Appealing to the "Hidden Iman" myth and its use in combat seems to be Orientalism at its worst.

It was used to motivate children. Iranian adults won't be so easily controlled. And there's no reason to assume they're so irrational that they would bring about their own destruction in what would amount to a suicide attack against Israel.

Iranian adults are real people who fear consequences just like the rest of us.

thosethingswesay.blogspot.com

Well, I guess we should bomb the shit out of them, then...

I'm not sure what you were reading, but no one really said that Iran was "not a threat," did they?

What I read was, Iran's not that big of a threat right now, and in fact, there are bigger threats from nations that ACTUALLY HAVE nukes, not ones that may or may not have nukes one day in the future. Nations who, incidentally, are likely harboring bin Laden. And, to the extent that Iran does pose something of a threat, the Bush Administration has made everything worse.

Why do people in the "bomb the shit out of Iran" camp always have to make it seem like those who disagree don't believe threats actually exist? While Seth Gitell may not come out and state it explicity, like Daniel G does here in the comments, if you read between the lines, it's there.

I don't get it -- don't you people do nuance?

"Thank God George Bush is our president." -Rudy Giuliani

Finally, as bothered as I was and am by the Pakistani, Indian and North Korean development of nuclear weapons, I do contend that this Iranian government is different

Today.

But which is the greater danger for the next 5 to 8 years : that Pakistan’s government and weapons fall under control of a Taliban like party , or that Iran could succeed not just in a development program to create one bomb , test it , and then build a sufficient number so the threat is real ? Clearly , to employ its single nuclear weapon would be national suicide ..

I vote for the Pakistan scenario .

Which is not to say that we should ignore the problem. But that we treat it as a long term possibility not as a clear and present danger.

Seth basically decided to ignore the main objection, which we'll number for his convenience as (4): blather about threats, real or imagined, is not an excuse for aggressive action. In fact, such action is what got us loonies like the Iranian president.

The whole wingnut movement for years has been about fear and rage, stirring up as much blind fear and rage as possible, in order to excuse the inexcusable, I say that just as we responded to 9/11 by attacking Iraq, we should respond to the possibility of Iranian nukes, one day, by taking out the Republican party in 2008.

John

http://www.haberarts.com/

The second major objection raised is that an Iran that developed nuclear weapons would not be a threat to the U.S. I stand by my contention that the minute Iran can weaponize nuclear technology it changes the stakes in the entire region.

You still are having a little trouble with your geography.  The United States is not located anywhere "in the entire region".

It's long past time the US focused its priorities on the region where the United States is.

I don't think we should over react to the Iranian problem right now. It will be another six or seven years before they could even start to produce weapons.
We should try diplomacy--for a change. In the long run, I would say that Pakistan's nuclear weapons are the larger problem by far.

And the Basiji who once upon a time wandered the desert armed only with a walking stick is today working as a chemist in a uranium enrichment facility.”

DA TA TA DAHHHHHHH!!!!! (Cue ominous music)

And not only that, but he's living under Seth's bed!!!

And the award for overwrought paranoid hysteria goes to Mr. Kuntzel, by way of Seth for his stirringly ahistorical review of an incident in the Iran/Iraq War.

This is right up there with that scene from 1950's "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" where the protagonist, completely stymied by the plot, starts ranting and raving that 'they're all coming to get you.'

And its not racist at all. Not even a little bit, LOL.

Actually, the point of telling the Basiji story is simply racist propaganda. Reduced to its simplest terms, Seth's message is:

"Them n*gg*rs is KRAZY! KAAA-RAZY I tells you! No telling what dey gonna do! Dey be KRAZY in de haid!"

At the risk of repeating comments I've made previously, the whole point of the Basiji story is to divorce the incident entirely from its context and present it as proof that the enemy is both irrational and inhuman.

The actual context of the Basiji story is that in 1980 Iran was invaded by Iraq. Iraq launched a blitzkrieg invasion both by massive air raids and by land forces, the intention of which was to overrun and capture Iranian territory and population, to end Iran as a significant force, and to impose by external violence a regime change.

Iran had only recently evicted an externally imposed tyrant who had quite a history of brutality and oppression. The country was in the grip of nationalist and religious fervour.

