The Iran Problem with Hanson & Baer

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 30, 2009
The Iran Problem with Hanson & Baer: Chapter 5 of 5
How should Obama deal with both Iran and Israel? Victor Davis Hanson and Robert Baer summarize the options.
PERMALINK

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 29, 2009 The Iran Problem with Hanson & Baer: Chapter 4 of 5 Will Israel strike first against Iran? Victor Davis Hanson and Robert Baer discuss the politics and ramifications of this prospect. PERMALINK

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 28, 2009 The Iran Problem with Hanson & Baer: Chapter 3 of 5 What can the U.S. do about Iran? Victor Davis Hanson and Robert Baer offer their prescriptions. PERMALINK

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 27, 2009 The Iran Problem with Hanson & Baer: Chapter 2 of 5 Victor Davis Hanson and Robert Baer describe the motivations and goals of the regime in Tehran. PERMALINK

MONDAY, OCTOBER 26, 2009
The Iran Problem with Hanson & Baer: Chapter 1 of 5
Is the Iranian nuclear threat real? Victor Davis Hanson and Robert Baer say yes.
PERMALINK

The Carter Ricochet Effect Jimmy Carter's presidency offers a lesson in how the purest intentions can lead to the most disastrous results.

An idealistic president takes office promising an era of American moral renewal at home and abroad. The effort includes a focus on diplomacy and peace-making, an aversion to the use of force, the selling out of old allies. The result is that within a couple of years the U.S. is more suspected, detested and enfeebled than ever.

No, we're not talking about Barack Obama. But since the current administration took office offering roughly the same prescriptions as Jimmy Carter did, it's worth recalling how that worked out.

How it worked out became inescapably apparent 30 years ago this month. On Nov. 20, 1979, Sunni religious fanatics led by a dark-eyed charismatic Saudi named Juhayman bin Seif al Uteybi seized Mecca's Grand Mosque, Islam's holiest site. After a two week siege distinguished mainly by its incompetence, Saudi forces were able to recapture the mosque at a cost of several hundred lives.

By any objective account—the very best of which was offered by Wall Street Journal reporter Yaroslav Trofimov in his 2007 book "The Siege of Mecca"—the battle at the Grand Mosque was a purely Sunni affair pitting a fundamentalist Islamic regime against ultra-fundamentalist renegades. Yet throughout the Muslim world, the Carter administration was viewed as the main culprit. U.S. diplomatic missions in Bangladesh, India, Turkey and Libya were assaulted; in Pakistan, the embassy was burned to the ground. How could that happen to a country whose president was so intent on making his policies as inoffensive as possible?

The answer was, precisely, that Mr. Carter had set out to make America as inoffensive as possible. Two weeks before Juhayman seized the Grand Mosque, Iranian radicals seized the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, taking 66 Americans hostage. They did so after Mr. Carter had refused to bail out the Shah, as the Eisenhower administration had in 1953, and after Andrew Young, Mr. Carter's U.N. ambassador, had described the Ayatollah Khomeini as "somewhat of a saint."

They also did so after Mr. Carter had scored his one diplomatic coup by brokering a peace deal between Egypt and Israel. Today, the consensus view of the Obama administration is that solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict would ease tensions throughout the region. But worthy though it was in its own right, peace between Egypt and Israel was also a fillip for Sunni and Shiite radicals alike from Tehran to Damascus to Beirut to Gaza. Whatever else the Middle East has been since the signing of the Camp David Accords, it has not been a more peaceful place.

Nor has it been any less inclined to hate the U.S., no matter whether the president is a peace-loving Democrat or a war-mongering Republican. "Everywhere, there was the same explanation," Mr. Trofimov writes in his account of the attack on the U.S. Embassy in Islamabad. "American institutions, declared a student leader in Lahore, had to be burned down because 'the Holy Kaaba had been occupied by Americans and the Jews.'"

On the other hand, among Muslims inclined to favor the U.S., the Carter administration's instincts for knee-jerk conciliation and panicky withdrawals only had the effect of alienating them from their ostensible protector. Coming as it did so soon after Khomeini's rise to power and the revolutionary fervors which it unleashed, the siege of Mecca carried the real risk of undermining pro-American regimes throughout the region. Yet American embassies were repeatedly instructed not to use their Marines to defend against intruders, as well as to pull their personnel from the country.

"The move didn't go unnoticed among Muslim radicals," notes Mr. Trofimov. "A chain of events unleashed by the takeover in Mecca had put America on the run from the lands of Islam. America's foes drew a conclusion that Osama bin Laden would often repeat: when hit hard, America flees, 'dragging its tail in failure, defeat, and ruin, caring for nothing.'" It is no accident, too, that the Soviet Union chose to invade Afghanistan the following month, as it observed a vacillating president who would not defend what previously were thought to be inviolable U.S. strategic interests.

Today, President Obama likes to bemoan the "mess" he inherited overseas, the finger pointed squarely at President Bush. But the real mess he inherited comes straight out of 1979, the serial debacles of which define American challenges in the Middle East just as surely as the triumphs of 1989 define our opportunities in Europe. True, the furies that were unleashed that year in Mecca, Tehran and elsewhere in the Muslim world were not of America's making. But absence of guilt is no excuse for innocence of policy.

Pretty soon, Mr. Obama will have his own Meccas and Tehrans to deal with, perhaps in Jerusalem and Cairo. He would do well to cast a backward glance at the tenure of his fellow Nobel peace laureate, as an object lesson in how even the purest of motives can lead to the most disastrous results.

Obama's French Lesson

"President Obama, I support the Americans' outstretched hand. But what did the international community gain from these offers of dialogue? Nothing." -- French President Nicolas Sarkozy, Sept. 24

WASHINGTON -- When France chides you for appeasement, you know you're scraping bottom. Just how low we've sunk was demonstrated by the Obama administration's satisfaction when Russia's president said of Iran, after meeting President Obama at the U.N., that "sanctions are seldom productive, but they are sometimes inevitable."
You see? The Obama magic. Engagement works. Russia is on board. Except that, as The Washington Post inconveniently pointed out, President Dmitry Medvedev said the same thing a week earlier, and the real power in Russia, Vladimir Putin, had changed not at all in his opposition to additional sanctions. And just to make things clear, when Iran then brazenly test-fired offensive missiles, Russia reacted by declaring that this newest provocation did not warrant the imposition of tougher sanctions.

Do the tally. In return for selling out Poland and the Czech Republic by unilaterally abrogating a missile-defense security arrangement that Russia had demanded be abrogated, we get from Russia ... what? An oblique hint, of possible support, for unspecified sanctions, grudgingly offered and of dubious authority -- and, in any case, leading nowhere because the Chinese have remained resolute against any Security Council sanctions.

Confusing ends and means, the Obama administration strives mightily for shows of allied unity, good feeling and pious concern about Iran's nuclear program -- whereas the real objective is stopping that program. This feel-good posturing is worse than useless, because all the time spent achieving gestures is precious time granted Iran to finish its race to acquire the bomb.

Don't take it from me. Take it from Sarkozy, who could not conceal his astonishment at Obama's naivete. On Sept. 24, Obama ostentatiously presided over the Security Council. With 14 heads of state (or government) at the table, with an American president at the chair for the first time ever, with every news camera in the world trained on the meeting, it would garner unprecedented worldwide attention.

Unknown to the world, Obama had in his pocket explosive revelations about an illegal uranium enrichment facility that the Iranians had been hiding near Qom. The French and the British were urging him to use this most dramatic of settings to stun the world with the revelation and to call for immediate action.

Obama refused. Not only did he say nothing about it, but, reports Le Monde, Sarkozy was forced to scrap the Qom section of his speech. Obama held the news until a day later -- in Pittsburgh. I've got nothing against Pittsburgh (site of the G-20 summit), but a stacked-with-world-leaders Security Council chamber, it is not.

Why forgo the opportunity? Because Obama wanted the Security Council meeting to be about his own dream of a nuclear-free world. The president, reports The New York Times citing "White House officials," did not want to "dilute" his disarmament resolution "by diverting to Iran."

Diversion? It's the most serious security issue in the world. A diversion from what? From a worthless U.N. disarmament resolution?

Yes. And from Obama's star turn as planetary visionary: "The administration told the French," reports The Wall Street Journal, "that it didn't want to 'spoil the image of success' for Mr. Obama's debut at the U.N."

Image? Success? Sarkozy could hardly contain himself. At the council table, with Obama at the chair, he reminded Obama that "we live in a real world, not a virtual world."

He explained: "President Obama has even said, 'I dream of a world without (nuclear weapons).' Yet before our very eyes, two countries are currently doing the exact opposite."

Sarkozy's unspoken words? "And yet, sacre bleu, he's sitting on Qom!"

At the time, we had no idea what Sarkozy was fuming about. Now we do. Although he could hardly have been surprised by Obama's fecklessness. After all, just a day earlier in addressing the General Assembly, Obama actually said, "No one nation can ... dominate another nation." That adolescent mindlessness was followed with the declaration that "alignments of nations rooted in the cleavages of a long-gone Cold War" in fact "make no sense in an interconnected world." NATO, our alliances with Japan and South Korea, our umbrella over Taiwan, are senseless? What do our allies think when they hear such nonsense?

Bismarck is said to have said: "There is a providence that protects idiots, drunkards, children, and the United States of America." Bismarck never saw Obama at the U.N. Sarkozy did.

We've Been Talking to Iran for 30 Years

The Obama administration's talks with Iran—set to take place tomorrow in Geneva—are accompanied by an almost universally accepted misconception: that previous American administrations refused to negotiate with Iranian leaders. The truth, as Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said last October at the National Defense University, is that "every administration since 1979 has reached out to the Iranians in one way or another and all have failed."

After the fall of the shah in February 1979, the Carter administration attempted to establish good relations with the revolutionary regime. We offered aid, arms and understanding. The Iranians demanded that the United States honor all arms deals with the shah, remain silent about human-rights abuses carried out by the new regime, and hand over Iranian "criminals" who had taken refuge in America. The talks ended with the seizure of the American Embassy in November.

View Full Image

Associated Press

President Jimmy Carter announces that the U.S. will seek economic sanctions against Iran, Dec. 21, 1979. Secretary of State Cyrus Vance looks on.

The Reagan administration—driven by a desire to gain the release of the American hostages—famously sought a modus vivendi with Iran in the midst of the Iran-Iraq War during the mid-1980s. To that end, the U.S. sold weapons to Iran and provided military intelligence about Iraqi forces. High-level American officials such as Robert McFarlane met secretly with Iranian government representatives to discuss the future of the relationship. This effort ended when the Iran-Contra scandal erupted in late 1986.

The Clinton administration lifted sanctions that had been imposed by Messrs. Carter and Reagan. During the 1990s, Iranians (including the national wrestling team) entered the U.S. for the first time since the '70s. The U.S. also hosted Iranian cultural events and unfroze Iranian bank accounts. President Bill Clinton and Secretary of State Madeleine Albright publicly apologized to Iran for purported past sins, including the overthrow of Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh's government by the CIA and British intelligence in August 1953. But it all came to nothing when Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei proclaimed that we were their enemies in March 1999.

Most recently, the administration of George W. Bush—invariably and falsely described as being totally unwilling to talk to the mullahs—negotiated extensively with Tehran. There were scores of publicly reported meetings, and at least one very secret series of negotiations. These negotiations have rarely been described in the American press, even though they are the subject of a BBC documentary titled "Iran and the West."

At the urging of British Foreign Minister Jack Straw, the U.S. negotiated extensively with Ali Larijani, then-secretary of Iran's National Security Council. By September 2006, an agreement had seemingly been reached. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Nicholas Burns, her top Middle East aide, flew to New York to await the promised arrival of an Iranian delegation, for whom some 300 visas had been issued over the preceding weekend. Mr. Larijani was supposed to announce the suspension of Iranian nuclear enrichment. In exchange, we would lift sanctions. But Mr. Larijani and his delegation never arrived, as the BBC documentary reported.

