US and Iran - common ground

Interesting intersection of soccer and politics - Iran names an Iranian-American as their national soccer coach.  There's also an interview of Afshin Ghotbi conducted before he was named as Iran's coach at the NYTimes Goal blog.  Ghotbi has previously coached in both Iran and the United and was an assisant for the US World Cup team in 1998 (which was so bad, maybe Ghotbi was an Iranian mole!).

Whenever US-Iranian relations start to thaw, I think a big part should be a friendly match played between US and Iran.  The ideal result would be a tie.

Iranian nukes

A friend sent along this piece from Slate.com on the IAEA's allegations about the Iranian nuclear project:

Besides the NYT, none of the other papers give much play to the IAEA report and emphasize the agency said it has no evidence that Iran's military has gotten involved in the country's nuclear program. For its part, the NYT specifies that 18 documents were included in the report that claim "Iranians have ventured into explosives, uranium processing and a missile warhead design," which could suggest that nuclear weapons are being developed. The nuclear watchdog agency also says Iran has failed to disclose advancements in its nuclear program and suggests the country could be producing enriched uranium. David Albright, a former weapons inspector who is the go-to guy for these kinds of stories, tells the NYT that the "Iranians are being confronted with some pretty strong evidence of a nuclear weapons program" and the report "is very damning." But Albright also tells the LAT there are some key components missing from the report that one would expect to find in a weapons program. Iran insists the documents are fakes but has failed to release evidence and provide access to international inspectors that could verify Tehran's claims.

Iran's lack of cooperation with the IAEA could indicate that they are hiding a nuclear weapons program, or could be a matter of national pride (like how the US rejects UN elections inspectors), or could be designed to foster uncertainty about their intentions and capabilities. Here are the likely possibilities that I see:

• Iran has a weapons program and is hiding it very well
• Iran doesn't have a weapons program currently but plan to have one in the future and so maintains some of the components today
• Iran's political decision-making mechanisms are so convoluted that some people are setting up weapons program components while others aren't, and nobody knows what is going on, including the Iranians themselves
• Iran doesn't have the expertise to develop a nuclear weapon small enough to be weaponized on their crappy missiles, but wants to create uncertainty about their capabilities in order to paralyze US and European decision making and/or extract concessions
  

However I don't know too much about nuclear weapons programs. Comments?

Logic

It appears that even noted professors at Hahvihd with fancy vocabulary are not immune from logical errors.

Prof. Stephen Rosen is worried about Ahmadinejad's recent rhetorical escalation against Israel. He was worried that it might be a precursor to a chemical/biological weapons attack by Iran against Israel. So he checked some of his old research and found that, sure enough, when states use bio/chem weapons against their adversaries, it's preceded by dehumanization and rhetorical escalation!

In other words, he saw X and worried it might lead to Y. Sure enough, all instances of Y are preceded by X! Which of course says nothing about whether a) X causes Y, or b) whether or not there are 1000 Xs for every Y.

Ironically "silent evidence" is a key theme in Nassim Taleb's "The Black Swan", originally recommended to me by a former (current?) colleague in the Office of Net Assessment of Dr. Rosen's.

It would be interesting (and tedious and exhausting) to examine all instances of rhetorical escalation by states/armed groups, and see how often it actually leads to war crimes or the use of bio/chem weapons.

For what it's worth, I think Ahmadinejad's rhetoric is due to a) the assassination of Hezbollah's operations chief Imad Mughniyah, and b) his falling domestic approval ratings.

An Iraqi information campaign

Abu Muqawama(AM), Kip (a new blogger at AM's site) and Matt are all up in arms over the U.S.'s inability to put together any sort of effective information campaign to support military operations. AM is cheered by the fact that the Pentagon has figured out that they should publicize the fact that Al Qaeda are nasty folks but simply rebroadcasting Al Qaeda's own videos isn't good enough. The Pentagon should instead pay attention to what the folks at www.noterror.info are doing, with videos like this:
(Warning - graphic video)



The terrorist repeatedly asks the kidnapped man (who's name is Tareq) "Are you Sunni or Shi'ite?" Tareq finally answers "Iraqi", and is killed. I think the text then says "Executed - sedition is worse than killing" (apparently a Koranic verse), with the final text saying "Terrorism has no religion." (Translation from Inside Iraq.)

