War with Iran is probably our best option
By Joshua Muravchik March 13 at 8:27 PM
Joshua Muravchik is a fellow at the Foreign Policy Institute of Johns Hopkins Universitys School of Advanced International Studies.
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 Irans 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.
This gives force to the Obama administrations taunting rejoinder: What is Netanyahus alternative? War? But the administrations position also contains a glaring contradiction. National security adviser Susan Rice declared at an American Israel Public Affairs Committee conference before Netanyahus speech that a bad deal is worse than no deal. So if Iran will accept only a bad deal, what is President Obamas alternative? War?
Obamas stance implies that we have no choice but to accept Irans best offer whatever is, to use Rices term, achievable because the alternative is unthinkable.
But should it be? 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 detre of Irans 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 Irans power to achieve that goal.
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. Of course, they need some wealth to underwrite their power, but only a limited amount. North Korea has remained dirt poor practicing its ideology of juche, or self-reliance, but it still found the resources to build nuclear weapons.
Sanctions may have induced Iran to enter negotiations, but they have not persuaded it to abandon its quest for nuclear weapons. Nor would the stiffer sanctions that Netanyahu advocates bring a different result. Sanctions could succeed if they caused the regime to fall; the end of communism in Ukraine and Kazakhstan, and of apartheid in South Africa, led to the abandonment of nuclear weapons in those states. But since 2009, there have been few signs of rebellion in Tehran.
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, although an air campaign targeting Irans nuclear infrastructure would entail less need for boots on the ground than the war Obama is waging against the Islamic State, which poses far smaller a threat than Iran does.
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War with Iran is probably our best option