Unfortunately, Iran was militarily weak, lacking spare parts, weapons and trained personnel. Through heroic fighting and human wave assaults, they were able to stop the Iraqi invasion and throw it back.

Iraq was then put on the defensive and remained so for the balance of the war. The Iranians, having been attacked, were now equally dedicated to removing Saddam Hussein from power and ending his oppression of his own people, most of whom were Shiites.

The Iranians had little more than human wave attacks, against an enemy who was using poison gas on civilian populations.

The incidents of children walking into minefields take place in the context of this desperate struggle for survival by two nations, and by a new revolutionary nationalist regime full of religious fervour.

In the context of the war, and in context of similar wars, such as WWI or WWII, its vile, but not remarkable. In WWI millions of men were loaded down with 80 lb packs, forced to climb up muddy trenches and 'run' through barbed wire into machine gun fire. In the Tsar's army, at times 1 soldier in 5 had a rifle.

None of this matters to Seth or to Kuntzel, who would divorce it from all historical context to show it as an example of how crazy them Iranians are.

Personally, I see this whole 'dat n*gg*r is KAH-RAAZY!!!' as a dangerous and misleading attitude on several levels.

First, it lends itself all too easily to racism and propaganda, by characterizing the Iranians as a fundamentally different and alien creatures. The Iranians becomes a being unlike ourselves, whose motivations and actions are both alien, inscrutable and relentlessly dangerous. The image of rational actors making decisions is replaced with the image of subhuman slavering hordes, climbing over border fences, bodies wrapped in dynamite, wild eyed and searching for the nearest Dairy Queen full of children. While its a very exciting image, its not helpful.

Second, such a view tends to shut down more rational approaches to the problem. How do you negotiate with ravening subhuman hordes? How can you come to an agreement with an alien, incrutable, jihadist death crazed fanatic? And if you can't negotiate, can't agree, can't even have a discussion, if sanctions and deterrents don't and won't work... what then? Genocide? Of course, simply dismissing all the alternatives is not proof that they won't work.

Third, it creates a false sense of singularity and a-historicity. The notion is that these 'KRAZY n*gg*rs' or 'death crazed Basiji' are something unprecedented and unique. The communists weren't this bad! The Nazi's weren't this bad! The Kaiser wasn't this bad! The Confederacy wasn't this bad! And so on down the line. The idea is that because our 'death crazed jihadists' pose an altogether new and novel threat, never seen before, they are much more dangerous than previous adversaries and this then allows the discussion to enter unprecedented and bizarre directions. Brutal options become thinkable. Torture? 'We have to torture them n*gg*rs, they is KAH-RAZYY!!' Bombing civlian populations cities in countries under American occupation? 'We have to do it, these death crazed Jihadists won't be stopped otherwise.' Rape rooms, Mass Murder, Secret Prisons, Preventative War, War of Choice, War of Conquest, Nuclear Options, Genocide... all becomes thinkable or desirable, where it was clearly unacceptable in the cold war... because 'Everything is different now, we facing KAH-RAZY n*gg*rs/suicide worshipping Basiji, who are not rational like the old Communists and who are liable to do anything!'

Finally, this sort of bumper sticker mentality becomes an excuse to avoid thinking about the larger picture. Slap a KRAZY label on, we don't have to think about who these people are, where they come from, what motivates them, and how their agenda, tactics and strategy are shaped. This is, in my view, disastrous. Such superficial thinking makes for good television or parlour room pontification, but in the real world, when you have an enemy you beat that enemy by understanding their strengths and weaknesses, by assessing their resources, and anticipating their agenda, tactics and strategy.

Whether Seth realizes it or not, his approach here is superficial, vile, unproductive and ultimately in the final analysis hysterical and racist.

I keep hearing about this big Iranian move for regional hegemony. But so far I'm having trouble making it out. Where has Iranian territory expanded? Where are the new Iranian military bases in foreign countries? Where are the governments that have fallen and been replaced by Iranian client regimes? Where is the control of shipping lanes? Where is the financial and commercial empire sewn together by a "Tehran consensus" or something similar.

