Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
Biden and Iran
A Bulwark piece about the attacks on Iran’s nuclear facilities speculates that it was the work of Israel, the US, or the awesome Avengers Assemble! combo of both countries’ forces. The Bulwark writer says:
As the New York Times reported last week, they apparently are the result of joint U.S.-Israeli operations designed to set back Iran’s nuclear and military programs. They come following Iran’s lack of cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which passed a resolution last month calling out Iran on this problem.
I share your astonishment that the resolution did not accomplish anything – I mean, they called them out. Surely a few Mullahs retired to their private chamber to have a good hot sob over the humiliation. Gosh darn it, we’re doing our best not to make nuclear weapons, but it’s hard! Can you give a guy a break?
Iran seems to be banking on a Joe Biden victory in November. After all, not only was Biden part of the administration that negotiated the deal, but he pushed wary Senate Democrats to approve of it and even bragged about the deal in his primary campaign ads. His longtime aid and likely national security advisor, Jake Sullivan, was a key negotiator in the talks leading up to the JCPOA.
So with the prospect in sight of the United States returning to the JCPOA and lifting the sanctions, the Trump administration and the Netanyahu government in Israel are apparently trying to set back Iran’s capabilities while they have the chance.
True. Also, vote Biden! Because Trump. Here comes the reasoned analysis:
But all parties might be mistaken. Whoever wins in November will have unprecedented leverage over Iran. The regime’s popularity is at an all-time low—one recent defector has suggested that it is in single digits, according to internal estimates.
Iran’s economy is in free fall—both because of the U.S. sanctions and the incompetence and corruption of the regime’s leaders. The regime’s handling of the pandemic has been catastrophic, with over 200 daily deaths. And the people are only blaming the regime for their problems, not any foreign power.
It is difficult to see the Biden administration not take advantage of the situation for a more favorable agreement, especially as the U.N.-imposed arms embargo will soon expire under the terms of the resolution that adopted the JCPOA.
Ah.
A Biden administration will embolden all those Iran hawks on the left who are champing at the bit, eager to craft a new deal on the harshest possible terms. That’s why they’re Democrats! Unsparing advocates of American interests! This time they won’t be kneecapped by Obama’s negotiators, no sir – like sharks who can detect a minute particle of blood in the vast ocean, they will bore in hard, and place stern restrictions on Iran’s missile program, prohibiting them from testing ICBMs until 2039.
It’s brilliant strategy: wait until your foe is on the ropes, then stop your barrage, help him back to his corner, daub some Vaseline on the cuts, and ask that the next round be postponed until your adversary is feeling better. The writer admits that diplomacy hasn’t really been the bee’s knees:
Four decades of Western engagement with Iran has failed to modify the regime’s behavior, internally or externally. Even the Obama administration’s nuclear agreement failed to change Iran’s behavior outside of its nuclear program.
Imagine that. Even the Obama administration’s nuclear agreement failed to change Iran’s behavior outside of its nuclear program. Complete shock, that. Also, it failed to change Iran’s behavior inside of its nuclear program, but c’mon, we had a framework. We had a process. We had a dialogue.
You know what has worked? Making a lot of bad stuff in the hands of some bad people blow up. But that’s not how you make partners in a process that makes a framework for dialogue.
Question for the Biden voters here: do you think the institutional anti-semitism of the left – I’m sorry, the anti-Zionist sentiment, totally different thing – will have an impact on Biden’s ability to take a stance on international security and non-proliferation that also aligns with Israel’s interests?
Published in General
Do you have an example of their acting along those lines, rather than just talking?
Kind of a strange analogy, isn’t it? We are (supposedly) on the Afghan government’s side, while we oppose the Iranian.
Again…
Robert Gates, secretary of defense under both George W. Bush and Barack Obama, wrote in his 2014 memoir Duty that Biden has been “wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades.”