Negotiations have always been accompanied by sanctions. But neither has produced any change in Iranian behavior.

Until the end of 2006—and despite appeals for international support, notably from Mr. Clinton—sanctions were almost exclusively imposed by the U.S. alone. Mr. Carter issued an executive order forbidding the sale of anything to Tehran except food and medical supplies. Mr. Reagan banned the importation of virtually all Iranian goods and services in October 1987. Mr. Clinton issued an executive order in March 1995 prohibiting any American involvement with petroleum development. The following May he issued an additional order tightening those sanctions. Five years later, Secretary of State Albright eased some of the sanctions by allowing Americans to buy and import carpets and some food products, such as dried fruits, nuts and caviar.

Mr. Bush took spare parts for commercial aircraft off the embargo list in the fall of 2006. On the other hand, in 2008 he revoked authorization of so-called U-turn transfers, making it illegal for any American bank to process transactions involving Iran—even if non-Iranian banks were at each end.

Throughout this period, our allies advocated for further diplomacy instead of sanctions. But beginning in late 2006, the United Nations started passing sanctions of its own. In December of that year, the Security Council blocked the import or export of "sensitive nuclear material and equipment" and called on member states to freeze the assets of anyone involved with Iran's nuclear program.

In 2007, the Security Council banned all arms exports from Iran, froze Iranian assets, and restricted the travel of anyone involved in the Iranian nuclear program. The following year, it called for investigations of Iranian banks, and authorized member countries to start searching planes and ships coming or going from or to Iran. All to no avail.

Thirty years of negotiations and sanctions have failed to end the Iranian nuclear program and its war against the West. Why should anyone think they will work now? A change in Iran requires a change in government. Common sense and moral vision suggest we should support the courageous opposition movement, whose leaders have promised to end support for terrorism and provide total transparency regarding the nuclear program.

Mr. Ledeen, a scholar at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, is the author, most recently, of "Accomplice to Evil: Iran and the War Against the West," out next month from St. Martin's Press.

The Limits of Reinvention: If you think the U.S. was hated for being strong, wait until you see how it’s despised for being weak.

By Denis Boyles

It’s like the heady days of Paris, 2005. This week, the French ruling clique is having a go at America, pouring vintage disdain on American puissance — and finding that power woefully misapplied.

This was all supposed to change under Pres. Barack Obama, the first U.S. president in history to take a global lap just to say he’s sorry for his country’s behavior. His plan was to reinvent America’s image in the world. He became an overnight sensation in Paris, delighting les médiacrates with his easy dismissal of French president Nicolas Sarkozy and his wife, Carla Bruni. Months later, in France, the only person more popular with the press than Roman Polanski is Barack Obama.

But that may soon change — as it has already at the Elysée, and, for that matter, in government offices in Berlin and in Brussels and in the eastern capitals. In those places, Barack Obama, the man who practically invented reinvention, is himself being reinvented as an ugly American. Not because he’s seen as loud and aggressive, but because he’s seen as weak.

The events that have transpired since Obama took office nine months ago have been watched with widening eyes in Europe, and what they’re seeing isn’t what they had in mind when they too asked for “change.”

First, his attempt to reinvent the global banking system while pouring nearly a trillion dollars into mostly unproductive government swamps was seen by those who ought to know as nothing more than a series of simple political bribes. The Europeans — save only Britain — ridiculed the plan, stuck to their own solutions, and proved themselves right.

Then came a big wave of limpnesses — the inability to deal with North Korea; surrendering to Russia on the missile shield, leaving our eastern European allies to twist in the wind; even the mishandled melodrama in Honduras — all suggested something other than shock-and-awe. Meanwhile, his reinvention of state-run health care isn’t impressing Europeans very much, that’s for sure.

Even events that Obama may have had little to do with — the release of the Lockerbie terrorist, for example — have added to the growing perception that America is even weaker than its dollar. There’s a growing sense that, like its dollar, America as the global superpower must be doomed to be replaced by something more resilient, more realistic, more durable. Something stronger.

The latest example: At his U.N. debut last week, Obama shocked the Europeans — and especially Sarkozy — by responding to the Iranian nuclear crisis not with fair firmness, but with platitudes about arms control, the reinvention of disarmament, and achieving peace in his term.

The story-behind-the-story was an important one, and it’s been nearly overlooked. Sarkozy, who had been pressing for a forceful warning to the Iranians, had to tone down his own response. Instead, he simply pointed out that Iran had made threats that ought to be taken seriously by America and the world, but that clearly wasn’t happening. He mocked Obama by telling Le Monde’s diplomatic correspondent that the American president wasn’t living in the real world — a “virtual world,” he called it.

The story was picked up by the Wall Street Journal. That piece was then echoed by Nile Gardiner in the Daily Telegraph. Both thought it was appalling that the president of France should be telling the president of the U.S.A. how to stand up straight. As the Journal put it, “We thought we’d never see the day when the President of France shows more resolve than America’s Commander in Chief for confronting one of the gravest challenges to global security. But here we are.”

At the moment, then, this is all just an excursion in irony. The current campaign in Afghanistan seems doomed to fail, not just because of an unwillingness to commit the manpower and resources necessary to do the work — call that “pragmatic weakness,” if you will — but because NATO itself is falling prey to Obama’s “reinvention” craze. Here’s an L. A. Times headline sure to terrify every serious European leader: “Obama: New NATO coming, shape and strategy TBD.”

But reinvention has its limits, and so far Obama has found every one. The Europeans rightly fear that the president of the United States is a man who would set out to reinvent the electric light — then leave us all holding candles. But singing “Kumbaya.”

A less-than-forceful America has serious implications for Europe. If Obama is willing to throw the Poles to Putin, what does that mean for the rest of Europe? Just the idea of defending themselves is enough to bankrupt most European states. A strong America may have been unpopular. That’s the price a nation pays for its superpower status, and even when the Left was at its most successful in demonizing the U.S., they could never quite diminish the hopeful respect for American ideals that always lurked nearby.

But Obama may have found a way to reinvent America as something in his own image, even if more loathsome: a weak nation shrinking from the responsibilities of strength. A weak America is a prize that Yank-bashers have been dreaming about for 50 years, because that’s an America that, perhaps rightly, will be truly and forever despised.

— Denis Boyles teaches at The Brouzils Seminars in France. His most recent book is Superior, Nebraska.

There Are Only Two Choices Left on Iran

Unless you are a connoisseur of small pictures of bearded, brooding fanatical clerics there is not much reason to collect Iranian currency. But I kept one bill on my desk at the State Department because of its watermark—an atom superimposed on the part of that country that harbors the Natanz nuclear site. Only the terminally innocent should have been surprised to learn that there is at least one other covert site, whose only purpose could be the production of highly enriched uranium for atom bombs.

Pressure, be it gentle or severe, will not erase that nuclear program. The choices are now what they ever were: an American or an Israeli strike, which would probably cause a substantial war, or living in a world with Iranian nuclear weapons, which may also result in war, perhaps nuclear, over a longer period of time.

Understandably, the U.S. government has hoped for a middle course of sanctions, negotiations and bargaining that would remove the problem without the ugly consequences. This is self-delusion. Yes, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and French President Nicolas Sarkozy stood side by side with President Barack Obama in Pittsburgh and talked sternly about lines in the sand; and yes, Russian President Dimitry Medvedev hinted that some kind of sanctions might, conceivably, be needed. They said the same things to, and with, President George W. Bush.

Though you would not know it to listen to Sunday talk shows, a large sanctions effort against Iran has been underway for some time. It has not worked to curb Tehran's nuclear appetite, and it will not. Sooner or later the administration, whose main diplomatic initiatives thus far have been a program of apologies and a few sharp kicks to small allies' shins, will have to recognize that fact.

The Iranian regime wants nuclear weapons and has invested vast sums to get both the devices and the means to deliver them. The Russians and Chinese have made soothing murmurs of disapproval but have repeatedly made it clear that they will not go along with measures that would cripple the Iranian economy (and deprive them of markets). German and Swiss businessmen will happily sell Iran whatever goods their not very exacting governments will permit, and our terrified Arab allies have nothing like the military capability to match their own understandable fears. So let's be serious about the choice, because we have less than a year to make it.

An Israeli strike may set back the Iranian program by some short period of time. What the Israelis can do is unclear: They play their tactical cards close to their vest, and they would take different approaches, and accept different risks, than the U.S. Air Force would. No surprise there, given that they believe, with reason, that the looming issues are existential.

But even if they achieved temporary success, it would be just that, because the Iranian program is very different from the Iraqi Osirak reactor that the Israelis nailed so precisely in 1981. It is far more dispersed and protected, and is based on thousands of centrifuges rather than a single nuclear reactor. Moreover, the chances are that it would evoke outrage throughout the Middle East (although Arab governments would privately rejoice at the event), and probably provoke an Iranian reaction that could involve a very large war as the Israelis are attacked by, and retaliate against, Iran's proxies in the Levant and throughout the world.

An American attack would be more effective, but it would take longer and probably lead to real warfare in the Persian Gulf, disrupting oil supplies and producing global responses. More to the point, it is difficult to believe that the Obama administration has the stomach for war. Its appalling public case of nerves over the war in Afghanistan—a "war of necessity," as of only a few months ago—is indicative of its true temper. And if President Obama does not have the courage to accept hazards and ugly surprises, and if he cannot bring himself to deploy his rhetorical skills to the mobilization of opinion at home and abroad, he should not start a shooting war, even if the Iranians are already waging one against us.

That leaves living with an Iranian bomb. But this too has enormous hazards. It will engender—it has already quietly engendered—a nuclear arms race in the region. It will embolden the Iranian regime to make much more lethal mischief than it has even now. In a region that respects strength, it will enhance, not diminish, Iranian prestige. And it may yield the first nuclear attack since 1945 some time down the road.

At the heart of the problem is not simply the nuclear program. It is the Iranian regime, a regime that has, since 1979, relentlessly waged war against the U.S. and its allies. From Buenos Aires to Herat, from Beirut to Cairo, from Baghdad to, now, Caracas, Iranian agents have done their best to disrupt and kill. Iran is militarily weak, but it is masterful at subversive war, and at the kind of high-tech guerrilla, roadside-bomb and rocket fight that Hezbollah conducted in 2006. American military cemeteries contain the bodies of hundreds, maybe thousands, of American servicemen and servicewomen slain by Iranian technology, Iranian tactics, and in some cases, Iranian operatives.

The brutality without is more than matched by the brutality within—the rape, torture and summary execution of civilians by the tens of thousands, down, quite literally, to the present day. This is a corrupt, fanatical, ruthless and unprincipled regime—unpopular, to be sure, but willing to do whatever it takes to stay in power. With such a regime, no real negotiation, based on understandings of mutual interest and respect for undertakings is possible.

It is, therefore, in the American interest to break with past policy and actively seek the overthrow of the Islamic Republic. Not by invasion, which this administration would not contemplate and could not execute, but through every instrument of U.S. power, soft more than hard. And if, as is most likely, President Obama presides over the emergence of a nuclear Iran, he had best prepare for storms that will make the squawks of protest against his health-care plans look like the merest showers on a sunny day.

Mr. Cohen teaches at Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies. He served as counselor of the State Department from 2007 to 2009.

With Obama, Too Much Nuance, Not Enough Power

"It is my deeply held belief," Barack Obama told the United Nations General Assembly, that "in the year 2009 -- more than at any point in human history -- the interests of nations and peoples are shared."