This whole "hegemony" notion seems based on the fact that the regimes of two states on Iran's borders have collapsed in the past few years, as a result of military invasion, and Iran is reported from time to time to be lending assistance to their favorites in the power struggles that have followed. Isn't this something that just about every state in the world would do? What country would sit back and let two states descend into chaos on its borders without working in some way to defend its interests, and without trying to make sure that the successor states that emerge are not hostile? Having suffered quite a bit at the hands of Iraq when the latter was run by its Sunni Arab minority, doesn't Iran have a legitimate interest in seeing to it that somewhat friendlier folks, who also happen to be a majority in Iraq, are able to secure their ascendancy in government and are not defeated by the Sunni insurgency?

Otherwise, not much has changed in the region. Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states are still secure and independent. Egypt and North Africa, Jordan ... no Iranian hegemony there. Iran still has some sort of relationship with Hizbollah, as it has for a couple of decades now. By most accounts they have somewhat less influence with Hizbollah than they used to, since the latter has evolved into more of a Lebanese nationalist movement. So what exactly are the hegemony fools talking about?

The US is fighting halfway around the world to transform the country of Iraq into a place more hospitable to its own interests, and yet when Iran engages right next door in what by any account is a tiny fraction of the same level of intervention, it is seen as aiming for hegemony. Give me a break.

And what do you mean by a "war by proxy"? Surely you don't believe that the Iranian government is actually backing the Sunni insurgency in Iraq. That notion is transparent propagandistic nonsense, and the few US officials who still suggest this from time to time can't do so without visible embarrassment.

Do you mean that the Israel-Hizbollah fracas was a war against the US by proxy? Does that mean Israel is our proxy in the region?

You might not have noticed, but the groups in Iraq closest to the Iranians are fighting on our side in the Iraq war, and whatever Iranian support they are receiving has probably been a net plus for the US. What a way to fight a proxy war.

Seth, your analysis conspiciously lacks any assessment of Russia, which is likely to exert more diplomatic pressure on Teheran than all other factors (China is probably second).  For obvious reasons, Russia (and China) don't want to see a nuclear armed Iran.  Iran is eager to enter full membership in the Shanghai Cooperative Organization (SCO), they've petitioned the organization thusly.  It remains unclear if SCO is Putin's new Warsaw Pact, but in the global war on energy military security may very well play second-fiddle to energy security.  

So how does the so-called "west" counter this?  Of course its by lifting sanctions and trading with Iran - you know, becoming friendly and less threatening.  That's what Pootie-Poo is doing - why let Russia control Iran's oil and gas?  I'd say in the long haul stoking the war-fires with Iran is pretty bad for Israel.  As it stands now, Southern and Eastern Asia will have an energy market ten times greater than the west's.  The war-fires guarantee that western oil conglomerates won't have their fingers in that pie. 

Neoboho

Yet another hats off to Mr. Bush who, I'm convinced, has mapped-out his entire presidency around "what can I screw up today."

He took disarmament off the table as the US has moved from MAD, Mutual Assured Destruction to NUTS, Nuclear Use Theories.

His arms policies have swept away years of building global control of the worst of weapons and replaced them with bombast. He has either dropped out of or expressed disdain for the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, The Biological Weapons Convention and the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.

His aggressive policies have pushed the once relatively non-nuclear world to make a mad dash for membership in the nuclear club. He has practically sent out invitations to join the club and Seth is wondering why Iran might take him up on it?

One problem with proper reaction to threats is -- do we really believe in them? Are they serious enough to change a national priority or two? You know, if we face the most grave threat in history, or even just a serious threat compared to other ones in our history, we can contemplate solutions that actually cost us something.

We can attempt to deflate the finances of Iran by decreasing our purchases of crude oil to push the market down. Needless to say, it is far from a national priority at the moment.

We can attempt to gain cooperation of Russia by conceding some points that irritate them and which do not benefit us at all, like placing anti-ballistic rockets and radars in Central Europe (the whole boondogle of anti-ballistic defence could be scuttled as a major and appreciated concession).