They also have other videos as well as posters here (Arabic).

Germany vs. Israel U-21

Here are the highlights from the game Ashkan Dejagah opted out of:



Perhaps if he had played, Germany might have won. Also, I might take Israeli anger over Dejagah's refusal to travel to Israel more seriously if more Israelis had showed up to watch the game.

Ashkan Dejagah's dilemma

Ashkan Dejagah, a talented German-Iranian soccer player, plays for VfL Wolfsburg in the German Bundesliga. He's been called up to the German youth national teams a number of times, where he's had some success. Recently he's created a bit of controversy by refusing to travel with the team to play a game in Israel. Iranian law forbids Iranians from traveling to Israel. Dejagah still has family back in Iran, and apparently fears being barred from visiting his relatives back in Iran if he has an Israeli stamp on his passport. He has also said that there are "political reasons. Everyone knows I'm a German Iranian."

Wolfsburg coach Felix Magath has "released" ("Ich habe dem Spieler freigegeben") Dejagah from training with the team so that the rest of the team can "train in peace" ("wir in Ruhe trainieren wollten").

The Central Council of Jews in Germany, as well as a senior member of the Christian Democratic Union (of which Chancellor Angela Merkel is a member), wants Dejagah banned from the national team in retribution. I wouldn't be surprised if that happens, but I also feel that would be way overboard. Essentially they would be forcing Dejagah to choose between abandoning a (very bright) future on the German national team, and never visiting his family or his home country again. I don't think that's a decision a 21 year old should be forced to make.

A lot of issues at play - the political value of soccer matches, the effect on team morale if one player says "no thanks" to the national team for specific games, the identity of an immigrant, Germany's guilt over the Holocaust, and Iran's stupid policy of banning entry to people who have visited Israel.

Interesting reads

Two from Wes Clark: first, his article in the Washington Post's Outlook section on The Next War:

...the next war is always looming, and so is the urgent question of whether the U.S. military can adapt in time to win it.
Today, the most likely next conflict will be with Iran...
...But if it's clear how a war with Iran would start, it's far less clear how it would end.
...The next war could also come from somewhere unexpected; if you'd told most Americans in August 2001 that the United States would be invading Afghanistan within weeks, they'd have called you crazy.
...the lesson from Iraq and Afghanistan couldn't be more clear: Don't ever, ever go to war unless you can describe and create a more desirable end state. And doing so takes a whole lot more than just the use of force.
...The best war is the one that doesn't have to be fought, and the best military is the one capable and versatile enough to deter the next war in the first place.

Also, yesterday Clark officially endorsed Hillary Clinton for President. Clark's been close to the Clinton family since the Kosovo war, and I interpret his endorsement as a signal that he'd definitely be involved in a Clinton cabinet, or possibly as a running mate.

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An article from Der Spiegel on climate refugees - Tuvalu may be the first country in the world to entirely disappear as a result of climate change.

"Is it supposed to become a virtual country?" asked Rainer Lagoni, Professor of Maritime Law at the University of Hamburg. There is no legal definition for a country entirely without land.

Climate intelligence would certainly be a priority for countries in the South Pacific...

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Boston Globe - The Nonbelievers

In a world where zealots crash planes into buildings in the name of God and politicians use the Bible to craft public policy, Epstein sees himself as in the vanguard of an emerging movement fueled by the rise of skepticism, advances in science and technology, and a spreading aversion toward radical religious ideologies and traditions. He and other humanists, who also call themselves atheists, agnostics, freethinkers, secularists, or brights, point to a survey... which found that 20 percent of Americans between the ages of 18 and 25 say they have no religious affiliation or consider themselves atheists or agnostics – nearly double those who said that in a similar survey 20 years ago.

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Vanity Fair - Going After Gore

A very interesting after-action report on the press coverage of the Gore campaign. It describes a cycle in which Gore received disproportionately unfavorable coverage, which caused him to restrict access to the press, which caused more unfavorable coverage, etc. Gore also dumbed down his message because he felt reporters were too stupid to understand what he was talking about (arguably true):

Gore: You're reduced to saying, 'Today, here's the message: reduce pollution,' and not necessarily by XYZ out of fear that it will be, well, 'Today he talked about belching cows!'"

