gracchusdixit

We seem, at long last, to be on the verge of a nuclear agreement with Iran—that is, if recalcitrant Republicans in Congress don’t throw a hissy fit and jettison years of difficult and delicate negotiations. Those who oppose any sort of deal with Iran invoke one reason above all others: the notion that Iran’s leaders are evil, power-made lunatics who are utterly incapable of behaving rationally and will therefore never be able to enter into an agreement that we can depend upon.  In their view, the very idea of negotiating with the Iranians is utterly fruitless or, worse yet, tantamount to bargaining with the devil.

The difficulty for those who make this argument is the fact that the United States has a long history of bargaining with devils.  It was Ronald Reagan, the patron saint of conservatives, who famously denounced the Soviet Union as an “evil empire” but quite happily signed a nuclear deal with its leader.  The same Ronald Reagan not only dealt with Saddam Hussein—a devil if ever there was one—but also provided Saddam with military aid when Iraq invaded Iran.  The elder George Bush turned a blind eye when the man his son later called a “homicidal dictator” unleashed chemical weapons on his own citizens.  And worst of all, it was Saint Ronald who okayed a secret arms deal with the very Iranians his worshipful fans now deplore and then illegally used the money to fund the Contra rebels in Nicaragua.  Given this tawdry record of dealing with devils, the current caterwauling of Republicans in Congress is both hypocritical and absurd.

Now, no sane person wants the Iranians to get their hands on nuclear weapons.  Indeed, no sane person should want any nation to have nuclear weapons, including our own.  There are those who try to draw a line between countries like Iran, on the one hand, and supposedly “responsible” nations like ours, on the other.  They should be reminded that the only country which has actually used nuclear weapons is the United States of America.   Say what you will about the reasons, the fact remains that we are the ones who dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, incinerating several hundred thousand Japanese in the process.  Whether that act was “responsible,” let alone necessary, I will leave to historians to sort out.

Nor, on the other hand, should any sane person have so much as one scintilla of sympathy or toleration for Iran’s theocratic government.  The intrusion of religion into the public life of any nation is a prescription for disaster—whether the intrusion comes from Islamic extremism in Iran, Orthodox extremism in Israel, or Evangelical extremism in the United States.  Religion and liberty do not mix.  They never have.  They never will.

None of this, however, changes the fact that, viewed dispassionately, the Iranians can be said to have perfectly logical reasons for thinking about the possibility of acquiring nuclear weapons.  After all, they are surrounded by hostile enemies: by the Sunni Muslim states of the Middle East, by Jihadis in Afghanistan, by Israel, and, of course, by the ubiquitous military—and nuclear—presence of the United States.

In 1953, the United States and Britain launched a coup that toppled the only democratically elected government in Iran’s long and ancient history.  Thereafter, the same two countries imposed the authoritarian regime of Reza Shah Pahlavi on the Iranian nation.  It was the Shah’s overthrow in 1979 that led to the seizure of the American embassy in Tehran and a draconian embargo on Iranian economic activity, which has poisoned the relationship between the two countries ever since.

For the Iranians to wish to arm themselves against such threats is dangerous to everyone.  But isn’t paranoid, and it certainly isn’t irrational.

Whether we like it or not, Iran is one of the two most populous and powerful nations in the Middle East, it has played a central role in that region for more than three thousand years, and it isn’t going away any time soon.  To imagine that we can ignore or browbeat—let alone invade and subdue—a nation several times the size of Iraq is folly.  And to think that its people, with their ancient culture and their rich literary and intellectual tradition, are mindless lunatics is utter nonsense.

We do not, in fact, know that the Iranians are actively planning to develop nuclear weapons.  But if we want to forestall that possibility, then we must understand the reasons that could cause them to contemplate such plans in the first place.  If we expect the Iranians to behave “rationally,” then we must do the same.  Given the lunacy in Congress, that may be infinitely tougher than dealing with the Iranians.