We can attempt to pull Syria away from Iranian orbit by offering them Golan and major trade inducements. Iran without cooperating Syria is just another ME state. This would have to include some major, but very inexpensive, concessions to Palestinians. (These are mostly Israeli concessions, but it is mostly Israel that is threatened, we are actually pretty cosy on our side of the pond).

So there are many options, but each requires that we do something differently, and that we give up something. What neo-cons want to propose is: Iran does not do what we want, and Iran can take so-and-so and her orbit, so we should demand in loud voice that it should change. If THAT would not help, we must become SERIOUS, with ALL options on the table.

So, how about putting on the table a gigantic program of switching our fleet to much smaller and efficient vehicles, thus halving our gasoline consumption, decreasing our import hugely and deflating the prices of crude oil? Or cutting some deals with Putin that would satisfy his concerns? Or cutting deals with Syria and Hamas, to isolate Iran? Somehow, not much is put on the table where ALL OPTIONS are supposed to be.

You might not have noticed, but the groups in Iraq closest to the Iranians are fighting on our side in the Iraq war, and whatever Iranian support they are receiving has probably been a net plus for the US. What a way to fight a proxy war.

Fine as far as it goes, but why not analyse further?

1. The Sunni Baathist and jihadi insurgency in Iraq frames its struggle as being against a joint US-Persian occupation. It receives significant support from Sunni autocracies in the region such as Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Egypt. These have historically been described as the "moderate Arab allies" of the US but are in fact now the long term targets of a US strategy of "draining the swamps" that breed jihadi terrorism by democratizing the region.

The US needs cooperation from those "allies" in persuading Iraqi Sunnis to give up on the insurgency. Emphasizing US hostility to Iran helps while reconciliation with Iran would assist the hard core insurgents by alienating Sunnis from the US even more.

2. The hypocrisy of supporting Israeli rule over the Palestinians is a major hindrance to democratizing the region. Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank is a vital US interest. That is much easier to accomplish if the Israelis are hysterical about Iran (and even regard Hamas as well as Hezbollah as "existential threats") than if they remain focussed on their traditional enemy, the PLO.

3. Last and probably least, the US obviously would prefer it if Iran stopped short at acquiring the capability to develop nuclear weapons and did not actually trigger a regional arms race by deploying them. There is always the faint hope that sounding sufficiently demented about it, can assist in implementing the threat of serious economic sanctions relied on to deter actual deployment. The sort of transparently unconvincing propaganda retailed by the likes of Seth Gitell is able to convince Americans at sites like TPMcafe that they face a grave danger of the Bush administration launching a war with Iran, so who knows, there might be some Ayatollahs ignorant and stupid enough to believe it too.

BTW I haven't seen any serious responses to this analysis in the year and more since I suggested it. I gather that is due to it being so "far out" rather than anybody finding it convincing. But surely the very inanity of the propositions advanced by people like Seth Gitell ought to make others wonder about what really lies behind it rather than taking it for granted that US policy makers are raving lunatics.

Inanity, hannity, bobanity, megamanity, inanity. Man, but I confess, I'm rocking on Seth Gitell's stuff.

It's like a cornucopia of the ridiculous, a temple of the poorly conceived, an epic voyage into seas of shallow triteness. Most people can only manage to pack one particularly stupid idea into a given post, two at the most. Many can't even manage that.

But Seth's is bursting at the seams. There are so many bad ideas, and they're so interdependent that it almost achieves a kind of critical mass. A sort of radioactive decay of dumbness. It's like a new element. Inanium? Gitellite?

I hardly know where to start, any place I land, its like a fresh bouquet.

I stand by my contention that the minute Iran can weaponize nuclear technology it changes the stakes in the entire region. If at that point, or shortly thereafter, Saudi Arabia cannot make its own nuclear weapons, it would rush to do so.

And here we have it, ladies and gentlemen. The real reason we have to stop Iran's nuclear program.

To stop Saudi Arabia.

That's right.

This whole thing is to stop the Saudi bomb.

Who'da thunk it?

Then there's this bon mot, immediately following, like the kiss of a Walrus:

Without ever delivering these weapons, Iran could levy demands on whichever country in the region it wished.