That is, of course, the year Obama became president, and he wasn't shy about referring in his second paragraph to "the expectations that accompany my presidency around the world," though he assured us they "are not about me."
Before Obama's speech, I wrote that he seems "stuck in a time warp in which the United States is the bad guy." Not any more, he seemed to say in his U.N. speech. He has ordered the closing of Guantanamo. He has prohibited the use of torture. He is "responsibly ending" the war in Iraq (no triumphalist talk of victory). He is promising substantial reductions in U.S. nuclear weapons. He has invested $80 billion in clean energy. The U.S.
has joined the United Nations' Human Rights Council.

All of which is a way of saying that nasty George W. Bush is no longer around with all his self-righteous swagger, and that with (as Obama did not fail to note) the first African-American installed in the White House, America is now on the same page with the rest of the world.

Much of the speech seemed to be an exercise in what Sigmund Freud called "projection," assuming that others think the way you do. Obama spoke as if the mullahs of Iran, the Kim Jong Il clan of North Korea, Vladimir Putin and his gang of oligarchs, and the rulers of China had the same gripes against the Bush administration as Obama and the liberal Democrats in Congress. Hey, if we just close Gitmo, they'll realize that we're all in sympathy now.

In that spirit, Obama at the General Assembly on Wednesday and while chairing the Security Council on Thursday tread warily on the issue of Iran's nuclear weapons program. "This is not about singling out individual nations," he said Wednesday, before stating that if Iran and North Korea "ignore international standards," they "must be held" -- in unspecified ways -- "accountable." The next day, the Security Council approved a resolution on the subject that did not name either country.

Yet on Friday, information became public that suggested that Obama's comments on Iran were an example not of Freudian projection but of what psychologists call "cognitive dissonance," refusing to process facts that conflict with deeply held beliefs. The information was that Iran has been operating a second uranium enrichment facility near the holy city of Qom and that it had so informed the International Atomic Energy Agency earlier in the week.

In response, Obama, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and French President Nicolas Sarkozy held a press conference Friday morning before the G-20 summit in Pittsburgh denouncing the Iranians. "Iran is breaking rules that all nations must follow," Obama said. "International law is not an empty promise."

But the Qom facility was not news to Obama. Western intelligence has long known about it, and Obama was briefed on it as president-elect. Even so, there was a sharp contrast between his wary references to Iran on Wednesday and Thursday, and his sharp criticism on Friday. There were probably good reasons -- protecting intelligence sources? -- for not disclosing the information before this week. But shouldn't the president's rhetoric on Wednesday and Thursday have reflected all that he knew?

Obama has based his policy toward Iran on the hope that its leaders would see the problem as he does -- projection -- and was apparently discounting contrary evidence like the Qom facility -- cognitive dissonance. Perhaps he views himself as, in the words of the Atlantic's Marc Ambinder, "the first president of the nuclear age who grew up with a nuanced view of American power."

Unfortunately, it is clear that even in the year 2009 the interests of nations and peoples are not as unanimously shared as Obama proclaimed Wednesday. Our diplomats and those of five other nations are scheduled to meet with an Iranian counterpart in Geneva on Oct. 1, but the Iranians have indicated they don't want to discuss nuclear weapons issues.

At a press briefing before the G-20 conference, Brown and Sarkozy threatened Iran with stringent international sanctions; congressional Democrats -- Sen. Evan Bayh and House Foreign Affairs Chairman Howard Berman -- and Sen. Joe Lieberman are pressing for tougher sanctions, too. Is the time over for nuance, projection and cognitive dissonance?

But Didn’t He Deceive Us?

The Obama spinners would tell you how canny and clever their man was–concealing that Iranian secret nuclear site and now using it to, well, set a new deadline, I guess. But he’s darn tough, that Obama. Marty Peretz calls foul, reminding us that Obama concealed the Iranian plans from the public and our allies:

Which, of course, means that the whole public discussion was conducted under the shadow of half-truth and misleading assurances. We had little reason to expect the truth from the Bushies. But we were promised a real change by the successors. In the end the truth came out because Iran sent an enigmatic little missive to the International Atomic Energy Agency admitting it had been constructing another nuclear facility.

Were the put-downs by U.S. intelligence of Israel’s urgency about Iran’s atomic accomplishments not distortions? I believe so. The only top security person who was honest in public was the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Mike Mullen. I believe that Israel was “canny” but didn’t make public all that it knew simply out of deference, first, to President Bush, latterly to President Obama. . . .

So what is going to happen with Washington’s highly vaunted engagement with Tehran? How much kicking around will the president take?

Not very much from the mainstream media and the Left blogosphere. Funny how, in good faith, George W. Bush acted on the best available U.S. intelligence estimates concerning Iraq (estimates shared by every other Western power and his Democratic critics) in defense of American security, while Obama plainly concealed the risk to American security posed by Iran, presumably so he could continue doing nothing for as long as possible about the Iranian nuclear threat.

Something is very, very wrong. But you’d never know it from the Obama sycophants for whom no justification for Obama’s egregious irresponsibility and timidity is too far-fetched.

Obama’s New Liberal Realism

President Obama has largely drawn praise for his tepid response to the mass uprisings in Iran challenging the reelection of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. In general, Obama has offered three justifications for his tentativeness — and they have strangely been accepted by his supporters, who almost immediately evolved in lockstep from liberal Wilsonians to hardcore realists.

Here are Obama’s three justifications:

1. Given the historical record of U.S. intervention in Iran, we do not wish either to perpetuate that shameful record, or to hang on the necks of the dissidents the smelly albatross of U.S. support.

2. We don’t know which side will emerge triumphant. Supporting losers in the street will only antagonize the Ahmadinejad regime and render Obama’s ongoing diplomatic overtures null and void.

3. There is not much difference anyway between the agendas of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and those of his challengers, led by Mir-Hossein Mousavi Khameneh. No matter who wins, Iran will still have an overtly anti-American government bent on acquiring nuclear weapons. Why then incur further hostility for a response that would bring no advantage anyway?

There are a number of things wrong with all this — well aside from the strange spectacle of seeing once-fervent liberal critics of old-style Kissingerian realism suddenly espousing Barack Obama’s kinder, gentler version of it.

1. The coup that unseated Mohammad Mossadeq was in 1953 — nearly six decades ago. Its details are still controversial: the proportional degree of CIA intervention compared to that of the British, the role of fundamentalist clerics in the opposition, the degree to which Mossadeq himself entertained authoritarian measures, and so on. What Kermit Roosevelt Jr. did or did not do as the CIA officer in charge, what were the actual intentions of the Mossadeq government in the Soviet-American Cold War rivalry — all of that is all now in the distant past.

Blaming America for undermining Mossadeq but not blaming it for later undermining the Shah is about as logical as claiming we must hold the current generations of Japanese accountable for Pearl Harbor, or that German actions in World War II permanently warped the American psyche, or that the Chinese Communists’ butchering thousands of Americans in Korea must be held against current generations of Chinese. At some point, all nations, big and small, need to get a life and move on. Of course, when one rushes in and blabbers out apologies without context, then one becomes a prisoner of those past actions — we are to be sorry about Iran then and so must be sorry ever after.

Iran, remember, has no such reluctance about meddling. It endorsed Bush in the 2004 presidential race — to the delight of the Kerry campaign. For six years, it has tried to murder Americans in Iraq and destabilize the Iraqi democracy. It has killed Americans in Lebanon and Saudi Arabia, and done its best to thwart democratic government in Afghanistan, Lebanon, and Iraq. How odd that Iranian theocrats have no worries about violently overthrowing democracy abroad, while we are terrified of supporting democracy by words alone.

Criticizing the Ahmadinejad government for its election fraud and its response to peaceful demonstrations is not synonymous with crudely egging on street demonstrations. Reagan found a way to voice support for the Polish resistance to Soviet thuggery. Kennedy made sure that the Berliners knew that we believed they were right and the Soviet-sponsored East German Communists wrong.

In contrast, Ford’s calculated snub of Solzhenitsyn brought no gratitude from the Soviets, but plenty of shame to America. The elder Bush’s allegiance to Gorbachev over Yeltsin was finally embarrassing, and was rendered obsolete almost before it was embraced. To the extent that George W. Bush spoke out against autocracy in the Gulf and Egypt, he was to be praised, and some liberalization followed; but to the extent that he grew quiet in his second term, we were branded as hypocrites for supporting freedom in Iraq but not elsewhere in the Arab world.

Support for the reformers can be framed in terms of shared criticism of what we and they oppose, rather than clumsy cheering for their own agenda.

2. Voicing careful and wise support for the challenge to Ahmadinejad’s thuggery can influence events. That’s why the European Union is well ahead of us in its condemnation of the Iranian election fraud and subsequent crackdown.

Ahmadinejad is going to blame the U.S. whatever it does. He rightly sized up the new administration and realized there is now an American government that will apologize for the CIA’s actions in 1953, but not ask Iran to apologize for its deplorable record in Iraq from 2003 to 2009. So it is a one-way street with Iran, and it’s better to be damned for voicing criticism than for being afraid to voice criticism.

The Iranian theocrats are realists par excellence; they do not give a damn about ideals or morality, and will deal with us in the future on their perception of their own self-interest: whether or not we “meddle” now, if they find it useful to talk in the future, they will; if they find it of no value to talk in the future, they won’t.

3. Obama’s third assumption makes even less sense than the first two. Mousavi may be a past supporter of Khomeinism, as are ostensibly all Iranian politicians. But he is not on a moral or even a practical par with Ahmadinejad. He has already voiced criticism of Holocaust denial, and has called for freer expression and communication, and for liberalization of Iranian theocratic law. In other words, he is a type of multicultural “other” who is a rational opponent of U.S. policy, but whom Obama actually could court.

Furthermore, the crowds seem already to have transcended Mousavi, seeing in him more a tool than a totem, hoping that his election would lead to far more liberalization than even he intended. One of the reasons Gorbachev was welcomed by Reagan was that he began to initiate change that would soon render Gorbachev himself obsolete. The same may well be true with Mousavi.

In conclusion, we are seeing a new multicultural realism in American foreign policy — the result of a number of currents in our popular culture. We do not judge the authoritarian “other” in the same way in which we judge authoritarian conservatives abroad who ape Westernism.

There is also a weird sort of multicultural fantasy about cleric-ruled Iran, fueled by the non-Western dress of its elites, the constant evocation of 1953 (ironically by fundamentalists whose forefathers approved of Mossadeq’s removal), and its serial Hollywood-like denunciation of America. Ahmadinejad brilliantly ties into the Che effect, which makes his blood-curdling remarks about Israel’s end about as disturbing to American public opinion as the fact that Che himself was a cold-blooded killer who executed the innocent with his own hands. Add it all up and we get a reprise of Bill Clinton at Davos in 2005 gushing on about Iranian democracy and its progressives, as if a rigged plebiscite overseen by a group of unshaven dictators in Nehru-like coats is somehow neat.

Iraq explains a lot — and provides the greatest irony of all. We wish not to meddle in Iran in order to encourage real democracy there, but we accept Iranian meddling intended to destroy Iraqi democracy. We reach out to the Shiite thug Ahmadinejad in Iran, but not to the Shiite moderate Maliki in Iraq. We feel so guilty about promoting Iraqi democracy that we won’t aid its budding counterpart in nearby Iran. We are so wedded to the canard that the removal of Saddam removed the counterweight to Iran and empowered the clerics that we cannot see the existence of Iraqi democracy as a great catalyst to the democratic forces in Iran, undermining the theocracy more with words than Iran could undermine the Iraqi democracy with guns.

