"If you're interested in avoiding World War III, it seems like you ought to be interested in preventing [Iran] from having the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon."
- George W. Bush
October 17th, 2007
There seems to be a lack of reality when it comes to the debate over United States' action towards Iran. When President of Iran Mahmoud Ahmadinehad was invited to speak at Colombia, the President of the university Lee Bollinger described Ahmadinehad as, "You exhibit all the signs of a petty and cruel dictator."
Neoconservative Norman Podhoretz has written that Ahmadinehad is "like Hitler...a revolutionary whose objective is to overturn the going international system and to replace it...with a new order dominated by Iran and ruled by religio-political culture of Islamofascism." But even if Ahmadinehad may exhibit signs of a petty and cruel dictator (which I'll subscribe to), what people are missing is whether Ahmadinehad , and Iran for that matter, has the power to establish any form of world-run Islamofascism.
Here are the facts:
- Iran has an annual GDP of $610 billion, versus our $13 trillion.
- Their defense budget is around $4.8 million, versus our $530 billion
- The CIA has estimated that it'll take Iran three to eight years to have nuclear power (which by then Ahmadinehad would not be president, which isn't like it matters at this point)
- Syria and Iraq are exceptionally allied AGAINST Iran (remember the 1980s Iran-Iraq War?)
- Mahmoud Ahmadinehad is not in charge of Iran's army, barely in charge of the budget, does not have any say in foreign policy, he's not part of the intelligence apparatus, he can't even pass, moreover suggest, any laws in Iran.
So to call Mahmoud Ahmadinehad a dictator is to give him more credit than what he deserves, and instead only plays into his hands and ego. When moderate Mohammed Khatami was elected president in Iran in 1997, conservatives played him off as a figurehead; real power was wielded by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. But now that Iran seems to be a threat, all of our political power is concentrated on the wrong target, Ahmadinehad.
It is frightening that our country seems to be leading towards a confrontation (starting with Congress voting to call Iran's Revolutionary Guard a terrorist organization) without knowing anything about Iran and its people. Most Americans do not know that a large portion of Iranians are actually pro-American (in comparison to their own country), and according to an Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting poll, Ahmadinehad has an approval rating of 35%. In this, we seem to be repeating the same mistakes that we made in Iraq when we started to assume certain aspects of the Iraqi populace.
When Rudy Giuliani compared Iran to Cold War Soviet Union and China, he claims that Iran is more dangerous than the Soviet Union and China because the Soviet Union and China had a "residual rationality." Oh really? Two countries that killed and starved their own people, ignited revolutions in order to set up satellite states, actually FOUGHT against the United States at one time or another, are more reasonable than Iran?
The one time we've ever negotiated with Iran was when they helped us in the Afghanistan War in 2002, in which representative James Dobbin described them as, " very professional. straightforward, reliable and helpful. They were also critical to our success."
I'm not saying that we can immediately go back to our pre-Iraq War popularity (and credibility, for that matter) and strike up a friendship with Iran, but I do think we need to consider all the facts before we play up Iran as some threatening world power. We should perhaps consider what they want, what they need, what diplomatic issues that can be settled, before we repeat another preemptive and unilateral attack that would likely cause blowback against our nation.
As for Ahmadinehad? There is an old saying that goes, "The best way to defeat the devil is to mock him." The best example I've seen of this was at Colombia University, in which Ahmadinehad claims that there were no homosexuals in his country, which prompted laughter in the audience. And this is exactly how we should treat Ahmadinehad, as a powerless clown on the world stage, as opposed to propping him up as the next Hitler, which will only ferment his power and "credibility" in the world.
PS- Whatever happened to Kim Jong Il? It seems like he dropped out of foreign policy dialog after he attained a nuke.
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Yeah Iran may not be a giant threat by itself, but this is the country who vowed to anillate Israel or ally off the face of the planet, if it obtains the power to. A.K.A. NUKES! Secondly they are friends with a few countries we really don't like. Such as Russia, China, and our great friends Venezula. Now it almost seems like sides are being drawn. Now WWIII right here, right now, I think not yet Mr. Bush. But if there is one thing he might have gotten right during his presidency is that a dangerous situation is brewing. We may have never gone to war with Iran, but we did provide Iraq with supplies to blow them up in the war between Iraq & Iran. We also are dealing with them right now in Iraq, with Iran helping making the roadside bombs, that are killing so many American troops. So a threat now? Who knows but Iran's days are numbered, because you know they are goners if France has suggested War possiblity with them. And we all know the french don't go to war, unless they feel threatened. :)
"When I go into politics, I will change Washington D.C., not let it change who I am." - Me
But the thing is, when Iran, or Ahmadinejad to be specific, says things like they're going to wipe Israel off the map, or that the Holocaust never happen, they only say it as a form of political capital. To say anything that demonizes the West is going to win supporters in the Middle East, because people in the Middle East often times feel that the West is an imminent threat to their national security (remember, we have Iran surrounded on two fronts, Iraq and Afghanistan). It's almost the same way in which Barry Goldwater threatened to nuke Vietnam were he elected, or Tom Tancredo's vow to bomb Mecca; they use it more as a way to sway voters than as actual forms of policy. So I don't want to use Ahmadinejad's comments on Israel and the Holocaust as a reason to go to war with them because those comments are too peripheral, and I think what we should concentrate on is how powerful they are (which they aren't), and how much we can negotiate diplomatically (which we've done before).
Furthermore, we're actually on good terms with China. They're one of our biggest trading partners (next to Canada and Mexico, obviously), and are the ones paying off our national debt. We're kind of murky with Russia, because even though George Bush claims to have seen Vladimir Putin's soul in his eyes (which personally I say stone cold death), Putin's record on human rights is pretty bad (with all those mysterious dead journalists). As for Venezuela, they don't really make an impact on the world, or the United States for that matter.