Wow, did I ever feel sick to my stomach when I saw this headline when perusing The Washington Post this morning: "War with Iran is probably our best option"
What? Did the Post go off its meds? Oh wait it was a guest editorial from Joshua Muravchik, a fellow at the Foreign Policy Institute of Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies, an American Enterprise Institute veteran, and a shill for Benjamin Netanyahu:
Yes, there are risks to military action. But Iran’s nuclear program and vaunting ambitions have made the world a more dangerous place. Its achievement of a bomb would magnify that danger manyfold. Alas, sanctions and deals will not prevent this.
Muravchik writes:
The logical flaw in the indictment of a looming “very bad” nuclear deal with Iran that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu delivered before Congress this month was his claim that we could secure a “good deal” by calling Iran’s bluff and imposing tougher sanctions. The Iranian regime that Netanyahu described so vividly — violent, rapacious, devious and redolent with hatred for Israel and the United States — is bound to continue its quest for nuclear weapons by refusing any “good deal” or by cheating.
Only we've been hearing this from
Netanyahu for 20 years:
The most dangerous of these regimes is Iran, that has wed a cruel despotism to a fanatic militancy. If this regime were to acquire nuclear weapons, this could presage catastrophic consequences, not only for my country, and not only for the Middle East, but for all mankind.
Muravchik continues:
What if force is the only way to block Iran from gaining nuclear weapons? That, in fact, is probably the reality. Ideology is the raison d’etre of Iran’s regime, legitimating its rule and inspiring its leaders and their supporters. In this sense, it is akin to communist, fascist and Nazi regimes that set out to transform the world. Iran aims to carry its Islamic revolution across the Middle East and beyond. A nuclear arsenal, even if it is only brandished, would vastly enhance Iran’s power to achieve that goal.
Only Iran is a democracy, albeit a flawed one, and it hasn't shown a propensity for expanding into neighboring territory since
before the American Revolution.
Muravchik fails to understand people:
Such visionary regimes do not trade power for a mess of foreign goods. Materialism is not their priority: They often sacrifice prosperity to adhere to ideology.
Iran is a very large country filled with people of a variety of opinions. Some favorable to us, some unfavorable. Tightening sanctions or going to war would just ensure that the most unfavorable voices are the loudest and have the most sway. Get Iran to open up, allow Americans, American ideas, American media, America culture, and American capitalism to penetrate and we will do far more to make Iran amenable to American goals than we will be isolating them and keeping them an enemy. Well over half of Iran's population (or America's for that matter) wasn't even alive during the 1979 Revolution and has no memory of the
Hostage Crisis.
Sanctions may have induced Iran to enter negotiations, but they have not persuaded it to abandon its quest for nuclear weapons.
Sanctions are more likely to cause Iran to seek nuclear weapons.
And Muravchik completes the fail:
Otherwise, only military actions — by Israel against Iraq and Syria, and through the specter of U.S. force against Libya — have halted nuclear programs. Sanctions have never stopped a nuclear drive anywhere.
Does this mean that our only option is war? Yes