The dumbest idea about containing Iran’s nuclear ambitions
from a smart fellow: Patrick Clawson, the deputy director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. You can read about Clawson here and here, and sample his writings here, here, here, here, and here. Here’s what he says in the LA Times today:
What America can do — both on its own and with allies — is to contain and deter Iran. Steps to this end could include increasing U.S. military presence around Iran; putting nuclear weapons on U.S. ships off Iran’s coast; reinforcing the region’s protection against missiles (including accelerating the planned improvement to the Arrow antimissile system in Israel); extending an explicit nuclear umbrella to those threatened by Iran; transferring more advanced weapons to states around Iran (from NATO ally Turkey to the new Iraqi forces to the more stable Arab Gulf states); and so on.
None of these measures is as dramatic as an air raid, but as a package they could show Tehran that Iranians will be less secure if it pursues nuclear weapons. Containment and deterrence can be used to press Iran to accept a diplomatic solution, and they also enhance the ability of the U.S. to apply military force later if need be.
I don’t get it. This appears to be a smart fellow. Yet his view is so achingly and fundamentally at odds with human nature and the will to power of dictators that I just can’t grasp Clawson’s naivete. Even that the mini-me of international bad boys the Dear Leader understood that going nuclear gets the world dancing to your tune. The only way to stop them is to stop them. Bush has said he will do so, and he had better not start listening to this fellow. One more thing; Clawson aloso says this:
President Bush and Sen. John F. Kerry each has said an Iranian nuclear bomb would be unacceptable to the United States; Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s rhetoric is even tougher.
Well, that’s not entirely true, is it? If Kerry had said such a thing, which is a question he would not answer in the debates, the word “unacceptable” only has meaning if you are going to prevent it, and Kerry pointedly refused to say that he would. Mr. Clawson, by falsely praising a non-stance by Kerry, may really be signalling his desire to be a policy-level player in a Kerry administration. Suck-up alert.