Next, Iran?

In a widely discussed article in the April 17 issue of the New Yorker, journalist Seymour Hersh reports that the Bush administration is seriously considering an attack on Iran in order to disable its nuclear capacity. Moreover, since Iran has hidden many of its facilities underground, the attack could involve nuclear weapons.

How credible is such a report? Hersh’s own credentials are impeccable. Among his journalistic revelations are the My Lai massacre during the Vietnam war and, more recently, the abuses at Abu Ghraib. This credibility gives him greater access to inside sources than other reporters. On the other hand, one cannot dismiss the possibility that the administration itself has leaked the story in order to put pressure on Iran to stop development of nuclear weapons. A third possibility, though less likely, is that disgruntled administration officials are seeking to tar the administration. One certainly hopes that the administration is not using the reasoning ascribed to them by a former Bush defense official: that bombing Iran will humiliate the populace into rising up against their leaders. (The official offered his own comment on this reasoning: “What are they smoking?”)

How seriously should we take the idea that Iran seeks to use its nuclear capability to develop nuclear weapons? My own view is that it is a foregone conclusion that they will develop them. First, they have the motivation. The US attacked oil-rich Iraq when all available evidence was that Iraq not only did not have nuclear weapons, but it did not have any weapons of mass destruction whatsoever. It did not attack North Korea, who has nuclear weapons. Moreover, having nuclear weapons would be a deterrent against Israeli aggression. Israel has attacked Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt, Syria, and Iraq. It would be no wonder if Iran were interested in preventing an Israeli attack.

Second, they have the opportunity. With the US bogged down in Iraq and the American people tired of a conflict - and its aftermath - based upon and continued by deception, it would be almost impossible to gain public support for another military adventure. The only other country that would perhaps be willing to attack Iran is Israel. Israel destroyed Iraq’s Osirak nuclear reactor in 1981. The consequence of has been less that of deterring the development of nuclear weapons than to increase motivation, but also to counsel that the development of those weapons must happen at dispersed and secret sites.

If Iran develops nuclear weapons, will it use them? It is difficult to tell. Recall that there has only been one country in the nuclear age with the barbarity to use nuclear weapons, and that country did not hesitate to use them more than once and against civilian targets.

How should we react? US policy toward the Middle East, and Iran in particular, has been both dim-witted and crude. In 1953, the US joined Britain in overthrowing the democratically elected leader of Iran, Mohammed Mossedegh, and replaced him with the Shah, who ruled with extraordinary political cruelty for the next twenty-five years. Iranian anger against the US is not without cause. And yet we continue to treat the symptom as the disease. Perhaps a more sane approach would be to engage Iran, and indeed much of the rest of the Muslim world, instead of seeing it as either an enemy to be crushed or an inconvenient depository for oil.

Such an approach would require an entire re-thinking of our Middle East policy, from Iran to Iraq to Palestine. Is this likely? No. However, the world has changed, and it continues to change. US ability to bully every country whose policies it doesn’t like is coming to an end. We had better be prepared to face that fact, and to deal with its consequences.