Wow. And that's worked so well for Israel in the middle east, hasn't it. What with Israel levying demands on whichever country in the region it wished, demanding recognition, dictating peace treaties, unilaterally making trade arrangements...

Mmm hmmm. And it's worked so well for India, for Pakistan, for South Africa, for North Korea, for France, for Britain, for China, for the USSR and USA?

Let me clue you in. A nuclear weapon brings precisely ZERO political clout. Zip. Nada. Zilch. Zero. The bit empty.

I mean seriously, do you think Iran is going to nuke Quatar over a shipment of bad dates? Over their women's dress code? Over some niggling matter of trade policy? Because Quatar called the Iranian PM a bad name in the tabloids?

What? Seriously. What sort of standard could make a nuclear threat credible.

The trouble with nuclear weapons is that they're simply too powerful. They have no tactical or strategic application except deterrence and full scale warfare. You can't use them as a tool of foreign policy.

Let me put it this way. Suppose that you had a weapon that could blow up your neighbors house at the push of a button.

So what do you do when his dog craps on your yard? Blow up his house? That's a ridiculously disproportionate response. No one would take such a threat seriously. If the newspaperboy gets the paper in the rose bushes? If the other neighbors sprinkler wets your driveway?

The fact is that the possible threat is so unreasonable, so profoundly disproportionate, and ultimately so counterproductive that it ceases to be meaningful.

No nation, and that includes the United States which has on different occasions expressed a willingness to use them, has ever been able to successfully bully or control its neighbors foreign policy or domestic conduct with a nuclear weapons.

Seth's just being a very, very, very silly creature indeed.

You really are enjoying this!  At the risk of being asked a second time to get a room I have to say that I am enjoying you enjoying this.  :-)

aMike

A 5 for explication, but also for using the verb "stymieing."

I would note I’ve yet to hear a compelling counterpoint to my suggestion that Iran is waging a “war by proxy” throughout the Middle East right now.

Time to fire the big guns.  A salvo or two of Thomas Hobbes, first.

Take this! <thwack>

For war consisteth not in battle only, or the act of fighting, but in a tract of time, wherein the will to contend by battle is sufficiently known: and therefore the notion of time is to be considered in the nature of war, as it is in the nature of weather. For as the nature of foul weather lieth not in a shower or two of rain, but in an inclination thereto of many days together: so the nature of war consisteth not in actual fighting, but in the known disposition thereto during all the time there is no assurance to the contrary. All other time is peace.

</thwack>

And this! <snicker-snack>

. . .yet in all times kings and persons of sovereign authority, because of their  independency, are in continual jealousies, and in the state and posture of gladiators, having their weapons pointing, and their eyes fixed on one another; that is, their forts, garrisons, and guns upon the frontiers of their kingdoms, and continual spies upon their neighbours, which is a posture of war.

</snicker-snack>

Then, the coup de grace,What other country has a stellar record of proxy warfare in the middle east?

• Could it be the country whose leader, fresh from selling refrigerators, first used the evil empire meme later morphed into axis of evil by a later leader who couldn't even plagiarize well?
• Could it be the country of whom it has been said, "U.S. policy toward Afghanistan, Russia and the region during the 1980s helped, at least indirectly, nurture the growth of anti-American and fundamentalist forces now controlling Kabul, and indeed, even some of the terrorists now being sought by the United States for the Sept. 11 attacks against New York and Washington."
• Could it be the country whose self-same leader fought a proxy war against that evil empire using that Eagle Scout of Virtue, Osama Bin Laden?
• Perhaps it is the country which, having had no diplomatic relations with Iraq since 1967, proclaimed neutrality in that country's war with Iran (a war which, by the way was started by Iraq), and then, "having decided that an Iranian victory would not serve its interests, began supporting Iraq: measures already underway to upgrade U.S.-Iraq relations were accelerated, high-level officials exchanged visits, and in February 1982, , , removed Iraq from its list of states supporting international terrorism." 

Mega-hint.  Some guy named Rum-something-or-other shook hands with the leader-guy of the Iraq side.

All kidding aside.  It seems just a wee bit, no, make that a lotta hypocritical for any citizen of that country to get all righteous about Iranian proxy warriors in the Mid-East.  Just MHO, of course.

aMike

Did someone call?

