John Keegan on Iran

Caught this link with commentary at The Belmont Club.

Keegan's discussion centers on what to do about Iran's nuclear ambitions and the impending failure of the UN Security Council to stop them.

The pressing question is, indeed, what is to be done when a report to the Security Council fails to bring Iran to desist from nuclear enrichment? Economic and other sanctions are widely cited as a means to restrain Iran; and it is certainly true that the interruption of trade and the supply of technical equipment would cause its government serious inconvenience.

It is much more doubtful whether sanctions would make Iran change its policy. The ayatollahs do not suppose they are popular abroad, nor do they much care. Sanctions would interfere with the Western lifestyle of Iran's educated young people. The ayatollahs, however, have little interest in supporting that lifestyle, indeed, rather the opposite, while Iran's educated youth have given heavy proofs that their national pride weighs heavier than their access to Western luxuries.

I'd say that is very accurate reasoning. I'd also say that the reasoning could be taken further in that military action won't bring any form of popular uprising or a viable new regime. The national pride of the Iranians would sooner or later cause the regime change to be reversed and bring back a system that may very likely be worse.

Iran is a fairly uniform country when it comes to ethnicity. Unlike Iraq, most of the country is Shiite and non-arab. Iraq may well succeed due to the fragmentation of the population forcing various views to be heard and allowed.

Nevertheless, the West cannot simply let things drift. Military action by whatever agency cannot be written out, but will be a last resort. In the meantime, all means short of military action, including economic and political ostracism and economic sanctions, must be tried, together with the building of alternative oil pipelines to bypass the current routes of oil supply down the Gulf. And, of course, the intensification of anti-terrorist measures.

For if the West is considering military action, so are the ayatollahs. They are the sponsors of much of the insurgency in Iraq and suppliers of the insurgents' weapons. They also have intimate links with most of the world's worst terrorist organizations, including al-Qa'eda and Hezbollah. Iranians may well be the missing link for which MI5 is searching behind the July 7 bombings in London.

Moreover, while Iran has its own armoury of medium-range missiles suitable for nuclear delivery, the ayatollahs are also known to favour the placing of nuclear warheads in target cities by terrorists travelling by car or public transport. This is a bad and worrying time in world affairs.

Worrying time indeed. With military action being the last resort, you can almost come to the conclusion that it won't ever be used. The EU would rather talk in the nuclear fall-out than actually take military action. If the US took preemptive action, it would be viewed as wrong no matter what the circumstances.

So where does that really leave the west? Fortunately there has been some good news regarding Russia and China.

The five nations with permanent seats on the UN Security Council agreed at a crisis meeting Monday that Iran must suspend attempts to make nuclear fuel, but Russia and China stopped short of demanding that Iran be referred to the Security Council for possible sanctions.

and

While Russia and China apparently were unwilling to endorse sanctions now, they did agree not to block a call by Britain, France and Germany for an emergency session of the International Atomic Energy Agency's 35-nation governing board, which will consider referring Iran to the UN for possible sanctions. The IAEA board will convene Feb. 2.

Not the best of news, but then, they aren't completely blocking actions. Though they still are speaking against the use of sanctions.

Russia:

"Sanctions are not the best or the only way to solve international problems," Sergei Lavrov told a news conference in Moscow.

"The question of sanctions against Iran puts the cart before the horse," news agencies quoted Lavrov as saying.

Lavrov said years of international sanctions against Iraq had failed to change the behavior of ousted leader Saddam Hussein, Reuters reported.

"Our common goal is to ensure the inviolability of the nuclear nonproliferation regime," The Associated Press quoted him as saying.

China:

Beijing on Tuesday also indicated it preferred diplomacy over sanctions to resolve the situation.

"We think the most urgent thing for all the parties now is still to keep patient and make utmost efforts to resume the negotiations between the EU3 and Iran," said Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Kong Quan, according to Reuters.

"We hope the Iranian side can cooperate with the efforts by the international community to restart the diplomatic negotiations and resolve the nuclear issue properly," Kong said.

Beijing said last week that referring Iran to the Security Council might "complicate the issue."

Complicate? Well, I suppose so. Though isn't this complication already rather twisted with Iran's obvious delay and deflect tactics? Or maybe this is China's oil interests speaking. And the Russian quote may show some signs of resistance due to a large military contract?

I have to take Keegan to task for one statement:

Saddam merely pretended to have weapons of mass destruction, largely to feed his own fantasies of power.

Did he pretend to have mustard gas which killed the Kurds at Halabja? What about the Marsh Arabs? Since there is still much controversy as to when Saddam's WMDs were destroyed or otherwise dealt with, saying that he pretended to have WMD is pretty irresponsible.