zenpundit.com

ARAB INSIGHT

Jedburgh of The Small Wars Council posted Arab Insight, Fall 2007 (PDF) which has the theme “Do We Hate America? The Arab Response”. Definitely worth a look.

PERHAPS…

If the Bush administration really wants to cripple Iran, instead of planning an EBO attack or using IO scare stories about nuclear weapons, we should simply encourage Iran to adopt Ahmadinejad’s economic program.

YOU CAN SPEAK SOFTLY BUT MONEY TALKS

Beltway based Pundita observes:

“The US is fighting a war in a region where we’ve been very hostile to two countries bordering the war zone. Pundita is of the mind that the top priority is to win the war, and for that we need all the help we can get.

When it comes to asking Iran and Syria for help with Iraq, I see too much halfhearted trying from the US, then waving of hands and saying, ‘See, they won’t deal.’ Try harder.”

I agree. Iran and Syria are nasty regimes whose actions we must often oppose but where they are willing to cut some fair deals we should get down to business. Freezing Castro in the diplomatic equivalent of absolute zero has only served to help preserve his Communist- caudillo regime until the dictator’s old age while irritating most of our allies and trading partners. Do we really want a 92 year old Bashar Assad still in power someday ?

DETERRENCE AND IRAN

A set of papers from The Washington Institute for Near East Policy entitled “Deterring the Ayatollahs: Complications in Applying Cold War Strategy to Iran“.

Hat tip to Jedburgh of The Small Wars Council.

YOU CAN BLEED THEM WHILE YOU NEGOTIATE WITH THEM

When Robert Gates, the current Secretary of Defense, retired from government service after the end of the first Bush administration, he wrote a memoir , From the Shadows, in which he described the no-nonsense, George Schultz as ” the toughest Secretary of State I ever knew” who ” saw no contradiction” in bleeding the Soviets in one part of the world while negotiating with them in another. Secretary Schultz, whose opinion of the CIA on a 1 to 10 scale hovered in the negative integers, was not nearly as complimentary to Robert Gates in his own, ponderously unreadable, memoirs, but that is a story for another day.

I bring this anecdote of a less complex era up because of the furor over the Bush administration classifying the Pasdaran ( the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps) as a terrorist organization in order to take action against those business enterprises that are connected to the Pasdaran. The objections to this move appear to be two-fold: first, that it hypothetically puts American military personnel at risk of maltreatment and, secondly, that it could disrupt negotiations with Iran on a range of bilateral and international issues, most importantly, Iraq.

The critics are incorrect. It is a move a quarter-century overdue.

In the first instance, correctly identifying the Pasdaran as a state sponsor of international terrorism, which as a matter of historical record, it clearly is, does not prevent treating it’s uniformed personnel as POWs in case of an armed conflict between Iran and the United States. The Pasdaran, by contrast, has already tortured two Americans to death – Beirut CIA station chief William Buckley and USMC Colonel William Higgins – at a time of peace between Iran and the United States.

Cry me no river of tears for Pasdaran agents in Iraq being held captive by the U.S. military or who are being whacked in some alleyway by Sunni tribals in our employ. The Iranians knew the risks, from the inception, of the rules they chose to operate under, violating the most basic precepts of international law. It did not have to be that way – even the CIA and the KGB came to a rough modus vivendi during the Cold War that prevented most escalatory incidents – Teheran though has chosen to play rough. Let them enjoy the bed they have made for themselves.

Secondly, until we have an agreement with Iran we do not have any agreement and the regime should be squeezed at every point until we do. I’m all for negotiating in earnest, making the realistic, even generous, concessions that we can easily afford, finding areas of common interest and ( eventually) normalizing relations. We should scrupulously keep our word and demonstrate to the Iranians through actions that we will deliver exactly what we promise. But until that point in time, Teheran should get no favors, no breathing space, no economic freebies of any kind until we come to an arrangement.

The leadership of Iran is a nasty and brutal group. Within that circle, Ahmadinejad represents some of the regime’s worst elements but, as a whole, the Iranians do not seem irrational, simply adversarial. We can cut a deal with them but we should proceed without any illusions.

IRGC STORY LINKS:

Thomas P.M. Barnett

The Newshoggers

Counterterrorism Blog

The Glittering Eye

Pundita

Right Wing Nuthouse