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The Economist - Does independence beckon?

Article on the prospects for official independence for Kurdistan. The way I see it, the status quo is great for Kurdistan, and any attempt to formalize what they have now would jeopardize everything.

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Enterprise Management Resilience Blog - Explaining Development-in-a-Box

Steve DeAngelides explains in detail his company's conception of practical aid to developing regions.

The Anbar Awakening

LtC (retired) Dr. David Kilcullen has a new post up at the Small Wars Journal blog. It is very long, but worth reading as the thoughts of one of General Petraeus' inner circle. I posted a comment:

"a series of local political deals has displaced extremists, resulting in a
major improvement in security at the local level, and the national government is
jumping on board with the program. Instead of coalition-led top-down
reconciliation, this is Iraqi-led, bottom-up, based on civil society rather than
national politics."

I have two questions regarding this passage.

First - how has the national government jumped on board with these local political deals? From what I have read, the national government does not like these tactical alliances between mostly Sunni tribes and the Coalition because (as you acknowledge elsewhere in this piece) the Shia government thinks the Sunni tribes will use this brief peace as "breathing space" not for political reconciliation, but to prepare to fight the national government which many Sunnis see as a tool of Iran.

My second question is, where's the evidence of reconciliation? From what I have read, the Sunni tribes have a tactical alliance with the Coalition to kill AQI. There is no reconciliation or forgiveness involved - simply short-term self-interest that some (Tony Cordesman) think could disappear in a few months.

Soccer comedy

Two soccer videos. The first, the Daily Show's treatment of Iraq's recent Asia Cup victory.



The second, equally comical, is LA Galaxy versus FC Dallas in the Superliga (combined MLS/Mexico North American championship):

Dialogue with Iran

US, Iran will cooperate on Iraq security

Jeff Jacoby - Why are we rewarding Iran?

Bill Richardson made a comment during the Youtube debates to the effect of "talking to people doesn't mean you're losing." Well it does mean you're losing if you see the world only in terms of power - if you don't have the power to enforce your will by force and have to talk instead, it means you lose power.

This is a conflict of two (or more) worldviews - Jacoby's hard-power-centric view of the world as run by America, doling out rewards and spanking countries when they come home after midnight, against the view of America as one of many leaders of the world, leading by example, and keeping open channels of communication with everyone we can. People that think like that don't realize that power relationships have qualitatively changed due to continuous Revolutions in Military Affairs (RMA) and individual superempowerement. In my view, talking is now more necessary than it has been in the past. Related to TDAXP's conception of generational warfare's relationship to the OODA loop, if countering the opponent's actions is too difficult because of the number of decentralized potential actors, its best to "go deep" and challenge the observations and orientation of the potential enemy. Treat the disease (underlying orientation) rather than the symptoms (the individual attacks), and hopefully before any symptoms manifest.

To me, it seems that if you are "professional" who makes this kind of stuff your career, you'd have to be an idiot to not understand this. But I think that is the nature of people operating in different worldviews/paradigms/whatever you call it. I and others like me are starting from X and proceeding logically (at least I hope so), and Jeff Jacoby, Bill Kristol, Newt Gingrich, Dick Cheney, Norman Podhoretz, and others like them are starting from Y and proceeding logically (giving them the benefit of the doubt), and we end up talking past each other. Unfortunately I have not read Thomas Kuhn.

The media's role

So, ABC "broke" the story that the US is engaged in covert activity designed to topple the Iranian government. There's no actual new information other than the confirmation of what everybody has assumed - that we had a presidential finding directing the covert part of our official policy of trying to change the Iranian regime. The only thing this story does is help the Iranian government portray itself as a victim of American aggression (which it is, but American intelligence officers shouldn't be helping Iran by stupid leaks).
Other people are blaming ABC and Brian Ross (like here, here and here). I don't blame the media. Their job is not to act as another arm of American power through self-censorship or repeating the official line (although in general that is exactly what they do). To me, this story is an example of ABC trying to get a leg up on its competitors by getting a "scoop" however they can. ABC is simply another corporation trying to enhance its product.

Edit:
Ironic that Blizzard Entertainment can keep a secret better than the U.S. government.