Everyone could potentially develop a nuke if not bombed. So we must bomb everyone. All at the same time.

The monstrosity in the Iran-Iraq War wasn't in the Iranian bravely defending their country against the invading forces of Saddam Hussein; the monstrosity was in the fact that the US was backing and arming him with chemical weapons.

But by invoking this image of KRRRAAAZY Iranians during the Iran-Iraq war, Seth has inadvertently proven a point: if attacked, Iranians will rally around their government. Believe it or not, the Iranians love their country too - and that doesn't make them insane or apocalyptic.

Furthermore, you conveniently left out the real objection to your post- namely that there is no evidence that Iran even wants to build nukes.

And the idea that Iran's civilian nuclear program will force the Saudi;s to get nuclear weapons is so laughable. For one thing, the Saudis already have a nuclear program of their own. More importantly, if we are to assume that one country's nuclear capacity will force others to get a nuclear deterrent too, then nuclear proliferation in the Mideast should be traced back to the original nuclear power in the region: ISRAEL.

Who's Next?  (Warning--there's moosic on the website)  Tom Lehrer is sooooooo prophetic.

aMike

This is semi-lunacy. Russia is at loggerheads with NATO at the moment, with an ample provocation engineered by US of A, and the main achievement of Shanghai Cooperative Organization is nixing our influence in Central Asia. Russia views us (in Central Asia and places like that) as poachers, and China is not too crazy about our military bases along her western border either. The idea thar new pipelines from Central Asia could go to the growing market in China makes sense all around (if not to us).

Comparatively, nukes in Iran hands are a minor problem, and Russia will not exert herself without any quid-pro-quo.

Pipelining Gulf and Turkmen natural gas through Iran and Pakistan makes multi-billion dollar sense, but our influence in Pakistan seems to be stopping it. I wonder if this consideration will not end our influence in Pakistan one day.

I think that the idea that Gulf could have a hegemon with anti-American inclinations can make a lot of sense to SCO. One can see Eurasia as a quadrangle spanned by four strong nationalistic regimes -- China, Russia, Iran and India, with Central Asia, Afghanistan and Pakistan absorbed into a zone of mutual cooperation. Getting rid of bumbling sojourners from another hemisphere can benefit all four.

Re: Actually, the point of telling the Basiji story is simply racist propaganda.

Even if it's true, it actually tells against Seth's point byshowing upthe Iranian leadership as a bunch of cyniucal manipulators who do not believe their own religious propaganda. Islam strictly forbids pictoral representations of its holy men. Sending an actor out to impersonate the 12th Imam is an act of monumental blasphemy and idolatry. Whoever cooked up ascheme like that is none too afraid of the Wrath of Allah.

"Islam strictly forbids pictoral representations of its holy men. Sending an actor out to impersonate the 12th Imam is an act of monumental blasphemy and idolatry. Whoever cooked up ascheme like that is none too afraid of the Wrath of Allah."

A virtual "10" rating to you for making these points, JPF311.

Re: Artistic representations of Ali, Hasan, Hussein and other important Shia figures are commonplace

OK, I have heard elsewhere that Shi'ite Islam has been heavily influenced by the traditions of Eastern Christianity which of course do include a heavy emphasis on pictorial art (icons). Still, my point stands: having an actor impersonnate a heavenly holy man for political purposes (not as part of some religious rite or play) is an act of cynical manipulation on the part of those who came up with the scheme. It is most certainly not an act of fervent piety, and even without a ban on images it should strike any true believer as blasphemous. Again, if the Iranian leadershjip indulges in such shenanigans, the Iranian leadership is about as pious and God-fearing as Pope Alessandro Borgia and his family were.

What Nature doesn't do to us. . . .

aMike

(I didn't even have to look it up).  :-)

Mr. Gitell (& a few others):

I you do not look at things from your adversary's perspective you are thinking "with one hand tied behind your back".

Observe an important driving force:
Iran is the nation with its' head in the vise. And, "waging" they are. For ten points, list all of the important "wagers", by proxy or otherwise.

Kevin Russell Cook

;-)

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