Opponents of the Iranian nuclear arms control agreement frequently insist that they are not looking for war, and that the next appropriate step is to negotiate “a better deal”. When one listens more deeply to some of the rhetoric, however, one can hear the call to war. One admittedly very right wing opponent recently wrote to me, as an alternative to the deal, that, in his words, “A much better solution than the Agreement would be to intensify sanctions and/or to empower and assist Israel in destroying Iran’s nuclear capability”.
Words matter, and the way they are put together matters, so when this critic of the deal says “sanctions and/or…war”, the strict meaning one can read is that war will be a better solution, with or without sanctions. Look at the syntax and see if that isn’t the strict meaning of “and/or war”.
Now it isn’t, perhaps, fair to judge all opposition to the agreement as war-monger, and in fact is wrong to do so. However it can’t be minimized either. In a recent comment on a post intended to dissuade a US senator from continuing her support for the war, one commentator opined, “If Iran wants an atomic bomb, we should be the ones to deliver it to them!”
One can, even at a cursory listen, hear the drum beats of war.
Let’s set aside the moral issue. For the nation which invented weapons to ‘empower and/or assist’ the one nation in the area assumed to possess them in attacking a country who doesn’t have them as an alternative to a negotiation which most participants say will prevent them from achieving them is morally, well, somewhat ironic. At best.
We have plans in place for the possibility of war, if needed. https://www.wilsoncenter.org/sites/default/files/IranReport_091112_FINAL.pdf, for one readily available report). This activity would be, according to recent analysis such as this one, a extended, large scale operation, requiring the US military in an extended and comprehensive commitment, and would set back Iranian nuclear activities by 4 years. Other estimates have said that 5-10 years would be possible.
Admitted, these military strategists are just giving the considered estimates that are publicly available. Let us still consider them.
The argument, then, that the agreement would “only set the Iranian program back by 10-15 years”, perhaps twenty, would seem on its surface to be much preferable, if the only agenda is to prevent Iranian access to nuclear weapons.
Two news reports surfaced today. One reports that Iran continues to test fire its own regional rockets. Critics of the deal would perhaps argue that this is more reason we shouldn’t come to agreement. If the agreement prevents development of a nuclear weapon for longer than military action, though, as most estimates say it would, it should seem that Iranian rocket technology is one more reason to support the agreement. Plus, if Iran is showing that they can develop their own rocket capability, then what would be the next step after a destruction of their nuclear facilities? A continued sustained attempt to locate every rocket, every facility capable of building rockets? How long would such an effort take? How many lives? How many hundreds of billions. The last time we tried to prevent the possibility of ‘weapons of mass destruction’ in a middle eastern country, it didn’t work out so well, and that was still true even when we had over a hundred thousand troops in Iraq taking double digit casualties every month. Iran is larger, more populous, more mountainous, further away and more united than Iraq ever was. What makes us think we would there fare better?
The second news report in todays (August 22) times was also interest. Businesses in Iran are ramping up to welcome Western capital and sell themselves to western capitol. Would it really make war with the US, or an attack on Israel more likely if there were, eventually, US owned businesses in Iran than it will be if we spontaneously attack them while they are trying to make an agreement with us?
For moral and practical reasons, agreement is preferable to war. And, despite all the rhetoric about a “better deal”, if you listen to many of the opponents to the deal, albeit still the more right wing and less public of them, you can faintly hear the call to war.
Let us not listen to that call. We already have the possibility of a much better “deal”. We just have to approve of it.