Flat Earth Society

Thomas Friedman has a column out arguing that a nuclear armed Iran is preferable to having the Bush administration use military means to stop them. A more competent administration would rally world support for the threat of force “or really severe sanctions” and the Ayatollahs would cave. Of course the Bushies are anything but competent. Maybe the best course might be to just let Iran have the bomb. Let them know in no uncertain terms that if they use it or give it to terrorists we would destroy their nuclear sites. That ought to be deterrence enough. He is careful to say we would use tactical nuclear weapons and only target nuclear facilities, presumably to minimize collateral damage. He doesn’t make his case very well. It doesn’t help that he devotes most of his space to Rummy bashing (Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld) with a few gratuitous swipes at George Bush and Condoleezza Rice. In the end Friedman doesn’t really make much of a point. Like most of the pundits who like to criticize the president, he’s just venting.
It’s the sort of shallow thinking typical of Friedman. The title of his latest book is a case in point, The World is Flat. There he makes the case that the Chinese and Indians are on the verge of global commercial hegemony. His economics aren’t any better than his geometry but I’ll let the book’s title make that point for me. This piece is about Iran and the bomb.
I think the Iranians will probably get their bomb, though I doubt it will happen while Bush is president. He’s not about to launch military strikes but they can’t be sure he won’t. He could even invade. After all, Saddam Hussein didn’t think he would invade Iraq. They will be more confident when there is a new American President. Friedman’s competence argument notwithstanding no amount of diplomacy is going to gain broad global support for either force or serious economic sanctions. The world doesn’t really feel threatened. They have all gotten used to living under an American protective umbrella. Iranian oil is more important to Europeans and to the Chinese. Commercial opportunities in Iran are the top priority for Russia. The Ayatollahs would never actually drop a bomb not because America might use Friedman’s tactical weapons but because they might obliterate the country and with it the Ayatollahs. These people are more than willing to send their followers out on suicide missions but they don’t go themselves and they don’t send their own sons and daughters. They aren’t likely to put themselves at risk and they aren’t likely to repeat Saddam’s mistake either. If they do the Americans will take care of it.
It isn’t hard to see why the Ayatollahs want the bomb. It will give them back the respect they have lost. Their revolution was supposed to sweep the Islamic world. Instead it has stalled and become unpopular even inside Iran. The bomb puts them back on center stage. They are twisting the lion’s tail. It is circular reasoning to think that Iran would be deterred from building a bomb by any threat that America might take it away without actually harming any one. That would put them in a position of having nothing to lose by trying. The only thing they might lose by dropping a bomb is their capacity to build more bombs. What they might gain is membership in the nuclear club with all the international prestige that goes with it.
By the way, Thomas, our planet is in roughly the shape of a sphere.