Then, of course, there is Obama and his quest for a global messianic rather than an American presidential role. So far it pays to be Hamas and the Palestine Authority rather than Israel, Chávez rather than Uribe, Ahmadinejad rather than Maliki, Putin rather than an Eastern European elected prime minister, a Turkish Islamist rather than a Greek elected prime minister. The former all gain attention by their hostility, the latter earn neglect by their moderation and generally pro-American views. Praising Islam abroad is a lot more catchy than praising democracy — one boldly inspires Bush’s critics, the other sheepishly dovetails with Bush’s agenda. All that, in varying degrees, also explains the troubling neglect of the Iranians in the street.

One mystery remains: Does Obama do this because the squeaky problem gets the attention, or does he really empathize with the tired anti-colonial, anti-imperialist, and anti-capitalist refrain of those who used to be considered hostile?

Iran's New Target: Egypt: Cairo's desire for Mideast peace threatens Tehran's ambitions.

How to Put the Squeeze on Iran: Cutting off its gasoline imports may be the only peaceful way to get Tehran to abandon its nuclear weapons program.

If Barack Obama is to persuade Iran to negotiate away its illegal nuclear weapons program, he will first need to generate more leverage than what the Bush administration is leaving him with. The current U.N. sanctions have proven too weak to dissuade Tehran's leaders, and Russia and China seem determined to keep those sanctions weak. Meanwhile, the regime continues to insist there are no incentives in exchange for which it would halt or even limit its nuclear work.

David Klein

However, Tehran has an economic Achilles' heel -- its extraordinarily heavy dependence on imported gasoline. This dependence could be used by the United States to peacefully create decisive leverage over the Islamic Republic.

Iranian oil wells produce far more petroleum (crude oil) than Iran needs. Yet, remarkably for a country investing so much in nuclear power, Iran has not developed sufficient capacity to refine that crude oil into gasoline and diesel fuel. As a result, it must import some 40% of the gasoline it needs for internal consumption.

In recent months, Iran has, according to the respected trade publication International Oil Daily and other sources including the U.S. government, purchased nearly all of this gasoline from just five companies, four of them European: the Swiss firm Vitol; the Swiss/Dutch firm Trafigura; the French firm Total; British Petroleum; and one Indian company, Reliance Industries. If these companies stopped supplying Iran, the Iranians could replace only some of what they needed from other suppliers -- and at a significantly higher price. Neither Russia nor China could serve as alternative suppliers. Both are themselves also heavily dependent on imports of the type of gasoline Iran needs.

Were these companies to stop supplying gasoline to Iran, the world-wide price of oil would be unaffected -- the companies would simply sell to other buyers. But the impact on Iran would be substantial.

When Tehran attempted to ration gasoline during the summer of 2007, violent protests forced the regime to back down. Cutting off gasoline sales to Iran, or even a significant reduction, could have an even more dramatic effect.

In Congress, there is already bipartisan support for peacefully cutting off gasoline sales to Iran until it stops its illicit nuclear activities. Barack Obama, John McCain and the House of Representatives have all declared their support.

On June 4 of this year, for example, Sen. Obama said at a speech in Washington, D.C.: "We should work with Europe, Japan and the Gulf states to find every avenue outside the U.N. to isolate the Iranian regime -- from cutting off loan guarantees and expanding financial sanctions, to banning the export of refined petroleum to Iran."

He repeated this sentiment during the presidential candidates' debate on Oct. 7: "Iran right now imports gasoline . . . if we can prevent them from importing the gasoline that they need . . . that starts changing their cost-benefit analysis. That starts putting the squeeze on them."

How do we stop the gasoline from flowing? The Bush administration has reportedly never asked the Swiss, Dutch, French, British or Indian governments to stop gasoline sales to Iran by the companies headquartered within their borders. An Obama administration should make this request, and do the same with other governments if other companies try to sell gasoline to Iran.

But the U.S. also has significant direct leverage over the companies that currently supply most of Iran's imported gasoline.

Consider India's Reliance Industries which, according to International Oil Daily, "reemerged as a major supplier of gasoline to Iran" in July after taking a break for several months. It "delivered three cargoes of gasoline totaling around 100,000 tons to Iran's Mideast Gulf port of Bandar Abbas from its giant Jamnagar refinery in India's western province of Gujarat." Reliance reportedly "entered into a new arrangement with National Iranian Oil Co. (NIOC) under which it will supply around . . . three 35,000-ton cargoes a month, from its giant Jamnagar refinery." One hundred thousand tons represents some 10% of Iran's total monthly gasoline needs.

The Jamnagar refinery is heavily supported by U.S. taxpayer dollars. In May 2007, the U.S. Export-Import Bank, a government agency that assists in financing the export of U.S. goods and services, announced a $500 million loan guarantee to help finance expansion of the Jamnagar refinery. On Aug. 28, 2008, Ex-Im announced a new $400 million long-term loan guarantee for Reliance, including additional financing of work at the Jamnagar refinery.

Or consider the Swiss firm Vitol. According to International Oil Daily, Vitol "over the past few years has accounted for around 60% of the gasoline shipped to Iran." Vitol is currently building a $100 million terminal in Port Canaveral, Florida.

Last year, when Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty discovered that an Indian company, Essar, was seeking to both invest some $1.6 billion in Minnesota and invest over $5 billion in building a refinery in Iran, he put Essar to a choice. Mr. Pawlenty threatened to block state infrastructure subsidies and perhaps even construction permits for the Minnesota purchase unless Essar withdrew from the Iranian investment. Essar promptly withdrew from the Iranian investment.

Florida officials could consider taking a similar stance with Vitol.

The Minnesota example is not the only precedent. U.S. outreach to foreign banks and to oil companies considering investing in Iran's energy sector has reportedly convinced more than 80 banks and several major potential oil-field investors to cease all or some of their business with Iran. Among them: Germany's two largest banks (Deutsche Bank and Commerzbank), London-based HSBC, Credit Suisse, Norwegian energy company StatoilHydro, and Royal Dutch Shell.

A sustained initiative may be able to convince most or all current and potential suppliers that the profits to be gained from continuing to sell gasoline to Iran will be dwarfed by the lost loan guarantees and subsidies and foregone profits they will incur in the U.S. from continuing to do business with Iran.

Last Sunday, a group of 60 Iranian economists called for the regime to drastically change course, saying that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's "tension-creating" foreign policy has "scared off foreign investment and inflicted heavy damage on the economy." The economists said the current sanctions, as weak as they are, have cost Iran billions of dollars by forcing it to use middlemen for exports and imports. Halting Iran's gasoline supply could contribute to reaching a tipping point -- at which economic pressures and protests convince the regime its illicit nuclear program poses too great a risk to its grip over the Iranian people.

If the federal and key state governments in the U.S. were to make it their goal to achieve a halt by companies selling gasoline to Iran, it could be a game-changer. It may be our best remaining hope for peacefully convincing Iran to desist from developing nuclear weapons.

Mr. Kittrie is a professor of law at Arizona State University and a fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. He previously worked for 11 years at the U.S. Department of State, including as a specialist on nuclear nonproliferation and sanctions.

Iran's Preconditions: So much for Obama's diplomacy.

Barack Obama's declaration that, if elected, he would be willing to sit down and talk to Iran "without preconditions" has been widely discussed in this country. It's a key policy difference between him and John McCain, who rejects unconditional talks with Tehran.

So what does the Islamic Republic think? The enterprising reporters at the state news agency recently asked a high-ranking official for his opinion on talks with the U.S. As it turns out, Iran has its own "preconditions" and they don't suggest a diplomatic breakthrough, or even a summit, anytime soon.

Mehdi Kalhor, Vice President for Media Affairs, said the U.S. must do two things before summit talks can take place. First, American military forces must leave the Middle East -- presumably including such countries as Iraq, Qatar, Turkey and anywhere else American soldiers are deployed in the region. Second, the U.S. must cease its support of Israel. Until Washington does both, talks are "off the agenda," the Islamic Republic News Agency reports. It quotes Mr. Kalhor as saying, "If they [the U.S.] take our advice, grounds for such talks would be well prepared.

Iran is one of the toughest and most urgent foreign policy problems the new U.S. Administration will face. If Mr. Obama ends up in the Oval Office on January 20, he may find that solving it will take more than walking into a room and talking to Iranians "without preconditions."

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's Triumph

Iraq in Review: Is there anything left of the antiwar Left’s criticisms of the Iraq war?

Many commentators on Iraq had no strong ideas about the wisdom of removing Saddam Hussein, but often predicated their evolving views on the basis of whether we were perceived as winning or losing — and later made the necessary and often fluid adjustments. So in light of the changing pulse of the battlefield, it is time once again to examine carefully a few of the now commonplace critiques of the Iraq war.

1. We took our eye off the ball in Afghanistan by going into Iraq, thereby allowing the Taliban to regain the advantage.

Any two-theater war can result in less resources allotted to one of the two fronts. But such multiple-front wars, whether in World War II or the Cold War, have never stymied the United States military. More importantly, if we are truly in a global war against Islamic extremists — as al Qaeda itself reminded us when it announced that Iraq was the key front in their jihad against infidel crusaders — then the problem is not necessarily fighting the insurgents in Iraq, but whether it is a theater conducive to our aims and resources — and can be won.

In other words, Iraq simply upped the ante of a larger war, promising disaster if we lost, and enormous advantages if we won. Progress in Iraq is already having positive effects in Afghanistan, where an experienced American counterinsurgency force is fighting extremists who know that their kindred are on the verge of losing militarily and politically in Iraq, and are afraid that the same bitter calculus now applies to them.

In the first years, the odds were with the terrorists — given indigenous Muslim local populations, the hostile neighborhood of a Syria, Iran, and Saudi Arabia, and anti-war fervor at home and abroad. But once the U.S. military defeated al Qaeda in Anbar, the population turned on Islamic terrorists, and the elected Iraqi government gained stature, then Islamists in and out of Iraq suffered a terrible defeat.

We learned to fight a war of counterinsurgency and win hearts and minds far from home; they lost an insurgency — and with it the support of the local and once naturally sympathetic Muslim population. Note that suddenly journalists, intelligence analysts, and politicians are struck by al Qaeda’s implosion, as the Muslim street turns on radical Islamists, who themselves are torn apart by internal ideological schisms.

While many critics remain too heavily invested in antiwar positions staked out between 2003–7 to cite the war as a contributory cause, the obvious catalyst for al Qaeda’s fiasco is its terrible performance in Iraq. Remember, if Americans adjusted their own support for the war on their perceptions of the success or failure of the U.S. military, why wouldn’t millions in the Middle East do the same with radical Islamists like al Qaeda, whose fortunes on the battlefield have only gone from bad to worse?

2. Bush lied about the war and entered it under the false circumstances of fears of WMD and Iraqi ties to al Qaeda.

Bush erred in focusing on WMDs when the Senate and House approved over 20 writs for war, all of them as valid now as they were in October 2002. That said, it is hard to find a single prominent congressional critic of the war who has made the case that the administration itself altered intelligence information, doctored reports, or had substantially different assessments than those provided to Congress or offered up by foreign governments. The reason recent critics of the war such as Sen. Rockefeller are utterly unconvincing in their allegations of administration malfeasance is that the record shows that they themselves had access to the same information, and often outdid the President in their prewar rhetoric and saber-rattling about Saddam.

But again, the battlefield, rightly or wrongly, colors these controversies. In a world in which there is no longer a Saddam Hussein (who would now have had his hands on trillions of dollars in oil revenue), a Libyan WMD program, and Dr. Khan’s nuclear export business, the proliferation issue is becoming less contentious. (If one were to believe the National Intelligence Estimate, Iran ceased its weapons-grade nuclear track opportunely right after Saddam’s capture). Since 2003, thousands of Islamic extremists and al Qaeda’s notables have been killed, and the organization routed and discredited; it is hard to see how Iraq has not had positive effects in curbing proliferation and damaging the organization that was responsible for 9/11. Moreover, disputes about Abu Musab al Zarqawi’s post-Afghanistan odyssey, assorted terrorists in Saddam’s Baghdad in 2003, or al Qaeda in Kurdistan during Saddam’s rule become less contentious with the knowledge that al Qaeda, between 2003–7, tried to win, and then lost, Iraq.

