Posted on 01/19/2006 9:28:02 PM PST by Natty Bumppo@frontier.net
Local Politics
My Two Cents on Iranian Nuclear Ambitions
By David J. Aland [20 January 2006]
“All politics is local.” proclaimed Tip O’Niell. While that is certainly an instructive point of view, I’m not entirely sure that I fully believe it. After all, that would suggest that all political activity is merely a competition between competing parochialisms, a sort of “Dueling NIMBYs”, and something far less than the writings of our Founders indicate they had in mind. Hamilton, Jefferson, Adams, Franklin, and many others saw the political process as a collaborative event, in which shared goals and visions were critically important, and by which the common weal would be served by men of good intent.
But the O’Niell Theorem provides us with an interesting view towards a politician much on everyone’s mind these days – Iranian president Amadinejad. This former De-evolutionary Guard is best characterized as a “secular theocrat” – a civilian in the thrall of the repressive religious hierarchy. Next time Nancy Pelosi wants to gripe about what a theocracy looks like, she should stop staring at the White House and take a peek at this White Rabbit of Iran.
Formerly one of the courageous revolutionaries attempting to roll back history in Iran to roughly the eighth century, Amadinejad has certainly sparked up the international discourse since his election. He has publicly declared his belief in the imminent coming of the Mahdi, and has spent considerable funds to spruce up the area and the shrine where the Mahdi is expected to arrive. For those not versed in Islamic eschatology, Mohammed al-Mahdi is believed by the Shias that form the majority of the Iranian population to be the “12th Imam” and the harbinger of Yaum al Qiyamah, or the Muslim apocalypse. Amadinejad believes that day is soon.
He also apparently believes that he has some divine purpose in all of this. When speaking at the United Nations last September, he says that he felt “an aura of light around me” when he spoke of his vision for the coming of the “Promised One.” But his divine purpose may actually be somewhat less noble. On numerous occasions, he has expressed doubt in the legitimacy of the Israeli state, and flatly denied that the Holocaust took place. In fact, he is soon to host a conference in Iran whose purpose appears to be a gathering of Holocaust deniers to amass their cases.
In the meantime, he thumbs his not-insubstantial nose at the international community by tearing the UN seals off his nuclear research facilities and resuming the enrichment of plutonium, putatively for peaceful purposes, such as energy for a country whose oil reserves are massive.
In short, he believes the end is near, and he is pursuing the tools to speed up the process.
Well, that may be one way of looking at it.
It is always possible that the president of one of the most oil-rich nations in the world is pursuing nuclear power as a means of making that supply of oil last longer for all mankind. He may be driven by a utopian vision of global peace and prosperity, or maybe even just a little greed. Consider: if the Iranians use fewer barrels of oil, they can sell that many more for the usual 90% profit.
The O’Niell Theorem suggests another alternative. Amadinejad is consolidating his power in Iran by appealing to religious hysteria and positioning himself as a possible candidate Mahdi, who is, according to believers, hidden until the time is right. By doing so, he can gradually wrest power from the crypto-Stalinist theocrats in the Iranian Council of Guardians, whose authority over Iranian politics is so absolute that they could disqualify over 80% of the candidates in the last Iranian elections.
In this scenario, the nuclear saber-rattling is little more than a cheap imitation of Kim Jong-Il, North Korea’s Fearless Leader and leading Don King imitator. In this scenario, Amadinejad is a danger only to his political adversaries, and not the world at large, because he is mostly strutting for a local audience, and not threatening global stability.
There is, of course, a third interpretation, and it is one that keeps a lot of strategists up at night: Amadinejad truly believes the end is near, and he is pursuing the tools to speed up the process by igniting the final and convulsive jihad against the West. If this is the case, then the impotent nattering of the Eurocrats at the UN (who have warned Iran that further misbehavior will result in … the scheduling of another meeting?) is all for naught.
But if all politics are local, my parochial point of view is that we’d better be careful just how far we let someone whose goals and vision are so inimical to, well, life on this planet.
Think locally, but act globally.
David J. Aland is a retired Naval Officer with a graduate degree in National Security Affairs from the U. S. Naval War College.
Let that be a lesson to all of you who will listen to logic and reason, (hint: if you're into sitting out elections, voting LP, etc, this message ain't for you--you're beyond help).
I got your names from Khashayar's list. He's been banned/suspended for some reason.
Actually, if they keep saying that Israel should be wiped off the map and that they move forward with attempting to develop nuclear weapons, Israel, which has nuclear weapons my turn Iran into the equivalent of an apocalypse. So Amadinejad may be correct in that the end is soon.
Like the rest of us, you're guessing.
What if they're not years away, but months? Then what?
I base it on lack of a delivery system and enriched uranium.
A regional delivery system they have already, weapons grade nuclear fuel? That's what opening up those sites was all about. Do they pose a nuclear threat to the US at this point, clearly not. They do, however pose a nuclear threat, and would be able to play nuclear blackmail games with the rest of the Middle East, and Europe (the missile system they currently have *can* reach Europe, witness M. Chirac's recent finding of his testicles).
When will they be able to play these sorts of games, not known by the likes of you, or I, but the increasing rhetoric all around augurs sooner, rather than later...
the infowarrior
Not necessarily. As far as the nuclear capabilities of the Shehab 3, I've heard both yes and no on that. *Something* stirred Chirac up from his usual grovelling posture, something sufficiently potentially grave enough to make him issue the kind of threat he issued (a threat of nuclear retaliation is not to be taken lightly, as far as I'm concerned.)
What that "something" was, I can only guess at, and my guess is that the mullahs are closer to achieving nuclear status than is being publicly let on...
the infowarrior
The people, particularly young adults, want a democracy. This is why they didn't vote. It wasn't that they were looking for a better candidate... one wasn't provided within their system. Should they have voted for the one who would have oppressed them "LESS"?
Two questions:
1. How much enriched uranium do they have on hand? How fast can they enrich more?
2. How long will it take them to develop a delivery system that will fit in the back of a truck? Or in a shipping container?
The honest answer to the first is "we don't know". To the second, "tomorrow".
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