us all.
Titus Techera relies on the most minute linguistic distinctions to frame his arguments. They are not sound arguments. Distinctions w/o a difference. These are cheap debating techniques designed to trap an adversary. Larry 3435 doesn’t fall for it and neither do I.
How in the world does “evil” or ” crazy” change the way the US should deal with Iran? Either way it doesn’t inspire trust. Does Techera have a synonym for trust? No, he didn’t consider it. I have a couple of words: “religious fanaticism”. Of course I’m not an expert on the Muslim religion, but neither is TT. All he does is set up some phony hypotheses that if we admit this we have to accept that course of action. NO, we don’t. We can accept or not without agreeing with the results he insists on.
Iran is the most stable country in the region according to TT. What about Israel? Is Iran’s stability related to strict religious adherence which is integral to the political regime? If so, we must admit that Iran is both crazy and evil. Right! Hey, just applying TT logic. And even if we accept this hypothetical, we still don’t have to bomb the bastards. Like maybe just not make this deal with them. Try a Quiz Show TT.
B/t/w, I like Rubio. I hope he finds a way to finesse immigration. Hasta luego!
Thank you for this post Claire, my prior low opinion of Rubio has been reevaluated somewhat. I still think he was completely rolled by Schumer in the Gang of Eight negotiations and would worry about that happening again, but I concede he has at least 25 IQ points on Kerry and is not afraid of appearing knowledgeable, which is distressingly rare for a Republican. Since he’s retiring from the Senate I think he would make an excellent Secretary of State in a Kasich/Fiorina administration.
I also thought the Japanese polling was much less ominous than you made out. They still want to be close to the US. Since China has done us a favor by dredging islands in Philippine territory wouldn’t it be beneficial for the next administration to occupy them for our revised alliance? That way we wouldn’t have to buy a bunch of new carriers.
Correction: Sorry, I see it was Manfred and not you citing the poll.
Let me just play along with you here. If we did, what would prevent the Chinese from launching their ballistic missiles against these islands? After all, they built them…
…Against international law and refusing adjudication by international tribunals. And I don’t think the Communist Party is in any position to jeopardize their access to our markets right now.
The Schumer thing is the biggest “uh-oh” for me also with Rubio. I do accept his explanation of his position on immigration, basically that he learned his lesson. I still am a little worried that he was naive enough to think anything good could come from that kind of alliance.
“Crazy” is a misdirect when talking about the will and ability to respond rationally or logically to circumstances and to others. Crazy people can and do respond logically – what makes them crazy is their assumptions about the world and their place in it.
(Say a schizophrenic is convinced the bus driver is going to kill him. It’s perfectly logical for him to kill the bus driver first – it’s self-defense – his ability to reason isn’t faulty, it’s just dominated and driven by a crazy belief about reality [the bus driver].)
So some questions to reality test our assumptions:
Does the Iranian regime really want to destroy Israel? It keeps saying that it does, but what does this mean? (Khamenei’s tweets are a bit confusing. Wants to destroy, but no genocide, in which case…what? Is it one big troll?)
What is the evidence either way?
Does the Iranian regime want to destroy Israel enough to face its own destruction?
What is the evidence either way?
Maybe sometimes “crazy” is short for “seemingly unpredictable”. The reasons for that may not be lunacy but cultural/societal etc… Either way, when they say “Death to America” they seem to mean it since they have been directly or indirectly killing Americans for years.
Wouldn’t that make them seemingly predictable?
The thing is: do their actions seem to be consistently guided by what they perceive to be their own best interest?
What, judging by their actions (en masse, on average, in sum) would this self interest appear to be?
My opinion: like a lot of developing countries they seem to have a number of competing power centres*. Each one of which does act in its own perceived best interests, and none of which seem to act in a way which deliberately makes its own destruction more likely. Some of them are pretty nasty, some of them do see continued hostility (covert and overt) with the US as in their best interest.
[Edit: *according to Hooman Majd Khomeini did this deliberately in 1979 [?] when he set up the Pasdaran in an effort to army-coup-proof the Islamic Republic by creating an alternate pole of military power.]
Believe it or not, I have days on which I’m crazy enough to feel that it’s my responsibility both to understand it all and to explain it all to everyone.
When I catch myself thinking that, I remind myself that it’s time to clean the litter boxes.
How are they a “developing county” Zafar? Economically and socially they seemed to be quite a bit more developed in the past then now.