This might seem like a tough indictment, but when asked about it, Gates cited some of the huge misjudgments of Biden’s long career. The former defense sec noted that Biden opposed aid to South Vietnam, which led to that country’s collapse.
“He said that when the Shah fell in Iran in 1979 that that was a step forward for progress toward human rights in Iran,” Gates said. “He opposed virtually every element of President Reagan’s defense build-up. He voted against the B-1, the B-2, the MX and so on. He voted against the first Gulf War.”
Gates’ catalog of Biden’s ineptitude is spot-on. Biden supported the “nuclear freeze” movement in the early 80s, which would have given the Soviet Union an edge over the United States at a time when the USSR was trying to bully its way around the world.
Biden opposed the strategic defense initiative, which was essential to the collapse of the Soviet Union. Today, SDI technology defends people from Poland to Israel, not to mention the U.S.
n 2007, Biden rejected the Bush Administration’s troop “surge” in Iraq. He declared it “a failed policy,” notes the Heritage Foundation’s James Phillips. “He later claimed that Iraq’s improved security, made possible by the surge, was a victory for the Obama Administration.”
As recently as 2011, Biden “advised Obama not to send a military team to kill Osama bin Laden, the al-Qaeda leader who organized the September 11 terrorist attacks,” notes journalist Alex Ward. “The mission, with a few hiccups, was successful — and was arguably one of the biggest foreign policy ‘wins,’ at least symbolically, of Obama’s presidency.”
Then there’s the man polls indicate is the front-runner for Democratic presidential nomination, Joe Biden. A former aide to George W. Bush, Peter Wehner, has written in the Wall Street Journal that “In the early 1980s, the U.S. was engaged in a debate over funding the Contras, a group of Nicaraguan freedom fighters attempting to overthrow the Communist regime of Daniel Ortega. Mr. Biden was a leading opponent of President Ronald Reagan’s efforts to fund the Contras.”
Continued…
The voting records bear that out. On October 3, 1984, Biden voted to prohibit the Reagan administration from spending money against Nicaragua from the intelligence budget. The amendment was rejected, 42-57. On June 6, 1985, the U.S. Senate approved an amendment offered by Georgia Democrat Sam Nunn to release $38 million in humanitarian aid to the Contra rebels fighting Ortega’s Sandinistas. The amendment passed, but Biden was one of 42 Senators who opposed it. Both votes wound up on the annual scorecards of Americans for Democratic Action, a liberal interest group.
Biden voted again in March 1987 for halting aid to the Contras. In 1986 Biden wanted to require the Reagan administration to negotiate with Ortega’s government before sending any money to the Contras.
The biggest example is that they spend money on killing people around the World and financially supporting terrorist organizations like Hizballah, Hamas, PFLP and others. They also prop up the Syrian regime with money and weapons. None of this is helping them financially, but is furthering their religious agenda.
Is their support of Hezbollah a money making operation? I suppose you could say that if they take over the entire Middle East that would have certain financial incentives, but I don’t think that’s the main reason they want to do so. Do you?
What about their involvement in Iraq?
The Houthis?
They could be considerably richer if they weren’t supporting terrorism among the other things we don’t like that they do because then we’d be much more amenable to working with them and the Europeans would have even more reasons to want to work with them (they desperately keep trying to find ways around the problems as it is).
What kind of proof would you need them to give to show they really believe in their religious goals above and beyond financial goals?
That’s quite an indictment of Biden’s track record! I didn’t realize it was that bad.
Remember his brilliant idea after 9/11?
From that notorious right-wing journal, the New Republic.
Probably his early dementia.
Short version:
I find your lack of faith disturbing.
Iran is a nation, with one regime that the people rely upon and look to for support. These are people who once knew better, more stable, more bountiful times. The regime can be weakened and destabilized by making it look ineffective and not worth the trouble of supporting.
