In response to my column Wednesday on a possible military attack on Iran, I’ve been deluged with letters from readers the last couple of days, many expressing incredulity that the White House could actually be serious about launching another war in the midst of two others that are going so exceedingly poorly and have such thin public support.


Believe it. A few more things have happened just in the last 48 hours. Several more sources, of varying reliability, are predicting a military strike against Iran’s suspected nuclear facilities as soon as late next month. Personally, I doubt these predictions, but they do show how far along the planning for war has gone. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is getting ready for a trip to the Persian Gulf emirates next week that will kick off a diplomatic campaign to line up political support among allies for a U.S. confrontation with Iran. The International Atomic Energy Agency is getting ready for a key meeting on March 6, in which, at U.S. insistence, it will once again consider whether to refer Iran to the United Nations Security Council (where China and Russia would both surely veto any anti-Iranian resolutions, but the referral itself is seen as lending international legitimacy to U.S. claims). Washington is leaning hard on previously skeptical countries like India to support U.N. referral at the IAEA meeting. Meanwhile, Iran’s hardline leaders are threatening to pull out of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty if diplomatic action is taken against them. And yesterday, the Guardian reported that the White House has submitted a sudden emergency request for $75 million in congressional funding for a massive new propaganda campaign against Tehran. The request includes funds to create new “pro-democracy” groups within Iran, ignoring the country’s already well-established democracy movement (which opposes U.S. intervention) in favor of Chalabi-style puppet groups it can control and trot out as convenient.


The American public hasn’t much noticed yet, but we are moving steadily and inexorably toward war. Things are hopping.



Among the letters I’ve received are several from irate conservatives that challenged me to outline what I would do to counter the undeniable problem posed if Iran’s radical clerics (with their terror group ties) got hold of nuclear weaponry. It’s a bit of a red herring; even if Iran is running a nuclear weapons as well as its nuclear energy program, which there is no actual evidence to support, it is, by almost every intelligence service estimate, close to a decade away from getting functional nukes. Iran is still missing the necessary centrifuges and several other key pieces of equipment. There’s plenty of time to try alternatives to the drastic and quite likely disastrous option of a military strike, a strike that would almost certainly lead to a wider regional war, serious damage to he U.S. economy and its military, and a new global wave of serious terror attacks.


Nonetheless, it’s an important question. … continued below …
If the military option is to be prevented, it will have to be because of domestic political opposition. That means not only publicizing the dire risks associated with a military attack, but showing that those risks far outweigh the risks of first trying alternatives to rein in Iran’s alleged weapons program. Anti-war advocates need more than fear and Bush administration distrust. We also need a plan.


Me? The simplest answer is that I’d follow the advice of the democratic, reform-minded opposition within Iran, which opposes the hardliners, opposes the nuclear program, but is appalled by Washington’s threats and believes they (and any military action) greatly strengthen the radical clerics. Iran does have democratic elections, and its reform politicians were making great inroads into the theocratic revolution not so many years ago. Then Bush invaded Afghanistan and Iraq, and since then — and especially in the last year, as Bush has used wholly unproven charges of a nuclear weapons program to further demonize Iran — the reformers believe American bellicosity has been the single greatest factor in the increased political strength of the current, alarmingly radical cleric leadership. As with Bush and 9-11, the clerics have used a very real threat to their national security to rally the populace to policies there would otherwise have been far less support for.


What, then, can Bush do? How about dropping the saber-rattling and negotiating in good faith? Instead, the U.S. has worked overtime to undermine the E.U.-led negotiations and to try to get the IAEA to refer Iran to the U.N. Security Counciil, presumably for some sort of resolution Iran would then hopefully be provoked into violating, thus opening the legal door for the military action Washington seems to crave. Unlike Saddam, however, Iran has no proven history of developing (let alone using) such weapons. And until very recently, in the wake of relentless diplomatic and military provocation from Washington, Iran — unlike Saddam — has been in compliance with all its international obligations around its nuclear program.


Can it work? Of course. Bush himself successfully did it with Libya, a terror state dictatorship with an established nuclear program and a history of defying international sanctions. There was, moreover, no real democratic opposition in Libya, no domestic leverage with which to threaten Col. Qaddafi’s power. But Bush, in one of the true foreign policy successes of his presidency, was able to use a combination of incentives and sanctions to get Libya to dismantle its illegal weaponry and allow full access to international inspectors. If it can be done with a rogue state like Libya, it can be done with Iran — if the U.S. actually negotiates in good faith.


Compared to the danger of an all-out war, we’re much better off supporting the Iranian reform opposition, using a combination of threats and incentives to negotiate strict international control over Iran’s nuclear energy program, and not giving the clerics any more red meat with which to solidify their support at home. Quite aside from the dubious military, economic, and national security wisdom of it, there’s no legal or moral rationale for either a military incursion or regime change. That’s why, even though most of our allies are (rightly) concerned about the rhetoric coming from Tehran, few of them favor a military response. We’re almost completely alone on this. Again.


I do not think it’s possible to militarily strike Iran’s nuclear facilities without starting a war, probably a regional one. War is a last resort — not a first. There’s a vast range of diplomatic possibilities between doing nothing and starting the disastrous sort of regional conflict an unprovoked military incursion would incur. We should try them. The War on Terror is not just about a country like Iran. We have the whole of the Muslim world to consider, much of which is being swept — thanks in large part to us — by exactly the sort of radical Islamist political parties that run Iran. We can’t rub them all out by military force; all we would succeed in doing is further legitimizing them. We’re much better off working to mitigate their abuses, improve their economies, and support their secular, democratic alternatives. And that means not starting wars with massive civilian casualties in every country where we don’t like the ruling government.


At some point preventing terror has to be about cutting off the oxygen of anti-Americanism in which it flourishes. We need to convince the Muslim world that we’re on their side. We need a war of persuasion, not conquest. So far in the last four plus years, we’ve done exactly the opposite, and aside from all the other risks, a military strike against Iran would be another big, irrevocable step in the wrong direction, strengthening Islamist parties and terror groups across the Muslim world.


The clerics have ruled Iran for nearly 30 years since provoking any international incidents. I wouldn’t want to live under them, but the people in Iran have chosen to do so, and we’re much better off trying to encourage them to choose an alternative than trying to ram one down their throats — bloodily and probably unsuccessfully — and meantime strengthening their brethren across Africa and Asia. The case against a military option is compelling, the alternatives pragmatic and likely to be successful. It’s up to us to get that case out to the public, before something really ugly happens.