Did you happen to listen to the Need to Know podcast with Kudlow and John Batchelor as guest? John is apparently half Persian and had some interesting thoughts. One of their points was that their is a group of (probably ex-pat) Persian/Iranian minority nationals that would love the opportunity to bring money and reform to the country. With this deal Obama has handed the regime however, that possibility has died not that 1.5 billion now available to the mullahs. I am skeptical that they could have gained control anyway but if we had supported the Green Revolution there in Obama’s first term….who knows?? For the life of me I cannot figure out why Obama is so determined to legitimize the government there.
The term “build up” is a bit of a misnomer. I think it’s getting a lot of attention because it stands in contrast to the aging and shrinking militaries of the U.S. and most of our allies. Yet, when looked at broadly, they’re only adding some minor capabilities, not greatly increasing the size of their military or its capabilities. That said, it’s a positive trend. We want them to be stronger and have increased interoperability with our military, as well as other friendly militaries.
But that is now. What about out into the future? You step over the constitutional limit, what’s to prevent the Japanese from wanting to be much less reliant on the US going forward? Would you want to be reliant on us?
Manfred, copy your final sentence, it’s been a major point of concern of mine for over 6 years. However, they currently depend on the U.S. to help defend them. Their entire defense structure and doctrine assumes we’re going to continue to help defend them into the future, both conventionally and via our nuclear shield. They’re not ready to make the financial commitment and constitutional changes necessary to develop the types and quantities of weapons systems necessary to go it alone, which is why they support basing our forward-deployed forces in Japan, as well as improved Japan Self Defense Force interoperability with the U.S. military.
Be aware that it goes even deeper than just budgetary and constitutional issues–they don’t have the mindset to step out on their own. It’s been apparent during the debate over their new defense legislation that it’s part of their national character. They still accept the limitations imposed by their constitution on possessing military capability.
While I understand what you’re getting at, and agree that everything changes over time, I think anything this dramatic would take a generation or longer to become apparent. And even if China were to completely reverse course and start being truly nice to Japan (highly unlikely), I believe they will opt to stick with the U.S. and the defense treaty for decades to come.
Frankly the 2009 Green Revolution kids are much more my kind of people than the Inqilabi and Hezbollah crowd who provide the Islamic Republic’s deep support. It’s tempting to assume that because I like and understand them better they are more typical, but I fear that they remain a (large) minority, and that the divisions between the two groups are not just ideological, but based on class, and history (so with “baggage”) and perhaps even economic interest.
North Tehran has regressed, but conditions for the rest of the country (going by things like literacy rates, women’s employment) have improved. North Tehran failed the country before the revolution because de facto personal freedoms and economic opportunity didn’t go below a certain level.
Thence support for the Islamic Revolution.
I dislike the Ayatollahs, but they had a popular revolution. They do not depend on the US for legitimacy.
I agree with you that the regime may have some degree of popular legitimacy–something almost unknown to the Muslim Middle East, I’d say. But the revolution did not start with the Ayatollahs, did it? They took over afterward, didn’t they?
Mid-stream? But yes, I think you’re right – but the point is they couldn’t have taken it over without a some critical support from the population and from influential social groups like the Bazaris.
There’s a lot to what you say. Would you say that the merchant class supported the ayatollahs primarily as a matter of class struggle?
Meh, class struggle…perhaps…though it doesn’t fit neatly.
Imho the Bazaar supported Khomeini (and opposed the Shah and alternatives like [shock horror] Tudeh) for self interest.
As traditional small merchants (Farsi speaking, religious, with traditional systems for supply and retail, with no facility with Western culture and therefore access to Westernised Iranian pre-revolutionary systems of patronage) they were cut out from benefiting from the Shah’s largesse.
They got greater access to power post-revolution. Perhaps for cultural reasons, but access is access and motivating for profit.
Segue: India had three waves of migrants from Iran that maintained their cultural identity. The first two were Zoroastrian (“Parsis” and “Iranis”) – the third group were Muslims who walked to India about a century ago because there was a famine in Yazd. The Yazdis have maintained ties with Iran (home language and nationality) while being seamlessly integrated in places like Mumbai and Pune. (West Coast.)
Under the Shah the people who were making money in Iran by importing the country’s needs (food, consumables, everything) were connected to the Shah, and they fled to the West after the Revolution.
But Iran still needed these things – so who filled their niche in the economy?
Yazdi families from India who had the international market connections they needed, but who retained a cultural closeness to the Iranian bazaar (“untainted” by gharbazadi, if you will) – and therefore access to post-revolutionary corridors of power.
So it’s class, but class is more than economics.
Sure, it’s not merely economics. For one thing, getting to where class is economics means doing something that is not economics. & it does not go away, that origin. Like with gharbazadi. It’s close to testing faith.