Jaw-jaw and war-war

Churchill was right. And Leon Hadar makes the case.

Hadar, of the Cato Institute, admirably offers support to Barack Obama's strongest suit amidst a period of domestic policy-promotion that he, like me, is likely not happy with.

The Case for Engaging Iran

"Engaging Iran as part of an effort to freeze its nuclear program would not be a reward to the Ayatollahs. It would be part of a strategy to advance U.S. strategic interests which successive American administrations have implemented by engaging anti-American totalitarian regimes (Soviet Union; China) as well as those espousing anti-Israeli and even anti-Semitic views (Saudi Arabia) which, unlike Iran, have not even pretended to hold free elections.

Obama should also recognize that a reversal of his engagement policy, or even an attempt to slow it down, would only play into the hands of the extremists in both Tehran and Washington. It would create a diplomatic vacuum in which an Israeli military strike against Iran's nuclear sites would become inevitable.

Indeed, the danger with subscribing to the current conventional wisdom on Iran is that it could prove to be a self-fulfilling prophecy."

Hadar is wrong, I believe, to argue that Iran is not being provocative in its nuclear ambitions or that they have nothing to do with anti-American or anti-Western sentiment. To the contrary, I'm fairly certain that this is driving much of the current efforts, even as he is correct to argue his larger point, which is that a nuclear capability is not only the ambition of Kahmeni, Ahmadinejad, and their conservative and clerical allies.

That is actually the trick in Iran that does not get discussed much because it contradicts American ambitions to prevent a regime we do not trust and who is hostile to American power from developing a nuclear capability.

The truth is that the reason that developing a nuclear capability is popular across the political spectrum, as Hadar rightly argues, I believe, is because there is a legitimate self-defence policy interest involved that Americans consistently gloss over because they just don't want Iran to get the bomb.

But Americans are having a hard time, right now, grasping what Americans have a hard time grasping, generally. Which is that just because America wants something doesn't mean that they get it or deserve it.

Iran does have a legitimate interest in self-defense. Especially in recent years when it has been threatened repeatedly with invasion. Which threats, obvious to any observer not trying to defend America and Israeli behavior, and threats, generally, to Iran's self-defense capabilities, have accelerated their nuclear ambitions, not decelerated those efforts. Iran's pursuit of nuclear weapons only got hot AFTER Americans and the Bush Administration took off in hot pursuit to stop them from moving in that direction. And it did so because that Iranian regime saw such overtures, rationally and irrationally as a real threat and rationally as an encroachment on their sovereign right to self-defense.

Our efforts, since 2003, have clearly increased their pursuit of those weapons, not deterred them, by any objective assessment. The reason so many people are failing to make that assessment is because many folks are being defensive of a policy that has clearly failed, by any fair measure. And for many years, now.

Hadar is right that to avoid more of that same failure, we need a diplomatic course that discusses issues like Iran's right to self-defense and how that can be guaranteed under any agreement. Including an arrangment where Iran has a nuclear capability but it less hostile to American or Israeli interests, which would seem the much smarter and sensible policy, given the commitment to effect it through diplomacy.

That does not mean that America or Israel needs to allow itself to be bullied by Iranians who might use such a weapon for nuclear brinksmanship. The American and Israeli capacity is clearly many times stronger, by any objective measure. It is true that an Iranian strike could do damage - likely to Israel, hence their heightened concern - that a retaliatory strike could not undo.

But it should be clear after 6 full years of consistent failure in the more provocative and aggressive direction that this policy is not effective, in the long term, and has serious counterproductive consequences that its advocates are not honestly accounting for.

Hadar's argument does more honestly account for those failures and encourage President Obama in the one feature of his policy thinking that is his biggest strength: his willingness to engage. Long term, an Iran less hostile to American and Israeli interests, and Americans and Israelis, or more tempered in its pursuit of nuclear ambitions, at least those that are hostile to Americans and Israelis, is far more desireable than an Iran in hot pursuit of nuclear weapons, and with a propensity to use them in hostile fashion, because we are in hot pursuit of their regime.

Americans and Israelis can continue to entertain the fantasy that a strike on Iran or some other form of strong-arming will finally bring Iran to bear under the will of its American and Israeli masters. But there is only more failure and danger that lies in that direction.

Perhaps a more reasoned and honestly effective policy might do better.