3. Mistakes in Iraq were legion and irreversible.

It is better to see such controversies in terms of long- and short-term consequences. Examine the two most discussed — the Iraqi army and troop levels. Disbanding the Iraqi army without providing temporary financial support for young males with military skills was disastrous. Yet in the long-term, building a new army without tens of thousands of hard-core Baathists — as was true of the de-Nazification program with German army in 1946–7 — offered a greater chance for eventual success.

Did we send too few troops? Apparently we had enough manpower to take out Saddam, which we did brilliantly in three weeks — a force determined partly in reaction to the first Gulf War, when current critics then alleged that we had needlessly sent over far too many troops, both our own and those of the unwieldy coalition.

Evaluating the surge is more complex, since in a vast theater the size of Iraq, an increase of a little more than 20 percent in troop strength probably does not per se win wars. We forget now that many supporters of the surge were calling for 80,000-100,000 more troops in 2004–7. The 30,000 troops was a compromise figure, given our commitments elsewhere.

As important as the 30,000 reinforcements were, just as critical were three other factors associated with it: a signal to both Iraqi friends and enemies that we were staying on and fighting to win; a radical change in tactics from counterterrorism based in compounds to counterinsurgency intended to protect the local populations from terrorist reprisals; and the appointment of Gen. Petraeus as senior commander in Iraq who won the confidence of the Iraqis; silenced critics at home; and energized his officers on the ground with a new commitment to victory.

Again, there were tragic mistakes — focusing on WMDs as a sole casus belli, the pullback from the first siege of Fallujah, and bellicose Presidential rhetoric coupled with operational tentativeness — all of them regrettable, none of them fatal or comparable to the disastrous foul-ups of World War II, Korea, or Vietnam.

4. Democratization was naïve and bound to fail, given the realities of the tribal Middle East.

In fact, the promotion of constitutional government, however clumsy our efforts in 2003–4, was the only chance the U.S. had after the fall of Saddam Hussein to stabilize the country and hurt our terrorist enemies. No development infuriated al Qaeda more than U.S. support for elections and a constitutional Iraq that undercut the slander of a 21st-century crusade to annex the ancient caliphate, and invested the Iraqi people themselves in the fight against terrorism for their own future. Iraq is not comparable to the Hamas plebiscite, in that its elections were in concert with a ratified constitution and a result of an American-led effort to depose Saddam Hussein.

One of the most surreal developments of the war has been the Left’s caricature of American idealism and our support for a democratic Iraqi government — a brave group of reformers who have been more tarred and demonized by American politicians than have been their al Qaeda enemies.

Should we see a President Obama, and he realizes that Iraq is working, expect the Left to cease its criticisms of neocon democracy fantasies, and instead adopt Iraq’s democracy as yet more proof of Obama’s hope-and-change idealism in foreign policy.

5. The real winner of the war was Iran.

In the short-term, yes — Iran benefited from the removal of its traditional enemy, Baathist Iraq, and from the initial pan-Islamist rallying against the U.S. presence in Iraq. But in the long-term, should Iraq succeed, nothing will be more destabilizing to Iran than to have a free society next door, where Shiites say, write, and read what they wish, and do so in pluralistic fashion. Again, the ante has been raised. Should Iranian-backed militias lose in Iraq, the theocracy will have suffered a terrible defeat, at a time it diverts precious oil dollars to failed military adventures while its silenced population rations gas. Iran’s theocratic government must either incite a U.S. preemptive strike, or destroy Iraqi democracy — or it is doomed.

6. President Bush’s presidency was ruined in Iraq.

If we were to lose the war, then yes. But should we win, should a constitutional government stabilize, should al Qaeda keep unraveling, and should the hiatus of terrorist attacks against Americans at home and abroad continue, then historians will rank Bush in Trumanesque terms: a similarly orphaned presidency that ended disliked — even as it crafted a strategy to defeat global Islamic terror by taking the fight to the heart of the Middle East, while establishing proof of America’s good intentions by fostering constitutional government that offered Iraqis an alternative other than the usual Middle East non-choice of theocracy or autocracy.

Bush was terribly damaged by a series of poor spokesmen, his own bellicose soundbites of 2002–3, a series of tell-all defections of former intimates and officials, and an inability to cut U.S. consumption of imported petroleum. But that said, years from now, historians will look at the record and the results, not the present rhetoric, and his legacy could well be — “He kept us safe.”

7. Our military is nearly ruined and the war was never worth the cost.

We have paid a high price for our efforts with thousands of dead and wounded, and billions spent. But if the deterioration of al Qaeda continues, America is kept safe, and the Middle East at last has some alternative to the dismal autocratic norm — one that curbs future oil-fed extremism — then Iraq will be the most important American achievement since the end of the Cold War. If we lose or quit, and Iraq devolves along the lines of the badlands of Pakistan, then, yes, the losses were not worth it.

For all the wear and tear on our military, recruitments are up, we have developed the most sophisticated and experienced anti-insurgent force in the world, and we are just beginning to shake-up the entire military by promoting a new generation of brilliant officers who came of age in the cauldron of Iraq.

In the end, the U.S. military has achieved the near impossible by removing the worst government in the Middle East and fostering what has a real chance to become by far the best. In some sense, whether Iraq was worth the high cost depends on whether one thinks the present-day liberal and humane democracies in Europe, Japan, and Korea were likewise worth the past, and far more terrible, price that America paid in blood and treasure to secure their enduring freedom.

The Iranian Shell Game

Ever since a defector exposed the existence of Iran’s nuclear program in 2002, the regime in Tehran has routinely protested its innocence in the face of charges that it is developing fissile weapons of mass destruction and the missiles on which to carry them. Its nuclear program, Tehran claims, has only civilian purposes, and it is allowed to pursue such a program under the terms of the binding international treaties to which it is a signatory.

If Iran is telling the truth and desires solely nuclear energy—which would be peculiar, to say the least, considering that under its sands rest the world’s second largest natural-gas reserves and the world’s fifth largest crude-oil reserves—its behavior these past six years makes no sense. The regime would seem to have had everything to gain from making it crystal-clear to the world that it has no intentions of developing nuclear weapons. Instead, it has rejected repeated and alluring incentives designed to seduce it into demonstrating the non-existence of the efforts it continues to insist it is not undertaking. In the process, it has had to suffer painful economic sanctions imposed by the United Nations and the United States. Its six years of defiance and stonewalling have led to increasing diplomatic isolation.

As a matter of simple logic, then, it is only rational to conclude that Iran is working, and working very hard, to become a nuclear power. But there may be logic of a different and no less compelling kind behind its actions. For, at the end of these same six years, many in the West remain fiercely committed to the idea that discussing the dangers of Iran’s pursuit of nuclear power—let alone discussing how to stop it—represents a greater threat to the world than does the Iranian pursuit itself.

For a significant portion of the world’s foreign-policy makers and intellectuals, any confrontation with Iran on the matter of its nuclear program is dangerously provocative and therefore to be avoided. In particular, prominent European leaders have roundly denounced the supposed “adventurism” of the Bush administration and insisted that (in the words of one leading German Social Democrat) “military options must be taken off the table.” Authoritative American voices joined this chorus in the wake of a 2007 U.S. National Intelligence Estimate that declared (in an assertion supported by no other intelligence agency in the world) that Iran had suspended its nuclear-weapons program in 2003. More recently, elements within Western foreign-policy establishments have gone a step further and have begun to suggest that the world can “live with” an Iranian bomb.

And here we see why Iran’s behavior over the past six years has been neither irrational nor foolhardy but rather shrewd, calculated—and successful. Even while loudly repudiating allegations that it is pursuing a military program, the regime has used every technique at its disposal to sow confusion and encourage divisions among its adversaries. These techniques have been of vital importance in gaining time for Iran as it has worked tirelessly toward a fait accompli by procuring the technology necessary for the development of nuclear weapons—including most saliently through the purchase of equipment and materiel that it cannot, by treaty and international law, possess.

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Iran’s efforts to gain equipment vital to a secret nuclear program are mostly centered in Europe. In this, the involvement of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), the elite branch of the nation’s military, has been pivotal. The IRGC occupies a key place in the Iranian regime. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the president, is a former senior officer of the corps, as are the head of the nation’s security services and the chief of its information ministry. Iran’s homegrown missile, the Shahab, is a product designed and built by the IRGC.

The IRGC is also reliably believed to be in charge of the nation’s nuclear program. The two UN resolutions sanctioning Iran for its nuclear activities were targeted at senior IRGC officials. And the United States government, noting the IRGC’s relationships with Hizballah, Hamas, and the Iraqi insurgents, has declared the IRGC to be a terrorist organization.

Consider now a few cases, beginning with a single public-works project inside Iran.

• Two European concerns—Wirth, from Germany, and Seli, from Italy—sold tunnel-boring equipment to Iran for its Ghomroud water project. Wirth’s contract was concluded after Germany’s export-control agency, BAFA, determined that the machines involved in this project, being intended only for civilian use, were not subject to embargo.

Overseeing the tunnel project, however, was Sahel Consulting Engineers, a company owned by the IRGC. Nor is this connection a secret. The website of Wirth’s subsidiary in Iran features images of the Ghomroud construction site. The sign welcoming visitors to the project bears the logo of the IRGC, and the same logo is visible above the tunnel entrance.

Seli, for its part, sold its tunnel-making goods to an Iranian company called Ghaem. This sale, too, was found to be exempt from any restrictions or embargoes. But the U.S. Treasury has designated Ghaem as yet another subsidiary of the IRGC. Seli, in the meantime, is also involved in other important projects in Iran, among them the much larger Kerman water-tunnel project. That deal, worth 134.6 million euros over five years, was signed in 2004—with the active involvement of Sahel Consulting Engineers.

Unquestionably, the equipment has been used to dig water tunnels at Ghomroud and Kerman. Once the digging is finished, though, the equipment belongs to the subsidiary businesses of the IRGC, which can do with them what they wish.

Intelligence photographs have regularly indicated that much of Iran’s clandestine nuclear program is being built deep underground, in bunkers accessible by means of tunnels. The machinery and technology for constructing such tunnels can only have been provided by Wirth and Seli. The purchase of this equipment by Iran is perfectly legal. The uses to which it may sooner or later be put are something else.

• Many European companies are also selling highly sophisticated technology to Iran, and are doing so through businesses that are already known to have diverted such technology to industrial activities related to weapons of mass destruction and their delivery systems. The deals concluded by these Iranian businesses, or “end-users,” can appear as legitimate as building water tunnels.

For example, Iran’s Samamicro distributes high-precision tools made by a number of European companies, including Austria’s Grabner Instruments, a leader in laboratory-testing equipment for the petrochemical industry, and Mahr GmbH, a German company producing high-precision measuring instruments. The value of such tools for illicit nuclear purposes is beyond dispute.

Italy’s Iveco and Germany’s Mercedes have also built an assembly line in Iran. No doubt the assembly line is used to produce trucks, as it is intended to do. But it is equally appropriate for producing launch ramps for missiles. Then there is Austria’s KTM, which makes off-road leisure motorbikes. As can be clearly seen in official photographs, such bikes are being used by the IRGC to create mobile units trained to fire rocket-propelled grenades.

• And then there is military equipment per se. Most European military exports to Iran are flatly outlawed—but not all. The problem, once again, is the possible diversion of authorized equipment to illegitimate ends.