In contrast, Afghanistan is not a nation, but a land of tribes and nomads. It’s central government is a propped up regime without the political authority or military capability to actually control and administrate the country. No one takes the central government very seriously, outside the capital in which it operates and a small region around it. The people do not look to any one authority for support, instead they are loyal to the local warlord. The place is and has been a backwater for at least the last century. There can be no destabilization there because there is no stability to be found.
I don’t want Obama 2.0! We barely survived the eight years he was in office.
Are you saying there is no there there when it comes to blowing things up didactically? Or too many theres to do so?
These seem like temporal goals – especially the PFLP or Hamas. Unfortunately being able to make trouble is one way to get your neighbours’ ‘respect’. India and Pakistan do it to each other a lot.
Or they could be religious goals in terms of the Sunni / Shia split and who controls the Muslim faith. For that matter, you could call the crusades temporal – and they have a lot of elements of that, but they were also religious.
Sometimes, people mean what they say. I think they do, with other motives mixed in as well.
None of Iran’s actions has an impact on who ‘controls Islam’ – in that they don’t convert anybody from Sunni to Shia.
The crusades are a good comparison, in some ways.
But we decide which of their many utterances to believe, confirmation bias comes into it. Iran repeatedly denies wanting a nuclear bomb. Believe it?
imho there are clear ‘this world’ explanations for their actions.
Examples:
Support Hezbollah. Because the threat of war against Israel is a pain point for the US – so it works to constrain US actions against Iran. Don’t want to push it too hard, just in case.
Support the Houthis. Because the threat of closing off the Straits of Hormuz is a pain point for the world’s economy. Nobody wants to find out what it would take for that to happen.
You seem to want to defend Iran at every turn. Keep in mind that not only the U.S., but nearly every other country in the World has considered them the most egregious sponsor of terrorism of any country on Earth for the past 40 years. There is no ethical way to dismiss the fact that the Iranian government sends assasins out to blow up civilians in countries all over the World, even in South America. How can you possibly defend that?
I’m not defending (or attacking) Iran. I’m just saying that their motives are usually understandable without recourse to religious hooey.
No, especially since as I understand it (which is poorly, since I’m not even a good Christian let alone knowledgeable about the Islamic faith) there really isn’t that kind of control structure. But controlling PEOPLE and LOCATIONS, which allows you to SAY you control the faith – well the Ottoman Empire could have claimed that. And in their minds that might be good enough – for some religious people it’s enough to be able to tell others what to do whether it actually changes minds or not.
Of course not. But that doesn’t mean everything they say isn’t true. I assume when they say they want to kill us, they mean it. You may very well be right, but there actually are religious fanatics in the world, and there is at least some evidence of that in the Iranian leadership. Again, that doesn’t man that your other points about their reasoning are false. But it also doesn’t mean that those goals are their ultimate end goals, just as what we might do tactically doesn’t necessarily represent our true end goal.
I’d also like to point out that, and apologies if I’m reading into it, but it seems like you think I’m saying their Islamic faith leads ultimately to them basing their decisions in religion. I don’t think that, any more than I think the Christian faith would cause people to use force for what they consider religious purposes. But there are Christians who would do that, and there are Muslims who would. Heck, there are Buddhists who would, which has always struck me as very strange (again, limited knowledge mea culpa).
They still have to interact with the world as it is – so yes, support Hezbollah, the Houthis, terrorism in general so you have a way of asymmetrically fighting your opponents – but that doesn’t necessarily mean the driving force can’t be religious, whatever perversion of the underlying tenets might be happening.
And yet, THEY may believe the religious hooey. And if they do, it probably has some affect on what they do.
I think they do.
Beautifully put.
You are wrong.
Look at who else they interact with and how.
Iran has an excellent working relationship with India (when sanctions don’t derail it) – and we are a majority Hindu nation with a Hindu Nationalist government. We’re not even (mostly) people of the book.
How do they interact with China?
With Russia?
Don’t care.
