JINSA Report #557 Nukes and Talks

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March 20, 2006

JINSA Report #557

Nukes and Talks

It's not nukes, as such, that pose a problem. Britain has them, so does
France; and if Israel does, it doesn't worry us. Our feelings about
Soviet nukes changed for the better when they became Russian. We don't
like Chinese, Pakistani or North Korean ones, but Indian ones shouldn't
be an impediment to helping their civilian nuclear energy industry.
Hypothetical (?) Iranian nukes are the object of intense concern.

European-led talks on the subject were a fraud, a sham and worse than a
waste of time -the Iranians admit the U.S. was right about using the
negotiations to buy time for additional progress toward nuclear
capability. There is little chance of a better outcome at the UN and
very little hope of a unilateral Iranian decision to disarm a la Libya.
All the gaming scenarios appear to end with Iran acquiring nuclear
capability and, at best, using it for blackmail. Serious discussion
about Iran has, therefore, focused on the requirements for regime change
and/or military action to set back or eliminate the mullahs' program.

But every country is more than the sum of its most problematic parts,
and the U.S. has multiple interests with every country including Iran.
Hence the regular stipulation by Presidents and Secretaries of State
that America's problem is not with the Iranian people, but with their
government and specifically with their government's determination to
acquire nuclear weapons with which they have already threatened two
member states of the United Nations – one of which being us.

In that context, the American invitation to Iran to discuss our
legitimate interests in Iraq - and Iran's acceptance - raises
interesting diplomatic possibilities, particularly the possibility that
we both have legitimate interests.

Iran, after all, was attacked by Iraq in September 1980 and subjected to
missile attacks against its cities. Iran, therefore, has a strong and
legitimate interest in ensuring that Iraq does not reacquire the means
for cross-border warfare. Iran has an interest in the Shi'ite population
of southern Iraq - the ones President George H.W. Bush encouraged to
revolt against Saddam in 1991 and then abandoned, costing tens of
thousands of Shi'ite lives and engendering justified suspicion and
enmity toward the U.S. that hindered the liberation of Iraq 12 years
later. It has non-legitimate interests as well, and these need to be
taken into account.

The U.S., with a disciplined approach, might show that a stable Iraq
need not be a bad thing for Iran if it proves that a country of
disparate ethnic and religious groups can be governed from a consensual
center. Iran has more than 60 million people, only about half of who are
Persian. Acknowledging this has nothing to do with propping up the
mullahocracy – JINSA absolutely believes in democratic regime change,
but we do believe that Iran should be a unitary state, not fractured
into unstable duchies. All of it should be consensual and then democratic.

Given American problems in Iraq and with Iran, it will require creative
diplomacy to move both off dead (no pun intended) center, but it might
be a start.

To view this JINSA Report online click on the link below.
http://www.jinsa.org/JINSAReports/3360

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