Who is this Muravchik?

I had never heard of Muravchik before his Foreign Policy article "Operation Comeback," which I blogged about here. But now he has popped up again in the LA Times, in an op-ed titled "Bomb Iran." Reading it frustrated me. I will now issue a point-by-point refutation.

Bomb Iran
Diplomacy is doing nothing to stop the Iranian nuclear threat; a show of force is the only answer.

By Joshua Muravchik, JOSHUA MURAVCHIK is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.
November 19, 2006

WE MUST bomb Iran.

It has been four years since that country's secret nuclear program was brought to light,

The CIA states that there is no evidence that Iran even has a secret nuclear program except for one Israeli agent who's reports the White House won't let them read.

and the path of diplomacy and sanctions has led nowhere.

Muravchik claims we have tried diplomacy, despite the fact that no American officials have talked with any Iranian officials about this matter. Muravchik's claim that diplomacy has failed is false (aka a lie) because we haven't tried it yet.

First, we agreed to our allies' requests that we offer Tehran a string of concessions, which it spurned. Then, Britain, France and Germany wanted to impose a batch of extremely weak sanctions. For instance, Iranians known to be involved in nuclear activities would have been barred from foreign travel — except for humanitarian or religious reasons — and outside countries would have been required to refrain from aiding some, but not all, Iranian nuclear projects.

But even this was too much for the U.N. Security Council. Russia promptly announced that these sanctions were much too strong. "We cannot support measures … aimed at isolating Iran," declared Foreign Minister Sergei V. Lavrov.

It is now clear that neither Moscow nor Beijing will ever agree to tough sanctions. What's more, even if they were to do so, it would not stop Iran, which is a country on a mission. As President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad put it: "Thanks to the blood of the martyrs, a new Islamic revolution has arisen…. The era of oppression, hegemonic regimes and tyranny and injustice has reached its end…. The wave of the Islamic revolution will soon reach the entire world." There is simply no possibility that Iran's clerical rulers will trade this ecstatic vision for a mess of Western pottage in the form of economic bribes or penalties.

So if sanctions won't work, what's left? The overthrow of the current Iranian regime might offer a silver bullet, but with hard-liners firmly in the saddle in Tehran, any such prospect seems even more remote today than it did a decade ago, when students were demonstrating and reformers were ascendant.

At least Muravchik takes ground invasion off the table. You know, given that regime change is an impossibility, deleting "regime change" from our official policy towards Iran might be a diplomatic tool (not that Muravchik has heard of such things).

Meanwhile, the completion of Iran's bomb grows nearer every day.

...but is still approximately ten years off in the future, according to the same editorial page that printed this op-ed.

Our options therefore are narrowed to two: We can prepare to live with a nuclear-armed Iran, or we can use force to prevent it. Former ABC newsman Ted Koppel argues for the former, saying that "if Iran is bound and determined to have nuclear weapons, let it." We should rely, he says, on the threat of retaliation to keep Iran from using its bomb. Similarly, Newsweek International Editor Fareed Zakaria points out that we have succeeded in deterring other hostile nuclear states, such as the Soviet Union and China.

And in these pages, William Langewiesche summed up the what-me-worry attitude when he wrote that "the spread of nuclear weapons is, and always has been, inevitable," and that the important thing is "learning how to live with it after it occurs."

But that's whistling past the graveyard. The reality is that we cannot live safely with a nuclear-armed Iran. One reason is terrorism, of which Iran has long been the world's premier state sponsor, through groups such as Hamas and Hezbollah. Now, according to a report last week in London's Daily Telegraph, Iran is trying to take over Al Qaeda by positioning its own man, Saif Adel, to become the successor to the ailing Osama bin Laden. How could we possibly trust Iran not to slip nuclear material to terrorists?

Well we could always trace the source of the nuclear material. That would enhance our deterrence threat.

Koppel says that we could prevent this by issuing a blanket warning that if a nuclear device is detonated anywhere in the United States, we will assume Iran is responsible. But would any U.S. president really order a retaliatory nuclear strike based on an assumption?

Op-eds that are filled with rhetorical questions are generally filled with crap. Also, as noted above, if we are able to trace the origin of the nuclear material or trace the path the bomb took in more traditional ways, any retaliatory nuclear strike would be based on fact, rather than assumption.