A patrol boat called the Levriero, made by the Italian company FB Design and used by Italy’s customs police to fight smuggling at sea, was purchased by Iranian emissaries in the 1990’s together with the boat’s manufacturing frame and design plans. Thanks to those plans, Iran is now able to produce the vessel locally. Iranian-made copies of the Levriero took part in a peculiar incident this past January in the Straits of Hormuz, when IRGC speedboats seemed bent on provoking a confrontation with U.S. warships. They may also have participated in the March 2007 high-speed chase in the Shatt-el-Arab waterway that led to the kidnapping of fifteen British sailors.

Even when military goods are supplied to Iran under tight controls and for specific purposes, nothing is quite what it seems. In 2003, the United Kingdom and Italy supplied night-vision equipment to Iran’s police for their anti-drug units. Quantities of this high-tech gear reportedly turned up inside the headquarters of Hizballah in southern Lebanon during the latter’s 2006 confrontation with the Israeli army.

In 2005, Iran purchased 800 high-precision sniper rifles from the Austrian firm Steyr-Mannlicher, once again for ostensible use by police anti-narcotics units. When the United States imposed sanctions on Steyr-Mannlicher over this sale, Austria’s defense ministry protested that it had been “unimpeachable.” Fourteen months later, U.S. troops in Iraq seized more than 100 of the Steyr-Mannlicher rifles during a raid on an insurgent position. Steyr-Mannlicher denied that the guns had come from its consignment to Iran—which may have been true, since an exact replica of the rifle, apparently made in Iran, went up for sale at an arms fair in Tehran in 2006.

In brief, European and other Western companies, acting often with the blessing of their governments, have supplied Iran with a variety of sophisticated tools, putatively for benign or even worthwhile aims. Soon after the merchandise reaches its destination, it is systematically diverted to non-civilian use. By this means, proceeding with or without the knowing collusion of its Western suppliers, Iran has been spectacularly successful in evading the international sanctions regime.

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But there is another, simultaneous aspect to Iran’s success. This has been its campaign, waged on the diplomatic front, to prevent the international community from determining just what are its intentions, its strategies, and above all the state of its capabilities in the area of nuclear weapons.

The job of making that determination has fallen to Mohammad ElBaradei, the director of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), a branch of the United Nations. Since 2003, at regular intervals, ElBaradei has been reporting back to the UN on what the IAEA has been able to learn from the Iranians and other sources. His reports have conveyed much sobering information, a tone (whether feigned or not) of urgency, and no indication of progress whatsoever. To the contrary, what they disclose are the successful workings of an Iranian policy aimed at occluding the IAEA’s perspective through steady denial, the provision of incomplete or misleading information, and plain stalling.

On June 18, 2003, faced with mounting signs of a possible military nuclear program, ElBaradei announced: “We need to solve this issue as soon as we can.”

Two months later, in late August, he worried:

The information [we have procured] was in contrast to that previously provided by Iran. In addition . . . there remain a number of important outstanding issues, particularly with regard to Iran’s enrichment program, that require urgent resolution.

A few days after that, he permitted himself a faint note of impatience:

Iran should not wait for us to ask questions and then respond; it should come forward with a complete and immediate declaration of all its nuclear activities. That would be the best way to resolve the issues within the next few weeks.

The “best way,” indeed—but that is clearly not how the Iranians saw it. By November 2003, without any evidence of Iranian cooperation, ElBaradei reported:

Iran’s nuclear program, as the agency currently understands it, consists of a practically complete front end of a nuclear-fuel cycle, including uranium mining and milling, conversion, enrichment, fuel fabrication, heavy- water production, a light-water reactor, a heavy-water research reactor and associated research-and-development facilities.

These words should have been enough in themselves to confirm what Iran was up to. But they were uttered just as the American failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq had become a dominating fact on the international horizon. As it happens, ElBaradei himself had been a not-insignificant player in efforts at the United Nations to stymie the U.S. effort to topple Saddam Hussein, and he was not about to present a dossier that might now incriminate Iran beyond the shadow of a doubt. Despite the facts adduced in his report, he continued to caution that there was still no conclusive evidence of a military program.

Almost exactly two years later, with still more facts surfacing, ElBaradei was, as ever, polite:

In order to clarify some of the outstanding issues related to Iran’s enrichment program, Iran’s transparency is indispensable and overdue.

And once again the Iranians evidently felt otherwise. On January 27, 2006, ElBaradei wrote of repeated requests for a meeting with Tehran to discuss information that had been made available to the [UN] about alleged studies, known as the Green Salt Project, concerning the conversion of uranium dioxide into UF4 [the immediate precursor of fissile uranium] . . . as well as tests related to high explosives and the design of a missile re-entry vehicle, all of which could involve nuclear material.

A month later, on February 27, 2006, he again reported failure:

Iran has yet to address the other topics of high-explosives testing and the design of a missile re-entry vehicle.

And a few months after that, on June 8, 2006:

[But] since the last report, . . . Iran has not expressed readiness to discuss these topics further.

The Iranians went on ignoring him. On August 31, 2006, he wrote:

Iran has not expressed any readiness to discuss these topics since the issuance of the . . . report in February 2006.

More than a year later, after Iran had endured two rounds of UN sanctions for its failure to comply with the IAEA, nothing had improved:

Iran has not agreed to any of the required transparency measures, which are essential for the clarification of certain aspects of the scope and nature of its nuclear program.

On February 22 of this year, ElBaradei conveyed Iran’s response to mounting signs of a clandestine military program:

Iran stated that the allegations were baseless and that the information which the agency had shown to Iran was fabricated.

Forever tactful, the IAEA gave Iran another chance to come clean—to which Tehran summarily replied that “this was its final assessment on this point.” The agency then showed Iranian officials a warhead design that it had obtained from the hard drive of an Iranian computer and deemed “quite likely to accommodate a nuclear device.” Iran once more replied that “the schematic layout shown by the agency was baseless and fabricated.”

This past May, ElBaradei caught the attention of Western news media with his latest report. In it, he duly noted that Iran had failed to explain the existence of a diagram for an underground testing facility; failed to explain the testing of explosive detonators normally used for nuclear weapons; and failed to explain the existence of documents (including a short video clip) relating to the modification of Iran’s Shahab-3 missile to enable it to accommodate a nuclear warhead. Perhaps most disturbing in the report was this offhand passage about work being done by a scientist at the Institute for Applied Physics (IAP), an Iranian military research facility:

The [IAEA] has also inquired about the reasons for inclusion in the curriculum vitae of an IAP employee of . . . [an] equation for the evolving radius of a nuclear-explosion ball with photos of the 1945 Trinity test.

That would be the explosion of a plutonium bomb in the New Mexico desert on July 16, 1945. Why would an IAP scientist have been working on this equation? One reason might be that his employers saw a possible application for it in Iran’s current circumstances.

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ElBaradei has been at his task for more than five years. Even now, he will not come out and declare that Iran has a program to develop and deploy nuclear weapons. In fact, what five years’ worth of mounting information in ElBaradei’s own reports indicates is that this program can only have advanced. Notwithstanding the levying of sanctions by the United Nations and the United States, notwithstanding the ever-diffident nagging of the IAEA, the Iranian strategy of obfuscation, duplicity, and delay has worked.

“All warfare,” Sun Tzu wrote,

is based on deception. When able to attack, we must seem unable; when using our forces, we must seem inactive; when we are near, we must make the enemy believe we are far away.

It is also true that, in diplomacy no less than in war, deception works because those being deceived prefer to live within the deception rather than to acknowledge the sobering facts staring them in the face, and thereby to accept the frightening responsibility of having to act to address and reverse them.

Are We Safer? Yes, George W. Bush has made America more secure since 9/11.

by Reuel Marc Gerecht
06/30/2008, Volume 013, Issue 40

Are we safer now than we were before 9/11? Safer than before we invaded Iraq and toppled Saddam Hussein? Barack Obama insists we are not. Seeing Iraq as the crucible of our growing weakness, the Democratic nominee for president asserts that "we have now spent over $600 billion, thousands of lives lost, and we have not been made more safe .  .  . [and] al Qaeda's leadership is stronger than ever." According to the senator, moreover, George Bush's policies have also "made Iran stronger"; under his administration Iran has been "able to fund Hezbollah and poses the greatest threat to America and Israel and the Middle East in a generation." Joining Senator John McCain to the president, Obama assails the "Bush-McCain record on protecting this country" and the Arizona Republican for his intention "to double-down on" the "fear-mongering," "saber-rattling," and "failed policies" which endanger the nation.

Now, it is certainly true that the Bush administration in its conduct of both war and diplomacy has too often been inept. Even if the provincial elections in Iraq this fall and the national elections next winter establish a long-lasting means for Sunni-Shiite reconciliation, fortify the country's nascent democracy, and decisively prove the wisdom of the surge last January, President Bush's allowing Iraq to descend into hell in 2004 will likely haunt his legacy. Whether it is Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo, extraordinary rendition and the CIA's not-so-secret prisons, or the Patriot Act and the gargantuan Department of Homeland Security, there are many things that thoughtful critics could wish the United States had not done or had done better in the war on terrorism.

But Obama's charge isn't really about the arrogance, clumsiness, and lack of foresight that often characterize presidents and their administrations at war. For him, and many of his supporters, the Bush administration has uniquely and comprehensively degraded the nation's security, especially against the lethal threats emanating from the Middle East. America was much more secure under Hillary Clinton's husband--with the first attack on the World Trade Center, the truck bombing of Khobar Towers, the embassy bombings in Africa, the aborted attempt on the USS Sullivans in Aden, the other attempts at millennial bombings in the Middle East and the United States, and the near sinking of the USS Cole--on the road to 9/11.

Yet when we look at what George W. Bush has actually done, it's pretty hard not to credit him with massively improving America's security, both at home and abroad.

Before 9/11, America's counterterrorist capacities were, to put it politely, disorganized, unfocused, poorly staffed, and poorly run. (The exception was the ever-emotional and self-referential Richard Clarke, the former head of counterterrorism at the National Security Council, who should always get credit for being deadly serious about Islamic terrorism and Osama bin Laden.) The 9/11 Commission report is a chronicle of growing danger unmatched by bureaucratic seriousness or political will. And Bill Clinton, unlike George W. Bush, had nearly eight years to think about Islamic extremism. To President Clinton's credit and great shame, he intellectually understood the nature and horrific potential of bin Ladenism and al Qaeda--as he understood, and regularly tasked his senior officials to explain nationally, the dangers of an increasingly restless Saddam Hussein. Yet he could not summon the fortitude to strike devastatingly against al Qaeda and its Taliban protector or Iraq. Instead in 1998, we had "Operation Infinite Reach" in which cruise missiles were launched at a rock-and-mud Afghan village and a Sudanese pharmaceutical factory that may have had an al Qaeda or Iraqi chemical-weapons connection. Only in the fall of 1999 did a CIA team, timorously, land in Afghanistan's Panjshir Valley to meet, but offer no military aid to, the anti-Taliban commander Ahmed Shah Massoud.

Post 9/11, under President Bush, the situation changed drastically, as it certainly would have changed also under a President Gore. What is striking about Obama's Iraq-obsessed critique of the Bush presidency is his unwillingness to give any credit where credit is obviously due. Today in the mainstream press, with its pronounced anti-Bush reflexes, we are more likely to see articles and op-eds about America's unfair and labyrinthine visa system than about its effectiveness in our counterterrorism campaign. (And yes, the system is offensive, inflexible, and denies entry to many innocent, talented, and potentially pro-American Arabs, Pakistanis, and Iranians.) But if Obama wins in November, we can be assured that he will leave it in place. It is just too effective in complicating the operational planning of al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations.