Well, kudos that they don’t find India to be the Great Satan so act nice to India. Not sure what that proves about how they feel about 1) controlling people of Muslim faith in the Middle East as well as possibly controlling the most important religious sites, and 2) Christians and Jews in general and the US and Israel in particular. We have a recent history there that probably exacerbated current feelings, but there is a large religious component to it as well.
As for interacting with China and Russia (don’t forget Venezuela, Cuba, and other points of interest in Latin America like Argentina). Are those immediate religious objectives? Nope. Are they a way to again asymmetrically fight their more powerful enemies? Yep. But given that, as far as I can tell there’s the thought that the only true faith is Islam and that it will take over the world. You may not have to become Muslim, but you will give your submission and pay your tax. And you will really want to become Muslim by that point. Mass conversions happen for a reason. And usually not because everyone was touched by the spirit in my opinion.
So, enemy of my enemy is my friend for their relationship with China and Russia (and vice versa).
As for how they treat India – with the investments China looks to be making in Iran, they may require that to change as part of the bargain depending on how feisty China is feeling about the whole Belt and Road progress and whether India stands in the way. Though China always has Pakistan to prod into causing trouble, so maybe it won’t be an issue. Not like India and Pakistan don’t already mix it up now and again so may not take much anyway.
Again, none of that means they don’t view the world through a religious prism, or can’t be nice to people who aren’t in their way.
What that proves is that Iran’s foreign policy is not ruled by religion but by self interest.
Its couched in religious rhetoric, but at the end of the day it’s rhetoric justifying self interest.
Which is not dissimilar to how other countries use rhetoric that refers to their official ideology when they justify actions that stem from their self interest.
Since 1953 at least, but probably has something to do with the sanctions as well.
What decisions have they made wrt foreign policy that don’t have a completely understandable geopolitical reasons?
It’s hard to prove a negative. How about you prove a positive? Is there a foreign policy decision that they’ve taken which cannot be explained in any way but by religious belief?
That’s the nub of it. But in their way to achieve what?
In whose way, dare I ask, is Iran?
I think we may have to agree to disagree on the motives of the Iranian leadership. Can I point to any foreign policy decision that can’t be explained by something other than religious belief? Nope.
Is there any foreign policy action that the US has taken that cannot be explained in any way but by the belief of some that we are the greatest nation on earth (me) and everyone would be better off under democracy (I’m not sure on that one)? I don’t think so. But there are times when it’s helped push decisions along and maybe been the deciding factor.
It seems like you are saying that religious beliefs have no affect on their foreign policy decision making process. I’m not saying that it’s the only factor. But I highly doubt it has no input, and I imagine people more knowledgeable than I would more effectively make that point.
They aren’t stupid people, and so when they make decisions they should be seen as being able to be explained by acting in what they perceive as their best interest, because usually that’s the best way of moving towards the goals you have in mind. Same as for anyone else. Though sometimes what you thought was a good idea turns to ashes after the decisions are made (hello Vietnam, Iraq (part 2) and Afghanistan!).
As to who is in their way? The US, I hope (hey if India wants to join in I won’t argue!). Does that mean I think we should invade Iran? Nope. But that’s not the only option – hence sanctions and the rest.
So this was fun and stretched rusty parts of my brain, so I appreciate it. But I think we’re both rehashing things a bit, so I’ll bow out and let any others that want to take up the banner. Thank you for the discussion!
Our national interest in Afghanistan was that portions of it were being used by Al Qaeda as a remote safe haven where they could train and coordinate their operations from. So we were able to target Al Qaeda and neutralize it pretty effectively. What we couldn’t, and can’t do, is pacify the entirety of Afghanistan as a nation and build a stable country in its place, because, like you say, there is no country there to be rebuilt. You wind up playing an endless game of whack-a-mole as you get tied up amongst the various competing tribal factions trying to take advantage of your presence. And we don’t have the appetite to commit total destruction of significant portions of the population, which is why the Taliban has been resilient in opposing us there.
No, he’s not.