Another reason is that an Iranian bomb would constitute a dire threat to Israel's 6 million-plus citizens. Sure, Israel could strike back, but Hashemi Rafsanjani, the former president who was Ahmadinejad's "moderate" electoral opponent, once pointed out smugly that "the use of an atomic bomb against Israel would totally destroy Israel, while [the same] against the Islamic world would only cause damage. Such a scenario is not inconceivable." If that is the voice of pragmatism in Iran, would you trust deterrence against the messianic Ahmadinejad?

Not to be a cold-hearted bastard, but Israel is not part of the United States. They are an ally with their own nuclear arsenal and can take care of themselves. And as for Rafsanjani, he also said "We have no problems with Jews and highly respect Judaism as a holy religion."

Even if Iran did not drop a bomb on Israel or hand one to terrorists, its mere possession of such a device would have devastating consequences. Coming on top of North Korea's nuclear test, it would spell finis to the entire nonproliferation system.

As I see it, this is the real danger of an Iranian nuclear weapon - the precedent that it creates for the rest of the world.

And then there is a consequence that seems to have been thought about much less but could be the most harmful of all: Tehran could achieve its goal of regional supremacy. Jordan's King Abdullah II, for instance, has warned of an emerging Shiite "crescent." But Abdullah's comment understates the danger. If Iran's reach were limited to Shiites, it would be constrained by their minority status in the Muslim world as well as by the divisions between Persians and Arabs.

But such ethnic-based analysis fails to take into account Iran's charisma as the archenemy of the United States and Israel and the leverage it achieves as the patron of radicals and rejectionists. Given that, the old assumptions about Shiites and Sunnis may not hold any longer. Iran's closest ally today is Syria, which is mostly Sunni. The link between Tehran and Damascus is ideological, not theological. Similarly, Iran supports the Palestinian groups Islamic Jihad and Hamas, which are overwhelmingly Sunni (and as a result, Iran has grown popular in the eyes of Palestinians).

First, it's ludicrous to believe that ideology and theology can be separate. Second, Syria, while overwhelmingly Sunni, it is run by a Shi'ite (Alawite) government - any attempt to characterize its foreign relations as "Sunni" is dishonest. Third, Iran is a country of 70 million people, as many as Syria, Saudi Arabia and Iraq combined (in the region, only Egypt has a higher population, 80 million). Between its population and oil reserves, it will be the significant regional player whether it has a nuclear weapon or not.

During the Lebanon war this summer, we saw how readily Muslims closed ranks across the Sunni-Shiite divide against a common foe (even as the two groups continued killing each other in Iraq). In Sunni Egypt, newborns were named "Hezbollah" after the Lebanese Shiite organization and "Nasrallah" after its leader. As Muslim scholar Vali Nasr put it: "A flurry of anti-Hezbollah [i.e., anti-Shiite] fatwas by radical Sunni clerics have not diverted the admiring gaze of Arabs everywhere toward Hezbollah."

Lebanese support for Hezbollah is not only amongst Muslims, but also significant amongst Christians and Druze, as this poll shows. Thus, characterizing it as "Iran ganging up with its fellow Muslims" is inaccurate. Many in Iran frame the conflict equally as imperialists versus natives.

In short, Tehran can build influence on a mix of ethnicity and ideology, underwritten by the region's largest economy. Nuclear weapons would bring regional hegemony within its reach by intimidating neighbors and rivals and stirring the admiration of many other Muslims.

As I stated earlier, Iran has regional hegemony within its reach with or without nuclear weapons.

This would thrust us into a new global struggle akin to the one we waged so painfully with the Soviet Union for 40-odd years. It would be the "clash of civilizations" that has been so much talked about but so little defined.

When Muravchik says "so much talked about," he really means "that we neoconservatives dream about at night." However, as Doug Muder, says, the struggle is in reality a struggle between extremists and moderates, rather than between Christians and Muslims.

Iran might seem little match for the United States, but that is not how Ahmadinejad sees it. He and his fellow jihadists believe that the Muslim world has already defeated one infidel superpower (the Soviet Union) and will in time defeat the other.

Russia was poor and weak in 1917 when Lenin took power, as was Germany in 1933 when Hitler came in.