As president, Obama would also likely leave untouched the intelligence and security liaison relationships energetically developed by the Bush administration. Listening to the Illinois senator's speeches about America's current place in the world, one would think because of our many transgressions, we no longer have helpful friends. But if one talks directly to European security and domestic-intelligence services (and my colleague Gary Schmitt and I have spent the last two years visiting these organizations to get a realistic picture of how western Europeans are approaching counterterrorism after 9/11), one cannot avoid the conclusion that America's counterterrorist cooperation with them has blossomed under Bush. It is closer and more amicable today than it was in March 2003 when we invaded Iraq, and the relationships then--especially with the French, our most zealous Iraq war antagonists--were already good.

President Bush would certainly not win a popularity contest anywhere in western Europe (he does a little better the closer one gets to Russia), but the effect of this anti-Bush sentiment on our security and intelligence cooperation has been minimal. Most Europeans don't like the term "global war on terror," seeing counterterrorism primarily as a police exercise and are uncomfortable in their post-Kantian way with bellicose language. (But the Europeans know that without American assistance, they would have great difficulty striking terrorists abroad, as they don't possess the military means to do so.) As was the case before 9/11, the Europeans occasionally express some anxiety about transatlantic cooperation that could lead to death-penalty charges in U.S. courts or military tribunals, but this is usually expressed as a mournful afterthought.

European internal security officers certainly don't dwell on Iraq. They believe that the present generation of Muslim holy warriors--and both European and American security officials regard these European jihadists as the most dangerous of the would-be terrorists out there--are more products of homegrown causes than any American action. European security officials, especially in Great Britain with its large Pakistani immigrant community, put much more emphasis upon the conflict in Afghanistan--the "good war" for most Democrats--as fueling lethal jihadism.

It is impossible to overstate the importance of Britain's domestic intelligence service, MI5, and France's internal security service, the Direction de la Surveillance du Territoire, to our fight against al Qaeda and its allied groups. If European-passport holding jihadists get past the European services, the odds are not great that the FBI is going to catch them on this side of the Atlantic. Although the Bureau is certainly a better counterterrorist outfit than it was before 9/11, that difference, given the threat and the enormous amount of money spent on homeland security since 2001, isn't inspiring. (Obama could fairly criticize the Bush administration and the Republican-controlled Congress for its post-9/11 handling of the FBI.)

Yet we can search in vain Obama's writings and speeches for serious commentary on Europe, let alone on Europe's essential role in America's defense against Islamic radicalism. Western Europe is arguably the most important arena for U.S. counterterrorist efforts against operationally active Islamic terrorist groups. (Intelligence sharing during the Cold War was nowhere near this intimate with the continental Europeans.) Obama is not alone in under-appreciating what the Europeans are doing for the United States. Focused on the failure of the continental Europeans to fight well--or often at all--in Afghanistan, the American Right tends to overlook their contribution to the larger battle against Islamic extremism. Given the accomplished Europeanists among Obama's advisers, however, it's hard not to suspect that the senator has assiduously been avoiding talking about the European-American counterterrorist partnership because it does not fit so easily into his Iraq-war-has-ruined-our-national-security, the-world-is-ashamed-of-us, al Qaeda-is-winning theme.

Obama insists that the Iraq war has seriously weakened us strategically. But how exactly is this so? According to the senator, the Iraq war caused us to take our eye off Afghanistan and our real enemy al Qaeda--the one in Afghanistan and Pakistan, not the branch in Iraq, which bin Laden constantly refers to, praises, and describes as fighting in the battle that will determine the fate of Islam. "These are the same guys [the Bush administration] who helped to engineer the distraction of the war in Iraq at a time when we could have pinned down the people who actually committed 9/11."

Yet, the Bush administration's mistakes in Afghanistan were not those of focus, but of battlefield tactics, will, and a longstanding, entirely bipartisan, confusion on how to deal with Pakistan. The same guiding lights who deployed too few troops to Iraq earlier sent too few troops unaggressively into Afghanistan. Who knows whether we could have caught or killed bin Laden and the Taliban leader, Mullah Omar, at the beginning of the Afghan war if we'd parachuted troops en masse into the flatlands adjacent to the Taliban's capital of Kandahar, where bin Laden often resided? Who knows whether we could have killed bin Laden at Tora Bora if General Tommy Franks had committed large numbers of Special Forces to the fight and not allowed allied Afghan troops to be the primary ground forces in the area? We certainly should have done these things. We were fighting on bin Laden's terrain.

If Al Gore had been president, would he have overruled General Franks's casualty-averse, Special Forces-on-horseback, airpower heavy approach to the Afghan war? It seems unlikely. Would the more dovish and less experienced Barack Obama have questioned and countermanded a ranking general?

Obama has repeatedly said that he would now deploy two additional brigades (roughly 8,000 men) to Afghanistan--a commendable "surge" of troops that is surely needed in the country, and about double the reinforcements so far sent by the Pentagon. But is this really a big part of answering the senator's constant complaint that the Bush administration took its "eye off" al Qaeda? A few thousand more troops in Afghanistan's southern provinces would diminish al Qaeda in Pakistan how? Does he mean that instead of stacking up a couple of hundred CIA case officers in the Green Zone in Baghdad, we should stack up these same men and women in Afghanistan, inside guarded compounds where their English-only abilities get further honed? (If Obama were to attack the Bush administration for its lack of zeal in the reformation of the CIA, especially the clandestine service, where the number of operatives who have any real knowledge of Afghanistan's languages and culture remains--according to case officers currently serving--scandalously small, he would be on firm ground.)

Increasing troop levels in Afghanistan will do little or nothing against al Qaeda in its primary training ground and headquarters: Pakistan. More troops will certainly help thwart the Taliban's ambitions to destabilize larger parts of Afghanistan. But to beat al Qaeda in Central Asia and the subcontinent, we must beat al Qaeda in Pakistan. And we are unlikely to do this anytime soon by opening up secular schools in the North-West Frontier Province (a commendable if unworkable idea of Obama's) or by launching occasional Special Forces strikes into al Qaeda-infested areas of Pakistan, another estimable if mild recommendation from the senator. Targeted assassinations and repeated military strikes against al Qaeda's camps and the affiliated Pakistani tribes can seriously damage the organization. The Bush administration has proven the possibilities of such tactics in Afghanistan and elsewhere by killing off or capturing probably upwards of 80 percent of al Qaeda's command structure and foot soldiers of 2001.

Which brings me to the question of whether Obama believes that with such losses al Qaeda is undiminished since 9/11, when bin Laden and Ayman al Zawahiri were living in the open and with ease dispatching emissaries. Many of the killed and captured holy warriors were skilled Westernized, globetrotting Arabs and Pakistanis. Al Qaeda is still recruiting and could do horrendous damage to the United States, but does Obama really think al Qaeda's recruitment efforts are "stronger" now after the world's principal security services have been focusing on the organization for seven years, and when well-known Islamists and the Arab media are seriously debating the ethics that allow young men and women to slaughter civilians in the name of Allah? Just read the increasingly whiny and apologetic speeches of bin Laden and Zawahiri since 2005. Note their current attempt to headline the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which has solicited some derisory commentary from well-known fundamentalists. (In 2001 al Qaeda viewed Zionism as a subset of Western evil, generally not worthy of its loftiest polemics.) How in the world does Obama actually know that the incarceration and treatment of the 9/11 terrorists, which "destroyed our credibility when it comes to the rule of law .  .  . has given a huge boost to terrorist recruitment in countries that say, 'Look, this is how the United States treats Muslims' "? Are Muslim militants really turning into jihadists because the premier infidel power didn't give Khalid Sheikh Mohammed habeas corpus rights? Does the senator really think that faithful Muslims would embrace the slaughter of innocents if the United States waterboarded him--an interrogation technique that is quite polite compared to the standard interrogative methods of the Arab, Pakistani, and Central Asian security services? Like much of the American left, the senator is imagining his own disgust in the "hearts and minds" of foreign Muslims. Isn't it a big push to suggest that any of this means that al Qaeda and its allied extremist groups committed to jihad against America are in a stronger position now than in 2001 and 2003?

After launching military strikes against al Qaeda elements in Pakistan, what would the Obama camp do that is so different from what the Bush administration has done or a McCain one would do? Would President Obama really cut off aid to the Pakistani military, a highly imperfect ally in the war on terror? One reason al Qaeda-directed or -inspired suicide bombings skyrocketed in Pakistan in 2007-08 is that the Pakistani government had been challenging the group and its local allies. Another reason is surely that al Qaeda's holy warriors now have great difficulty in attacking the United States and other Western targets, in large part thanks to the Bush administration's counterterrorist efforts and to those of Britain and France.

General Pervez Musharraf may have been fitful and fickle in how he conducted his anti-al Qaeda campaign, but he did earn al Qaeda's wrath. And al Qaeda violence in Pakistan, as in Iraq, appears to be slowly but surely working against the popularity of the organization and its local support, as superbly described in a recent essay, "The Unraveling," by Peter Bergen and Paul Cruickshank in the New Republic.

The increase in violence in Pakistan does not mean we are less safe; it means the Pakistanis are beginning to tackle the excruciatingly difficult problem of extirpating bin Ladenism from regions of the country where it put down deep roots. Jihadist sentiments are now widespread in Pakistan's Federally Administered Tribal Areas, the North-West Frontier Province, and even the Punjab, the critical geographic and cultural bridge to India. Reversing this growth will likely be an erratic, ugly process as Pakistan's reborn democracy responds to the widespread anger about the American presence in Afghanistan. To local eyes, America is up to no good, the Pashtun Taliban were better Pakistani allies than the current Afghan government with its many pro-Indian Tajiks. With the Taliban in power, the Americans were getting bombed, and Pakistanis weren't deluged with suicide-bombers.

Democratic Pakistan is working hard to reach a modus vivendi with the Taliban militias. If it does, Afghanistan and the Coalition forces will face renewed attack as Pashtuns increase their support of the multiheaded Taliban movement. But if they don't reach an understanding, which seems more and more likely given the intensifying militancy and ambition among the Pakistani Taliban, then democratic Pakistan and its angry army will likely combat the militants who provide al Qaeda sanctuary. This brutal process may immiserate Pakistan and produce small waves of jihadists trying to gain access to the West and attack Americans and Europeans. But this is progress even if Barack Obama, who rightly supports the strengthening of democracy in Pakistan, doesn't quite understand what's going on.

But back to Iraq, the supposed epicenter of our newly developed national weakness: Does Obama hear our European and Middle Eastern allies calling for the rapid withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq? (The definition of rapid is 16 months, the senator's stated timetable for a "gradual" withdrawal.) If so, he has acute hearing.

Once it became clear to Sunni Arabs that an American withdrawal would lead to the battlefield defeat of Iraq's Sunni Arab minority by Iraq's Shiite Arabs and Kurds, the desire to see the American troops leave Mesopotamia quieted down noticeably. Sunni Arabs are increasingly interested in the clout that might accrue to them through provincial elections in October 2008 and national elections before 2010. (It's amazing how military defeat focuses the mind on more peaceful paths to power.)

Are the emirates of the Persian Gulf or the Saudis asking the Americans to withdraw the Navy from the region? They could do so easily if so inclined. But they know that as long as the U.S. Navy stays, and the American will to use it remains steadfast, the Iranian regime's capacity to intimidate its neighbors remains a dream. Although the surge has so far had little effect on Obama and the Democratic party, its effect on the Middle East--on how Iraqis view us, on how all Arabs view us, and on how Iranians view Iraqis and Americans--has been enormous. We didn't run. We doubled-down. The Sunni Arab press and satellite TV channels are describing Iraq in more normal terms (it's hard for them as the country is full of Shiites, Kurds, and Americans) and is learning to deal, ever more calmly, with the hitherto bizarre situation of having Sunni Arab Iraqis say almost nice things about Americans.

