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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
Headedwest (View Comment)
Thank you for your thoughtful analysis.
I agree that the leaders of Iran are not driven by religious zealotry, but use zealotry amongst their followers to maintain control over their population. They will look after their own skins when you get to brass tacks.
As far as their geopolitical interests as I understand it: Their primary rivalry is with their western neighbor and it goes all the way back to the days of Persia and Babylon. For them, the threat has pretty much always come from the west, be it the Babylonians, the Greeks, the Romans, the Byzantines, the Ottomans, or the Iraqis. Their war in the 80s with Iraq was a cataclysm for the nation overall. So it is in their interest currently to dominate or at least destabilize the Iraq region to prevent a strong rival from re-establishing itself there.
Beyond Iraq, Iran has an interest in establishing influence on the Eastern Mediterranean. Their ultimate goal would be to have a naval base or two on the Levantine coast. This would give them access and influence into western Europe, and become a true world power player. So this is the root of their rivalry with Israel, and their funding of Hezbollah and Hamas and other local actors in Syria and Lebanon. They don’t have the strength or resources currently to field a conventional force and use it to cross Iraq and Syria and establish itself as a presence there. It’s their hope currently to establish a stronger hand alliance with the Syrian regime, and have it act as a friendly host for Iranian naval bases there.
I hope it was The Champions.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SgVueR3ybYk
Wow, James has really been on fire this week! Nice to see!
Absolutely. (Familiar, yes? There’s probably a farsi equivalent for RINO.)
Iran weirdly combines this consciousness of itself as a civlisational state that has been around for a long time (before Islam, before the Shah Namah) with the more recent experience of being dominated and exploited. And for a long time (since the Qajars?) the antagonist for Iran has been the West, and since 1953 specifically the United States.
This basic dynamic is what I think drives the Islamic Republic’s foreign policy, and looked at through that prism opposing Sunni Saudi but supporting Sunni Hamas makes perfect, consistent sense. Ditto its opposition to Israel (or rather support of Palestine).
(I also think Iran occupies a similar position in the US’ foreign policy cosmology. Since 1979 it’s been the Middle Eastern equivalent of Cuba.)
So I’d say yes, I agree with some of the concrete objectives you suggest Iran might have, but this dynamic is the why would they want to. Which is both smaller and more pressing than being a world player. jmho.
Even in this country’s most fundamentalist enclaves, no one’s being publicly hanged for apostasy, or imprisoned and tortured for speaking out against religious or political leaders.
I’m not sure it’s that weird. Iran has both a long history, and a more recent one. In America, we like to identify ourselves with “western civilization,” and see ourselves as at the current endpoint of a civilization that goes back to the ancient Greeks. This is a pretty broad stretch of the imagination when you look at the actual history, but it gives us a feeling of weight and substance beyond our 250 years.
Cuba’s a much more immediate and direct concern to the US than Iran. Our rivalry with Iran is based on two things: Oil and Cold War politics. On the former, we had oil resources in Iran per agreements with the old regime. Iran made moves to nationalize the oil industry. Nationalizing as your own assets that per previous agreements were the property of US companies was and still is seen as a hostile act. As far as the latter, we were implementing a strategy of encirclement around the Soviet Union to try and neutralize their ability to project power further into Europe and Asia. Both Israel and the old Iranian regime were a part of that strategy. When Iran started playing footsie with the Soviets AND harassing Israel, they put themselves on the opposite side of the war from us. And so from these two components started a series of escalations between our two countries.
As for Cuba, it’s geographic location straddling the conduit between the Gulf of Mexico and the greater Atlantic makes it a constant concern for us, as over 50% of our exports still travel out through the mouth of the Mississippi into the gulf, and a blockade would be an existential threat to our economy. The fact is we’ve been wanting control of Cuba since early on in American history. John Quincy Adams was quoted as saying our plan was to annex it “within the next 50 years.”
I’d say don’t underestimate the Iranian regime’s ambitions.
I don’t think this is at all accurate. Here’s some stuff I gleaned from the Wikipedia page on Capital Punishment in Iran:
They have four broad categories of crime that receive death sentences from either Hanging, Firing Squad, Stoning, or Throwing off a Tall Building.
#4 is sort of a subsection of #3, dealing only with sex crimes. These capital offenses include Adultery, Rape, Sodomy, Incest, Running Prostitution Rings, and Homosexuality. Adultery is punishable by flogging of 100 lashes for unmarried people and by death on the fourth offense. The sentence was carried out by Stoning up until 2002 when Iran officially put a moratorium on the practice, however, Iran Human Rights report that eight men have been stoned to death since then.
