In the never-ending quest to do not much of anything to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, the Obami, we are told, are “walking a delicate diplomatic path.” On one hand, they are being played, and know it. (“They acknowledge Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad appears to be using negotiations to limit U.N. pressure while also working to legitimize his government domestically.”) But then again, they don’t want to upset the — you knew this was coming — “moderate opposition forces inside Iran.” So they stall. Yes, yes, they’ve been stalling for some time now, pretending that the regime would show interest in a grand bargain, downplaying Qom, cooking up the flimsiest of enrichment deals to provide cover for doing not much of anything, protracting the process of being rejected, ignoring news of other possible secret sites (that would fall under the “known unknowns,” in Donald Rumsfeld parlance), and refusing to concede that we’ve gotten nowhere. It’s a lot of work doing nothing for that long.
So what’s next? They’ll get cracking on this next year. Yeah, honestly:
The officials said Mr. Obama remains committed to ratcheting up pressure early next year, and that Washington is cobbling together a coalition of allies to punish Tehran even if Beijing and Moscow balk. The U.S. has also been talking with Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates about how to utilize oil sales to pressure Tehran. “Our patience is limited. The president has made clear that at the end of the year we’ll be able to decide” if Iran is serious, said Robert Einhorn, the State Department’s top official on nonproliferation, last week. “April 2010 is too late.”
April 2010 is too late, but November 2009 is too early. And it seems we are already banking on the noncooperation of Moscow, whose cooperation was the rationale for doing nothing this year. (I suppose we were chumps after all for giving up the missile-defense facilities in Poland and the Czech Republic.)
The result: we will have given Iran yet another year free of outside pressure, enabling it to proceed with its nuclear program. And along the way, we’ve helped bolster the mullahs and defund the democratic opposition. If we had tried to help the regime achieve its aims, we would have been hard pressed to do “better.” And if we were supposed to be defanging the threat of a nuclear-armed fundamentalist Islamic state and staving off a nuclear-arms race in the Middle East, we could hardly have done worse. But maybe next year will be better. Or whenever.
None of this happens in a vacuum.
Iran is trying to do a job the world wants done; it is trying to ‘prove’ that our military is reckless and dangerous and that the world should preside over its drawdown and redeployment under world government.
It’s a fine line we walk, protecting our forces and equipment in international waters while trying not to be provoked to the sort of response which would engender actionable criticism by the rest of the world.
The Iranian navy is now by default the proxy provoker for the Eurabians and the UNians. What a concept.
Jennifer Dyer has provided a great service to anyone not familiar with the rules of engagement out there, and what can and cannot be done defensively, but I’m left with the feeling after reading it that she feels that there is no good tactical response to the speedboat threat, and not really any good options at the national level either. But there is an option: if the commander can’t or won’t blow them out of the water, the president should have ordered an immediate attack on the Revolutionary Guards Corps Navy, including their shore-based facilities and HQ. The out-of-control snarling dog in the region must be slapped down, and we just missed an excellent opportunity to do so.
Jennifer,
Thanks for the post. I was wondering if you, or anyone else reading this, has seen a report on what was in those boxes that the Iranians were dropping. Has that or will that be released to the public?
Given Commander Dyers comments, I worry that the Navy has not adequately prepared for the threat of in-shore terrorist attacks.
The development of the torpedo boat at the end of the 19th Century led to corresponding changes in ship design and fleet composition. From Commander Dyer’s post, it doesn’t sound as if the war on terror has led to similar changes in Naval strategy.
Commander Dyer writes, “… small speedboats are the very devil to deal with through armed force.” I believe this, but only to the extent that our surface Navy was designed to fight against blue water naval ships and conventional aircraft. The situation would seem to require some combination of more powerful small arms, better deception equipment, and different sorts of munitions. I hope the Navy is doing something about this, though I imagine that it might not want to publicize what it is doing.
I’m reminded of the myth that the ponderous galleons of the Spanish Armada were defeated by Drake’s intrepid sea dogs manning small, highly maneuverable skiffs. Garrett Mattingly deconstructed that engagingly romantic tale almost 50 years ago. Basically, the Royal Navy outclassed the makeshift Spanish fleet from stem to stern. The Spanish put up a brave fight but never really stood a chance. Of course the English were defending their homeland so they did not hesitate to employ maximum available force. In the Persian Gulf it is a more abstract matter. I hope that an actual Iranian attack on a US Navy ship would nonetheless provoke an unambiguous American response.
No need to be uneasy about our ships. They all mount Phalanx whose gatling guns can spit more than three thousand 20 mm rounds a minute, traveling at 3600 feet a second. Controlled by a highly accurate radar and FLIR sensor this system can easily shred any approaching speedboat.
This incident was either the grandstanding of some undisciplined Iranian sailors or a deliberate provocation. If the latter it suggests that the November leaking of the NIE on Iran struck a nerve.
We want Tehran to play ball with us on Iraq. Our persuasion has been by way of keeping Iran’s economy stagnant; her inflation and unemployment are at double digits. We have denied her investment capital, the technology to run her oil fields efficiently, and have tied up her financial arteries. Iran remains afloat because of the high oil price bubble. Should that burst she will crash.
But Tehran does not want to buckle under on Iraq. It wants to oppose us in Iraq and at the same time force us to accommodate her, to discontinue her isolation.
Iran has at bottom two shoes to drum on our heads. The first is the fact that she has the second largest oil reserves in the Middle East. Our economy, and Europe’s too, are terribly exposed to any sudden drop in oil production. The oil crisis of the 1970s was caused by the Shah initiating the squeeze. We certainly don’t want a repeat of that.
Her second shoe is belligerence. A country on the verge of acquiring atom bomb teeth frightens the American public. We fear what an Iran so armed and ill disposed to the US might do, and what Washington might resort to to stem that danger. Thus an angry Iraq is one which the NYTimes and American public opinion would want to conciliate.
But what is the real situation today? Iran is only able to pump half the oil she produced in the Shah’s day. And a third of that is now being consumed domestically. So Iran can’t afford to stop her oil production. It would hurt her more than us.
As to her second shoe, the recent NIE told America it need not worry about a nuclear Iran. The US is not preparing for an armed confrontation there. I.e., Iran’s the second shoe has also been eliminated. It was turned into a powder puff.
What those blustering speedboats warning America to be afraid amounted to was confirmation that Iran understands and is miserable. She knows she is off our radar. We no longer worry about her. We intend to keep her isolated and chocking indefinitely. If Iran wants any relief she must play ball on Iraq.