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"Rushing the enemy and slapping him in the face." Chris Nelson of The Nelson Report with the latest capital reading of events Iran:
Posted by Laura at April 26, 2006 10:06 AMThe leaders of Iran have amused themselves, if few others, in the past 24 hours by deliberately crossing over the Bush Administration’s declared “red line” for both Iran and North Korea...that is, threatening to proliferate nuclear and missile technology to rogue states like Sudan.
This, following a week of statements from senior Iranian officials...not just the increasingly over-the-top President Ahmadinejad...saying Iran has no intention of complying with Friday’s “deadline” (April 28) to provide the IAEA with answers for its report to the United Nations Security Council.
So the bad news is that the world can no longer comfort itself with the thought that while Ahmadinejad is obviously an irresponsible political agitator, there are still presumably responsible elements of control in the mullah leadership which really controls Iran, and its military and nuclear assets in particular. (Remember, Ahmadinejad is not “president” in the US or Russian sense, he does not have his “finger on the nuclear button”.)
In any event, the net is that Administration officials are reduced to threatening the Security Council by saying if it does not allow an Article 7 debate (implying the possibility of sanctions as an outcome) the UNSC will “lose credibility”.
The real target of this tepid US response is China, which continues to say it wants diplomacy, but rejects all talk of sanctions...as President Hu Jintao made very clear last week, in what is increasingly being seen as a seriously flawed US-China Summit. (More on that in tomorrow’s Report...)
A friend who watches the Iran situation closely said that what we’ve seen in recent days from Iran amounts to the Middle Eastern equivalent of the American Plains Indian’s show of bravado in the face of the enemy....”counting coup”. That is, in contemporary terms, rushing up to the enemy and slapping him in the face, despite his weapons and superpower position.
The American Indian risked death by such an act, hence it’s highly honored place in the warrior society. The Iranians clearly don’t think they are at risk. Still, such a public act of international defiance makes Iran look brave in the eyes of the Islamic world, while it makes the US and the UN look foolish...so the net in leverage is seen in Teheran, at least, as a gain for Iran, this analyst warns.
The “counting coup” tactic has a strategic goal, of course...”splitting the Five”...the US, the EU-3, and Russia. As with the stalled (failed?) US policy on N. Korea, it is the existence of the “Five” which, itself, as a practical matter, constitutes US policy toward Iran, just as the US must cling to the fiction that the 6 Party Talks amount to a real policy toward N. Korea.
“Maintaining the solidarity of The Five is all the policy we have,” our analyst friend laments. “All the rest is BS.” [...]
So where are we? It seems clear to our expert sources that Iran has no intention of complying with IAEA demands in time for Friday’s deadline, and that the result will be a repeat of last month’s UNSC debate, with both China and Russia continuing to oppose sanctions, and Iran continuing to poke and probe for ways to split the “alliance” against them.
On balance, our sources think the “real” White House thinking on its Iran options is a good deal more sophisticated (or sensible...take your pick) than some of the media coverage, and some of the Op Ed pieces by war hawks, would indicate. At least in part, this analysis rests on continued confidence in the basic scientific opinion that Iran will not be ready to produce weapons grade plutonium for many more years.
And Bush is given credit for understanding, however imperfectly, how his Iraq adventure has limited his military options in the Middle East, if not also in Asia. ...