Both Russia and Germany had been Great Powers in 1914, and both were uniquely poised to return to Great Power status. Anyone who argues that Iran is a Great Power will be laughed at.

Neither, in the end, was able to defeat the United States, but each of them unleashed unimaginable suffering before they succumbed. And despite its weakness, Iran commands an asset that neither of them had: a natural advantage in appealing to the world's billion-plus Muslims.

To assert that the Soviet Union had no "natural advantages" to appealing to populations outside its own borders is laughable. Wasn't that the whole theme of neoconservatives before 1991 - that Communists were everywhere because their ideology was so attractive? Also, Iran's natural advantage only exists because a) of the total lack of public diplomacy by the United States, and b) the United States' support for policies that can be perceived as anti-Muslim (perception matters more than reality in these cases).

If Tehran establishes dominance in the region, then the battlefield might move to Southeast Asia or Africa or even parts of Europe, as the mullahs would try to extend their sway over other Muslim peoples. In the end, we would no doubt win, but how long this contest might last and what toll it might take are anyone's guess.

Didn't Muravchik get the memo? The battlefield already is in Europe, and it has less to do with Iran and more to do with our ally, Saudi Arabia.

The only way to forestall these frightening developments is by the use of force. Not by invading Iran as we did Iraq, but by an air campaign against Tehran's nuclear facilities. We have considerable information about these facilities; by some estimates they comprise about 1,500 targets. If we hit a large fraction of them in a bombing campaign that might last from a few days to a couple of weeks, we would inflict severe damage. This would not end Iran's weapons program, but it would certainly delay it.

Iran is already ten years away from a nuclear weapon, if they are trying to build one at all. I do not understand why we need to kill people in order to delay them further, when everybody acknowledges that this is not even a real solution. I also do not agree that the only way to forestall an Iranian bomb is by force - using force will merely encourage Iran to speed up any potential nuclear weapons program they have, just like Israeli action at Osirak did.

What should be the timing of such an attack? If we did it next year, that would give time for U.N. diplomacy to further reveal its bankruptcy yet would come before Iran will have a bomb in hand (and also before our own presidential campaign). In time, if Tehran persisted, we might have to do it again.

Can President Bush take such action after being humiliated in the congressional elections and with the Iraq war having grown so unpopular? Bush has said that history's judgment on his conduct of the war against terror is more important than the polls. If Ahmadinejad gets his finger on a nuclear trigger, everything Bush has done will be rendered hollow. We will be a lot less safe than we were when Bush took office.

Ahmadinejad will not have his finger on a nuclear trigger, because the President of Iran is not the commander in chief of the Iranian military - the Supreme Leader, Khamenei, is.

Finally, wouldn't such a U.S. air attack on Iran inflame global anti-Americanism? Wouldn't Iran retaliate in Iraq or by terrorism? Yes, probably. That is the price we would pay. But the alternative is worse.

After the Bolshevik takeover of Russia in 1917, a single member of Britain's Cabinet, Winston Churchill, appealed for robust military intervention to crush the new regime. His colleagues weighed the costs — the loss of soldiers, international derision, revenge by Lenin — and rejected the idea.

The costs were avoided, and instead the world was subjected to the greatest man-made calamities ever. Communism itself was to claim perhaps 100 million lives, and it also gave rise to fascism and Nazism, leading to World War II. Ahmadinejad wants to be the new Lenin. Force is the only thing that can stop him.

Communism did not cause fascism or Nazism. That is just silly.

Many neoconservatives insist on seeing the world through the prism of Munich 1938. The reality is that Ahmadinejad is not Hitler and is not the dictator of Germany. Iran, unlike Germany in 1933, has no extra-territorial ambitions.

Similarly, Islam is not Communism, and is not a great evil to be defeated. There is no "Clash of Civilizations." The "War on Terror" is not the new Cold War. Al Qaeda will never threaten the existence of the United States or the existence of humanity.

Muravchik's logic goes like this:
Iran is making a bomb --> they must be stopped --> non-coercive measures haven't worked yet --> coercive measures will work --> we must bomb Iran.

My logic goes like this:
Iran may or may not be making a bomb --> let's not kill people until we know wtf is going on.