Juan Cole: The GOP's Iran option is off the table
[Mr. Cole is Professor of Modern Middle Eastern and South Asian History at the University of Michigan. His website is http://www.juancole.com.]
The conclusions of the latest National Intelligence Estimate regarding Iran's lack of a nuclear weapons program will have a profound impact on the 2008 presidential campaign. The report may well prove a key element in throwing the election to the Democrats. Republicans have used the alleged nuclear threat posed by Iran to scare the American public and to turn attention away from Iraq, economic troubles and Republican scandals. But the NIE findings have pulled the rug out from under the Grand Old Party.
Republican presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani initially dismissed the NIE, but on Sunday he backtracked substantially on "Meet the Press." He said of Iran, "And of course we don't ... want to use the military option. It would be dangerous; it would be risky." He added that it would be even more dangerous if Iran did acquire nuclear weapons, but immediately put on a mien of sweet reason: "We should utilize sanctions. We should utilize as much pressure as we're capable of." Now he represented the military option as a tool of diplomacy.
This is, of course, the same Rudy Giuliani who while campaigning has all but pledged to bomb Iran if elected. It is a "promise" and not a "threat," he has said, that if Tehran appears close to getting a bomb, he will "set them back eight or 10 years." While Giuliani hasn't specified how he would do so, he likely means launching military strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities such as the one at Natanz. That message has been accompanied by bluster from Giuliani worthy of a World Wrestling Federation ham in spandex: "We will not beg to negotiate with them. We're going to make them beg to negotiate with us." Such Hulk Hogan-style boasts may play to the Republican base, but Giuliani now seems more aware of the possibility that the war-weary public may not embrace his reckless bravado if he wins his party's nomination for the general election....
For Republicans, the beauty of Iran as a campaign issue was that it involved a regime whose minions had regularly chanted "death to America" for decades, a regime that is actively hostile to the U.S. ally Israel, that had at least at some point been involved in international terrorism, and that -- above all -- was suspected of aggressively pursuing a nuclear weapons program. Americans had despised the Shiite clerical regime ever since Khomeini's regime took U.S. embassy personnel hostage, and ayatollahs with nukes was a national nightmare. Indeed, the ongoing threat of a nuclear-armed Iran had the potential for bolstering those Americans motivated by issues of national security, thereby rescuing the politically sinking Republicans.
Americans are not now going to fall in love with Iran, and suspicions may linger about Tehran's civilian nuclear energy research program. But voters are unlikely to take very seriously the idea that a poor, weak country of 70 million -- one lacking much of an air force and with no weapons of mass destruction -- is the most important problem that the United States faces. And if Iran is not the most important problem, then surely healthcare, the economy and getting out of Iraq are. On those issues, the electorate now tells pollsters that they overwhelmingly favor Democrats to do the job. In the future, historians may see the revelation of the National Intelligence Estimate on Iran in December 2007 as a real turning point for the 2008 presidential election.
Read entire article at Salon
The conclusions of the latest National Intelligence Estimate regarding Iran's lack of a nuclear weapons program will have a profound impact on the 2008 presidential campaign. The report may well prove a key element in throwing the election to the Democrats. Republicans have used the alleged nuclear threat posed by Iran to scare the American public and to turn attention away from Iraq, economic troubles and Republican scandals. But the NIE findings have pulled the rug out from under the Grand Old Party.
Republican presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani initially dismissed the NIE, but on Sunday he backtracked substantially on "Meet the Press." He said of Iran, "And of course we don't ... want to use the military option. It would be dangerous; it would be risky." He added that it would be even more dangerous if Iran did acquire nuclear weapons, but immediately put on a mien of sweet reason: "We should utilize sanctions. We should utilize as much pressure as we're capable of." Now he represented the military option as a tool of diplomacy.
This is, of course, the same Rudy Giuliani who while campaigning has all but pledged to bomb Iran if elected. It is a "promise" and not a "threat," he has said, that if Tehran appears close to getting a bomb, he will "set them back eight or 10 years." While Giuliani hasn't specified how he would do so, he likely means launching military strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities such as the one at Natanz. That message has been accompanied by bluster from Giuliani worthy of a World Wrestling Federation ham in spandex: "We will not beg to negotiate with them. We're going to make them beg to negotiate with us." Such Hulk Hogan-style boasts may play to the Republican base, but Giuliani now seems more aware of the possibility that the war-weary public may not embrace his reckless bravado if he wins his party's nomination for the general election....
For Republicans, the beauty of Iran as a campaign issue was that it involved a regime whose minions had regularly chanted "death to America" for decades, a regime that is actively hostile to the U.S. ally Israel, that had at least at some point been involved in international terrorism, and that -- above all -- was suspected of aggressively pursuing a nuclear weapons program. Americans had despised the Shiite clerical regime ever since Khomeini's regime took U.S. embassy personnel hostage, and ayatollahs with nukes was a national nightmare. Indeed, the ongoing threat of a nuclear-armed Iran had the potential for bolstering those Americans motivated by issues of national security, thereby rescuing the politically sinking Republicans.
Americans are not now going to fall in love with Iran, and suspicions may linger about Tehran's civilian nuclear energy research program. But voters are unlikely to take very seriously the idea that a poor, weak country of 70 million -- one lacking much of an air force and with no weapons of mass destruction -- is the most important problem that the United States faces. And if Iran is not the most important problem, then surely healthcare, the economy and getting out of Iraq are. On those issues, the electorate now tells pollsters that they overwhelmingly favor Democrats to do the job. In the future, historians may see the revelation of the National Intelligence Estimate on Iran in December 2007 as a real turning point for the 2008 presidential election.