The Times Goes M.A.D on Iran

I've gotten a lot of use of one line from the movie Top Gun. After reading this in the New York Times, I have to drag it out one more time. "Son your ego is writing checks your body can't cash." Though it's not entirely true in this case because it's entirely possible that David E. Sanger could have cash this one himself.

Sanger is taking the position that we should just let Iran get the bomb, and rely on containment to keep them in check.

And could deterrence, containment and cool calculation of national interest work to restrain Iran as it worked to restrain America and its competitors during the cold war? Or is that false comfort?

"We've lived with Iran as a terror threat for a generation," says Stephen Biddle, the senior fellow for defense policy at the Council on Foreign Relations, making the case that containment could work again. "Iran has a return address, and states with a return address can be retaliated against.

Here's he's just quoting someone who thinks Cold War ideas will work when applied to the Iranian government just as it worked against the Americans and those other guys in the Cold War.

But Sanger is in full agreement with the idea.

What of the fear that Iran might pass a weapon to Hezbollah or to Al Qaeda in Iraq? Those arguing for a containment strategy say Iran knows that the origins of any detonated bomb would be traced sooner or later, so the mullahs would not be foolish enough to trust proxies with such a weapon.

In Sanger's world view we should wait until some Israeli or U.S. city is a smoking pile of radioactive rubble before we take any action. And while we wait, we are pinning our hopes on a band of religious fanatics and their clearly unstable president.

I'm not an expert in these things but lets say we let Iran get the bomb and they don't make the rational judgments Sanger is counting on and the give one to a terrorist group. Let's say the terrorists get the thing into the U.S. and set it off in Times Square. What would the death toll be? 100,000? 200,000? 500,000?

How many infidel lives is Sanger willing to risk on the sound judgment of people who think strapping a bomb to your chest and taking out as many people with you as you can is a great and noble thing?

If the idea of containment and the treat of a western response had a chance of working on Iran after getting the bomb, why hasn't it stopped them from trying?

Technorati Tags: Iran, Nuclear, Politics, Terrorism

Posted by: Stephen Macklin at 03:39 PM | No Comments | Add Comment