In view of their human rights record, support for terrorism, and dabbling in nuclear research outside of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty it is rather undeniable that a change in leadership in Tehran would be desirable, if practicable.

            So was invading Cuba in 1961, or arguably any year after that prior to the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991.  The reality is that in the cold calculus of international politics such action is problematic and certainly not practicable at this point.  The Iranians don't want the help.  The bottom line here is that the cultural context with Iran is much different from Iraq.  In Operation Iraqi Freedom, the Iraqis feared us doing too little and stopping before reaching Baghdad, just as we had 12 years earlier.  In Iran we have a lot of imperial baggage thanks to the 1953 coup.  As Pollack demonstrates, Iranians blamed us even when the Shah was deposing prime ministers we didn't like.  I'm fairly certain the average Iranian (the older ones at least) would rather live under the Mullahs than under the 4th Infantry Division (even for a year).  In Iraq I'm legitimately surprised by the reception we've received from the Sunnis; only a fool would think the Iranians would be happy to see American tanks rolling down Main Street. [I phrase this by way of pointing out that the Shi'ite Iraqis are reasonably happy with us, the Kurds love us, and 14 out of Iraq's 18 provinces are fairly free of violence.]

            So we're left with a regime that demands dealing with (for its nuclear research and terrorism against Iraq, Israel and Lebanon) and no viable military options.  We could conceivably deal with the nuclear issues with airstrikes, like the Israelis did at Osirak, Iraq in 1981.  That's the option the TV news pundits seem fixated on.  That would still be no guarantee that we got all the nuclear sites, or that the Mullahs would not or would not continue to share their research with Islamofascist terrorist groups, but it is an option on the table.  There is also the option of covert action, carrying just as many downsides.

            Perhaps we could wait the problem out.  Imagine if Ayatollah Sistani's Shi'ite dominated coalition came to power in Iraq in January, and then governed in a reasonably democratic, capitalist, and pluralistic way.  Would that then constitute a new paradigm, enabling a coalition of new Shi'ite clergy and young democrats to supplant the current Iranian government?  Maybe this is wishful thinking, but it is appealing thinking.  [2006 Note: Obviously this didn't happen.]

[... politics excised ...]

            I'm not yet anywhere near the end of Pollack's book so I'm not really sure where he's going yet and what solution he'll offer.

            December 31, 2004

            I'm still tunneling through Pollack's Iran book.  I'm right in the middle of the Iranian Revolution.  One of the things I'm amazed at is how poor our intelligence was at the time.  We didn't even have any Farsi-speakers in the CIA station in Tehran because the only Iranians they were allowed to talk to under the Nixon administration and afterward were Iranian government officials.  We had noooooo idea how deeply unpopular the Shah was.  And Jimmy Carter exacerbated the situation by visiting Tehran and seeming to congratulate the Shah on bloodily suppressing a student revolt.

            Since Nixon/Kissinger took over the Shah had been allowed to buy whatever U.S. military equipment he wanted, so he'd sit around all day reading Jane's Defence Weekly as a mail-order catalog.  He'd jack up oil prices to buy more military technology, and we'd even encourage it because if we were going to be hemorrhaging money to pay for Iranian oil we might as well let them buy our weapons with it to minimize the trade deficit.  Meanwhile none of this vast new wealth was helping the average Iranian: more proof that democracies are more stable that dictatorships since national revenue can't be used to enrich a select few in a functioning democracy.  The Iranian economy went all to hell — the Shah even collectivized agriculture.  The Iranian economy at that point was basically socialist.

            [I'm going to go out on a leap here and say that, essentially, communism is totalitarianism talking about human rights and fascism is totalitarianism talking about anti-communism.  In terms of centralized control of the economy they are pretty similar.]

            I'm agreeing with the critique of a number of neocons that we got what was coming to us in the Iranian revolution not because Carter didn't support the Shah enough (he pretty much let the Shah do what he wanted), but rather we got it because we missed the opportunity to press for democratic reform and allowed the revolutionary movements to be co-opted by Khomeini and the Islamists.  Most Iranians see the mistake now.

            January 12, 2005

            Well, I finally finished The Persian Puzzle last night.  In the conclusion, Pollack offers a proposed three track policy to contain Iran and deter its pursuit of nuclear weapons by:

• Negotiating a "Grand Bargain" with Iran that would take the form of a comprehensive settlement of all past issues with the U.S. (including releasing Iranian assets frozen by the U.S. during and after the Revolution) in exchange for a cessation of all nuclear activity, opposition to the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, and support for terrorism.  This might even include providing Iran with a light water nuclear reactor (which would be much harder to produce weapons from than a plutonium or highly enriched uranium reactor) to provide power.  I wouldn't necessarily oppose such a step as long as there was a guaranteed enforcement mechanism — unlike the framework Clinton and Carter negotiated with North Korea.
• Simultaneously (while holding out hope the Iranians would embrace track 1, which is unlikely) working with Europe, Russia, China, and Japan to implement a multilateral containment mechanism wherein we lay out a series of carrots and sticks tied to specific Iranian actions.  This could take the form of enhancements to the Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) either made by the UN Security Council, or more likely, on a treaty basis by the avowed nuclear powers.
• Failing the success of track 2 (again, given the European nations' fixation with money over security), renewing and strengthening our containment policy of the early 1990s and embracing secondary sanctions against our so-called allies if they insist on helping Iran achieve nuclear capability.

            I am somewhat surprised Pollack doesn't list as a fourth track continued planning for a counterproliferation air campaign combined with covert action to make sure all WMD sites were destroyed (he does discuss it separately).  We could even conduct those preparations in such a way to serve as a deterrent to the Tehran regime: overflights and strafing maneuvers by American aircraft to rattle the Iranians (similar to some things we did to the USSR in the early days of the Reagan administration), overtly casing targets for possible attacks, etc.

            To be successful in removing all nuclear sites, such a campaign would require a much better intelligence capability in Iran than we currently possess.  As Pollack notes, achieving that capability requires getting enough case officers fluent in Farsi to be willing to infiltrate Iran without diplomatic cover.  I presume there are ways we could conduct the intelligence infiltration to tip our hand just enough to serve as a warning without endangering our assets.  I interpret the fact that the Iranians erected their intelligence operation in Iraq in 2003 so flagrantly as a similar provocation.

            Pollack notes that the U.S. has only successfully deterred Iranian misbehavior when we have caused them to legitimately fear our use of force (i.e. the undeclared naval war of 1987-1988, our liberation of Kuwait, etc.).  To the contrary, we we have demonstrated an unwillingness to use force we have been met with more provocations and more terrorism.  Therefore a four track "flexible-response" policy might be ideal.  All in all, a good book.

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