Throwing the condemned person off a tall building is reserved for Homosexuals. Remember that Iranian President Ahmedinijad famously told an American audience in 2007 “In Iran we don’t have homosexuals like in your country.” He possibly could be right.
Apostasy (turning away from Islam) is punishable by hanging. Roughly two hundred members of the Baha’i Religion have been hanged for apostasy in Iran. Blasphemy is also punishable by death. Consuming one glass of alcohol is punishable by 80 lashes and repeated offenses may be punishable by death. This is rare, but one person has been executed so far this year for alcohol consumption.
Iran is the 2nd leading executors of prisoners in the World, behind China. Their preferred method is hanging, using a construction crane where the victim is jerked off of a stool, but his neck is not broken. The condemned dies by strangulation over a period of between 10 and 20 minutes.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_punishment_in_Iran
https://www.jpost.com/middle-east/man-executed-for-drinking-alcohol-is-one-of-123-executions-in-iran-in-2020-634611
I was talking about the U.S. The commenter was drawing a comparison between the Iranian religious regime and The US’s. I was countering that.
Sorry! I guess I misunderstood. I thought you were taking about Iran. It was a fortunate mistake though, because I learned a lot about Iran’s penal system I did not know before.
I was just making a point about political hypocrisy, which I think is universal.
They are both relatively small countries that have said ‘no’ to the US – and therefore potentially a bad example for others to follow.
More than that, they said, “yes” to our cold war arch rival.
It’s important to note a few things, such as how broad “Violation of the koran” might be (just an accusation of “desecrating the koran” can result in death, and that may be as simple as picking it up with the wrong hand), and that “sex crimes” ends up including things like ACCUSING someone of rape. If a woman ACCUSES someone of rape, that means she admits “committing adultery” and can be killed for that. Meanwhile, the man she ACCUSED may get off just by having a certain number of other people – usually if not necessarily all men – vouch for his “character.”
In Iran as with many other places, the actual law is not in the words, but in the “execution.” Often quite literally.
Fair enough, but in this world there are degrees of sin.
I think it would be a good idea to revisit the 1953 issue. It is often mentioned in parts of the media and academia that the US CIA overthrew the Iranian government in 1953.
What Really Happened in Iran: The CIA, the Ouster of Mosaddeq and the Restoration of the Shah.
by Ray Takeyh [Foreign Affairs Magazine July/August 2014]
You can read the entire article here.
Here is a bit more of the article by Ray Takeyh
What Really Happened in Iran The CIA, the Ouster of Mosaddeq, and the Restoration of the Shah
As for my own views about the sabotage in Iran, probably inflicted by Israel’s intelligence operatives, I think it makes sense that Israel would not want Iran to obtain nuclear weapons.
Israel probably is not comforted by the claim that Iran will only use nuclear technology for peaceful purposes.
In previous decades Israel used its military and intelligence forces to destroy Saddam Hussain’s nuclear program and a nuclear program in Assad’s Syria. Israel is likely trying to go 3 for 3.
I think it is possible that these “explosions” will have the effect of discrediting the Theocratic regime in the eyes of the Iranian public. The regime is already unpopular among the Iranian public. So, these actions by Israel might end up paving the way toward representative democracy in Iran as opposed to the current Theocratic regime.
Islamic clerics are very unpopular in Iran. Whenever an Islamic cleric tries to hail a cab, taxi drivers either pass them by or nearly run them over. If you get a ride in a taxi cab in Iran, the taxi driver is likely to tell you, “Those clerics of killing us!” There is extreme resentment among the people of Iran towards the regime.
So, I think the best solution is to keep the pressure on the Iranian Theocratic regime until it hands power to the people of Iran through competitive, multi-party free and fair elections.
That was a treasure-trove of information, Heavy Water. Thanks!
You’re welcome. Unfortunately, at most American Universities, the British Intelligence and the American CIA are considered to be able to overthrow foreign governments with a snap of their fingers. The idea that the military in a foreign country and/or the business community in a foreign country might want to enact a “change in political leadership” doesn’t factor in. So, America and to some extent the UK are considered at fault any time there exists hostile relations between a foreign government and the US/UK.
The article is behind a pay wall. Could you summarise why the CIA’s impact was insignificant, and why Mosaddeq was bound to fall and the Shah to return to his throne without external assistance? The Shah’s return, especially, seems very unlikely without that external backing.
External backing for coups doesn’t flip united polities, it backs one part of a fractured polity over another – basically putting its finger on scales so that one part has more power than it otherwise might.
That said, I think there are many details which it would benefit the Iranian public to be more aware of:
What’s ironic is that the coup didn’t result in the re-privatisation of Iran’s oil fields. From that point of view there was no long term benefit from it to the West.
Here is more from the Foreign Affairs article.
Here is more.
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