Iraqi Shiites are sending missions to Tehran to complain about Iranian meddling in Iraq's internal affairs. Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's military headquarters in Basra, where he personally led the government's operations to secure the city, was shelled with Iranian-supplied weaponry, which, as U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker wryly remarked, no doubt focused the prime minister's attention on the Iranian problem. A tough, independent, sometimes irascible fellow, Maliki didn't look like he was enjoying his recent public audience in Tehran with Ali Khamenei, but he didn't buckle before the Iranian cleric, who wants to scuttle any basing agreement or defense pact between the United States and Iraq. After the meeting, Maliki reaffirmed his desire to see Washington and Baghdad sign a defense agreement. As the Washington Post put it, "This would seem to be an obvious U.S. gain in what, according to Senator Barack Obama .  .  . is the urgent task of countering Iran's attempt to dominate the Middle East." The Bush administration may have a difficult time getting a Status of Forces agreement passed through the Iraqi parliament, given how the issue rubs against Iraqi pride and the maximalist positions the Pentagon always initially takes in such negotiations. This is good. For the first time since the early 1950s, Iraqis are learning--and quickly--how to act as political adults. As Iraqi democracy gains strength, so will Iraqi pride and the ability of Iraqi leaders to make difficult compromises with the United States.

On the ground, the Shiite-led government in Baghdad is, slowly but surely, regaining control of regions of the country once dominated by lawless Shiite militias. The Shiite-led army is, slowly but surely, expanding its operations into Sunni regions of the country and encountering little opposition from armed Sunnis who once allied themselves to al Qaeda. Iraq's oldest Shiite nationalist party, the Dawa, to which the once belittled and now increasingly admired Maliki belongs, may well become the dominant Shiite political party after the national elections in 2009, further intensifying the "Iraqification" of the country's Shiite politics. The Dawa is hardly a bastion of pro-American sentiments, but it is increasingly a redoubt of Iraqi democrats who know that radical, armed Shiite youth are not a reliable political base. On both the Sunni and Shiite sides, older men are regaining the high ground.

The indefatigably anti-American Moktada al-Sadr, who has never shown much fondness for Iranians, is now "studying" in Iran. His political position is in flux and he is persona non grata at the religious schools in Najaf, Iraq's preeminent seat of Shiite education, where his father and his philosophically trailblazing father-in-law both gained their fame. Sadr is now employing the old Shiite belief in concealment or "occultation" as a political tactic. This may not work out as well for him as it did for the twelfth Imam, who is more revered today than when he vanished in the ninth century, or Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who became much more powerful exiled in Iraq and France than he had been preaching in Iran in the 1960s. The Iraqi provincial elections will let us know whether the Sadrists can hold their own, or whether the Dawa eats into Sadr's base of support. His personal charisma has certainly taken a hit as the surge has brought greater security to Baghdad's Shia community and eliminated the thuggery that came with Sadrist protection.

To the east in Iran, Mohammad Khatami, the former president, has publicly attacked his own government for "arming and training groups" for missions "in other countries where they wreak destruction and havoc." Hardcore members of the Iranian parliament have demanded that the intelligence ministry investigate Khatami for treason. Khatami, true to form, has quieted down, reaffirming this loyalty to the regime. But if he dared to voice this criticism publicly, we can be sure the senior mullahs of Qom are still saying it privately. (Qom is Iran's center of religious jurisprudence; its leaders have close ties to the divines in Najaf and often cool relations with the politicized clergy in Tehran.) In Sadr City and Basra, the Iranian regime has backed off its support of militant Shiite groups. It's a very good guess that Abd al Aziz al-Hakim, the leader of the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council (which was founded in Tehran in 1982), is livid about the cash, weaponry, and training Iran's Revolutionary Guards Corps has given to Sadr's followers. Sadr and Hakim loathe each other. The Iranians surely know now they went too far in their attempt to radicalize the Iraqi Shia by encouraging internecine strife.

Obama would be correct in saying that the Iraq war offered clerical Iran an enormous opportunity to get itself into trouble, to unlearn a big lesson of the Iran-Iraq War: Arabism among the Iraqi Shia is real. The age-old Arab-Persian split in Mesopotamia can flair up suddenly, even among Iraqi Shia who have Iranian family members. In its history, the Iranian clerical regime has never had to deal with such a situation, where some of the most respected Shiite jurisprudents are in opposition and the Iranian ruling elite can neither shut these opponents down nor even criticize them too severely. Iraq's religious schools are recovering from the Hussein years and are again receiving students from Iran's most prestigious schools. Najaf will inevitably regain some of the centripetal eminence it had in the past. Najaf clerics were instrumental in both of Iran's 20th-century revolutions, and it wouldn't be surprising to see Najaf's disputatious clerics, both Iraqi and Iranian, rock the boat again in Iran (and in Lebanon). The Iraq war, with the gruesome al Qaeda campaign against both Shiites and Sunnis, has been the backdrop to a complex argument among devout Muslims about divinely sanctioned violence. The Iraqi Shiite religious establishment is not just waging an intellectual battle against the pretensions of Iran's theocracy, but also working with the elected Iraqi parliament and Sunni tribal leaders and anti-al Qaeda Sunni clerics to integrate religious ethics into law. Although most American liberals and conservatives now scoff at the idea, a religious, democratic Iraq could well be transformational for a region where virtually every government lacks legitimacy. In a Middle East that is always rough, corrupt, and illiberal, Iraq is potentially as revolutionary as American-liberated post-fascist Europe. Only now is the country really getting interesting. If democratic Iraq grows stronger--and we will have a pretty good idea of its strength with the coming provincial and national elections--and becomes a philosophical generator of anti-jihadist mores, the Iraqi people will have succeeded rather astonishingly.

When do we get to start asking whether the Iraq war, with its hard-won-however-imperfect democracy, might actually be a good thing, worth the American blood and treasure? If 85 percent of the Iraqis say it was worth the hellacious voyage, and the unelected Sunni Arab rulers of the region say it was not, might we not think with the former? If millions of Sunni, Shiite, and Kurdish Iraqis vote in the provincial elections, will Obama really want to say, one month before the U.S. presidential elections, that America's sojourn in Iraq has failed? If Iraq contributes to the current intellectual debates in the Muslim Middle East that seem to be diminishing the ideological appeal of bin Ladenism in Arab lands, might that mean that the bloodshed in Mesopotamia hasn't been a waste?

And speaking of Iran, Obama constantly asserts that the Islamic Republic has been the great beneficiary of America's invasion of Iraq, that things in the region would be so much better if Saddam Hussein were still in power. Leaving aside the issues of intra-Shiite friction and competition and the Muslim soul-searching partly provoked by the Iraq war, is Obama suggesting that the Middle East would be a safer place if Saddam were still with us and he, too, were again developing nuclear and biochemical weapons and could thereby "check" Iranian adventurism?

Clerical Iran's relationship with Syria was ironclad when Saddam was in power--it would not at all be surprising to discover that Syria's North Korean-designed breeder reactor under construction at Dayr az-Zawr was critically aided and approved by the Iranians before Saddam's fall. Saddam's savage aggressiveness--remember it?--was certainly one reason the mullahs became serious about developing nuclear weapons (the regime's conception of the Iranian nation as the cutting edge of anti-American, militant Islamic power was another). Damascus was taking a page from Saddam's and the mullahs' playbook: Nuclear weapons are an excellent investment for regimes who see their legitimacy tied directly to their ability to project intimidating force. A nuclear-armed Syrian-Iranian axis could unleash an enormous amount of trouble without fearing military or even economic retaliation from Western or other Middle Eastern states.

Does Obama approve or disapprove of Israel's preemptive strike on Dayr az-Zawr? Democratic senator Dianne Feinstein, a thoughtful dove, reluctantly praised the Israeli attack, which may well have retired Syria's nuclear-weapons program. Is this airstrike within the ballpark of the Illinois senator's idea of "tough diplomacy"? If so, would he then approve of an Israeli strike on Iran's nuclear facilities? His speeches and interviews certainly suggest that he views clerical Iran as a much more dangerous threat to America and Israel than Baathist Syria, whose nuclear facility may well have been developed with Iranian aid as part of a covert effort to develop an anti-American, nuclear-armed front in the Middle East. Are preemptive bombing raids okay if done by threatened foreigners? Would Obama have approved of a U.S.-led raid on Dayr az-Zawr? Or would he have described such an attack as unwarranted bellicosity that endangers the United States and the "peace process"? On September 25, 2004, Obama told the Chicago Tribune that "Launching some missile strikes into Iran is not the optimal position for us to be in" given the ongoing war in Iraq. "On the other hand, having a radical Muslim theocracy in possession of nuclear weapons is worse." Now that sounds a lot like John McCain's position on Iran, which Obama has described as counterproductive "saber-rattling."

It was the American invasion of Iraq that provoked the Europeans to get serious about their nuclear diplomacy with the mullahs in 2003. Has Obama noticed that as the threat of an American military strike against Tehran's bombmaking plants has faded so has the European resolve to punish the clerics with economy-crushing sanctions?

It just beggars the imagination to believe that Obama actually thinks that Ali Khamenei, Iran's prideful, virulently anti-American clerical overlord, would countenance a personal meeting with an American head of state. Obama has many advisers who served in the Clinton administration, and they have surely told him how unresponsive the clerical regime can be to earnest, friendly entreaties laced with the promise of big carrots. And the Clinton administration tried its hand at engagement when Mohammad Khatami was president, a cleric who will, at least furtively, shake a woman's hand. Over the last three years, Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns, who was until his recent retirement the State Department's majordomo on Iran, was tireless in his efforts to build a united front against Tehran. If Obama really believes his team could do better, be "tougher" than Nick Burns, then he might perhaps explain how.

Whatever new strength Iran has in the region comes not from the American invasion of Iraq--or from Iran's relationship with its always troublesome 25-year-old Lebanese stepchild, Hezbollah--but from its nuclear-weapons program and the nefarious potential it bestows on a government that is willing, as Mohammad Khatami remarked, "to wreak destruction" beyond its borders. The Bush administration has failed to stop this program precisely because the vigorous diplomacy that Barack Obama advocates has not worked. Obama calls for "tough diplomacy," but most Europeans don't want biting sanctions. More eloquently than George Bush, Obama can ask the Europeans for cooperation, but does he really think he could rally the German industrial giant Siemens or the French oil company Total to abandon their Iranian projects because of his personal magnetism? How will he pressure Paris and Berlin to kill these investments? After his public statements, could he plausibly saber-rattle like President Bush, who before the recent National Intelligence Estimate cut his legs off had spooked certain quarters in Tehran with the possibility that he would do to the Iranians what the Israelis did to Saddam Hussein at Osirak and to the Syrians at Dayr az-Zawr? If Obama plans bigger carrots than the Bush administration and the European Union offered the Iranians to stop uranium enrichment, he might consider describing those carrots and to whom in Tehran they will be offered.

Perhaps Obama will just say that diplomacy isn't going to stop the clerical quest for a nuke, and he is unwilling to bomb the Iranian nuclear-weapons facilities because he really doesn't think a nuclear-armed clerical regime is that grave of a menace. It's an excellent bet this is what the senator really believes, although he appears determined not to say so. If he made such a statement now--or even just defined "tough diplomacy"--we could see a meaningful debate between the presidential nominees, assuming the Arizonan really thinks that the only thing worse than preemptive military strikes against Iran's nuclear facilities is a clerical regime with a bomb. Perhaps we would have unexpected harmony between the two men, in favor of either preemption or containment. In any case, such a discussion would certainly be more profound than what the Democratic party's choice to be president of the United States has given us so far in his quest to become commander in chief.

Reuel Marc Gerecht is a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and a contributing editor to THE WEEKLY STANDARD.