Interesting article. Iran has been exporting its latest weapons technology to their proxies, thus engaging U.S. and its allies with little to no risk for retaliation. Does anyone still think Iran should be able to get nuclear weapons because we have them and every nation has a right to have what we have? Does anyone doubt Iran wouldn’t hesitate to make those nuclear weapons available to their proxies?
BAGHDAD — The United States is grappling with a rapidly evolving threat from Iranian proxies in Iraq after militia forces specialized in operating more sophisticated weaponry, including armed drones, have hit some of the most sensitive American targets in attacks that evaded U.S. defenses.
At least three times in the past two months, those militias have used small, explosive-laden drones that divebomb and crash into their targets in late-night attacks on Iraqi bases — including those used by the C.I.A. and U.S. Special Operations units, according to American officials.
Decontain Iran, let them be the regional power they are, and pretty soon the strategic postures of Russia, Pakistan, Turkey, India and China will change.
Remove all sanctions, and watch the Franco-German money - and connections of interest - flow. Germany gets an export zone it doesn’t have to pay for on the backside, France gets its traditional partner back (this relationship is so embedded and longstanding the modern colloquial farsi word for “thank you” is mersi, as in the French merci), and the orientation of the entire region shifts to a new pole.
Here’s the hard part:
Then, tell the idiots who’ve been running the garrison state for twenty years to grow the ■■■■ up. Extend EU and/or NATO protection to it and Lebanon, with the proviso that the regular money train is ending forever, and let Tehran live with the reality that the garrison state, Lebanon and the PA are in the past.
The posture of the US toward Iran’s nuclear capacity ought to be the same as its posture towards Israel’s.
It has never been about Iran being allowed nuclear weapons. By way of France, Pakistan or England, they could be a nuclear power tomorrow, by the usual grey-channel ways this happens. Or, Tehran could sink a chunk of its GDP into a domestic program, and get there maybe just in time for Saudi Arabia to follow its path-dependent track of fragmenting back into Najd, Haasa and Hedjaz.
So the answer is yes. A nuclear armed Iran will dictate the relationship with their proxies, not the other way around. They will most certainly make those nukes available to those proxies.
Your fantasy world scenario assumes Iran to be a State run by rational people. That simply isn’t the case.
Iran is not currently ‘prevented’ from going nuclear. This is not a fantasy position. Tehran is run by very cagey, strategic thinkers. The kind who can weather even Ahmadinejad, constrain his reforms, and reset. Tehran has avoided the strategic error of rogue nuclearization. But, the consensus that Iran is containable is crumbling, especially as Xi and Modi work relentlessly to transform half of Asia into mega ethnostates on a collision course toward a genocidal showdown.
Iran, decontained, becomes an immediate regional power, with lasting European investment. If it goes nuclear, that’s probably good, strategically, for the US, Europe and Africa. Whatever our moral qualms about proliferation might be, it’s strategically superior to sinking time, calories and loot into propping up Saudia Arabia and the sexcrime emirates in its orbit.
As for concerns about proxies, what proxies? The Houthis, the Hazara and Hizbollah? Tehran already determines their positions, and constraints, with cash, drones and training. Nukes don’t alter these relationships, anymore than having nukes give Islamabad extra juice in the Afghan portion of the Kush. These relationships are always built on patronage and tribal bonds, not mobile launch pads or nuclear capacity.
It would be rogue nuclearization. Tehran signed the last deal with Washington, because DC was finally willing to admit that Iran can be and is a regional nuclear power at will, and the treaty would’ve legitimized that status, over a deliberately slowed-down transition. Tehran consented to having the US up its backside for a decade, minimum, in exchange for an increased pace to decontainment and the end of a sanctions regime. That period of time would have been used by France, Germany and to a lesser extent, the UK and the US, to build into the Iranian economy in ways that made future deintegration very difficult.
In combination with the restrictions and obligations built into TPP, it would have crippled Beijing for more than a generation.
