Russia and China may have approved referring Iran to the Security Council, but whether those two countries are getting tough with their oil ally depends on what they do when the Security Council takes it up.

If anything, they can go to bat more affirmatively for Iran there, by stalling and watering down resolutions so the issue remains deadlocked under their veto power.

Posted by: Shinoliite at January 31, 2006 12:33 AM

But it is only going to be refered to the Security Council on March, to leave Iran a few weeks to negociate itself out of the crisie. Because, you know, time was the problem here.

Anyway, this is a steep in the right direction, even if it wont do anything, other than to give us the crdibility and legitimacy of the UN.

Posted by: Elliot at January 31, 2006 12:37 AM

"Anyway, this is a steep in the right direction, even if it wont do anything, other than to give us the crdibility and legitimacy of the UN."

Why must we go through the motions in order to make the UN "credible"? El Baradei could not be trusted with the issue of Iran, he is not on the side of the infidels, but on the side of the ummah. He has done absolutley nothing to deter Iran, he's only bought them more time. He doesn't even seem concerned that they have nukes! We need to stop pretending that the UN has any form of legitimacy, it has been taken over by the Muslim bloc. They have plenty of time to condemn Israel, but they never take any action against the Muslim countries. What are they going to do with Assad since they have demonstrated that either he or one of his close friends killed Hariri? What are they going to do with the Sudanese government over the Darfur genocide? What are they going to do about the persecuted Copts in Egypt? Anything? They don't care, the UN is more concerned about the feelings of the Muslim nations (e.g. the Muhammad cartoons) than over any human rights abuses that the Muslims are guilty of. Referring Iran to the SC is pointless. America, Britain, and Israel just need to bomb the place and get it over with. Enough talk, we've been talking for close to 3 years and it has gotten us nowhere with the nuclear mullahs.

Posted by: igor at January 31, 2006 1:35 AM

Condoleeza Rice is an academically trained diplomat. The US State Department, the European Diplomatic Establishment, indeed most of those negotiating on behalf of the West in the present crisis with Iran are also academically trained, and therefore steeped in the last half-century’s notions about crisis management as filtered through the US/Soviet experiences in the Cold War. The model for crisis management success during this period was the Cuban Missile Crisis, while the model for failure was WWI. A large part of what these folks were taught in International Relations were the supposed lessons about de-escalation and conflict reduction learned by comparing the 1914 crisis with the one in 1962. The seminal study in this regard was The Management of International Crisis by Ole R. Holsti, Richard A. Brody, and Robert C. North.

This is a Social Science model. It attempts to actually quantify by “automated content analysis” using the major participants published statements about the crisis, “each party’s perceptions and intentions for six variables: positive affect, negative affect, strength, weakness, activity and passivity.” What they determined was:

“In the Cuban crisis…both sides tended to perceive rather accurately the nature of the adversary’s actions and then proceeded to act at an ‘appropriate’ level; that is, as the level of violence or potential violence in the adversary’s actions diminished, perceptions of those actions increased in positive affect and decreased in negative affect, and the level of violence in the resulting policies also decreased. Thus, unlike the situation in 1914, efforts by either party to delay or reverse the escalation were generally perceived as such, and responded to in like manner.”
More conclusions:

·“American decision-makers displayed a considerable concern and sensitivity for the position and perspective of the adversary.”

·“The flexibility provided by a number of plans requiring less than the use of unlimited violence stands in marked contrast to 1914”

·“Another characteristic of the decision process in October 1962 was the very conscious concern for action at the very lowest level of violence—or potential violence—necessary to achieve the goals

·“There was no demand which the Soviet Premier could not understand, none that he could not carry out and none calculated to humiliate him unduly.”

OK, what am I saying here? First, I believe that one can perceive the essential elements of international crisis management as expressed by Holsti et al, in the present situation. It is characterized by a mildness of approach, a concern for the perceptions and sensitivities of the adversary, a tendency to stretch out and slow down the crisis, and most importantly, a belief that the other side is working just as diligently as you are toward a solution to the quarrel. Secondly, the true paradigm for this crisis is not 1962, or 1914 but 1938. To put a point to it, the lessons of Munich have been replaced by the lessons of the Cuban Missile Crisis.

The Iranians (and the North Koreans) understand this so well that at each and every juncture where the “diplomatic will” of the West is close to jelling against them, they offer yet another plea for negotiation. Most people with some common sense see this and wonder why the West would continually fall for these delaying tactics. The reason, as I see it, is simple enough. This is what the history of warfare has taught us, according to the people who educated our diplomats. The Soviet Union, as an essentially rational European state, imbued with the notions of great power balances, spheres of influence and so on, was amenable to this approach. Islamofascists are not.

This is not an international diplomatic squabble. It is a desperate, life or death struggle with a group of neo-fascists who believe that if they can obliterate Israel and drive the West out of the Middle East, the invisible Imam in the well will rise up and govern the world according to their insane principles. Are you worried? I am.

Posted by: george III at January 31, 2006 4:00 AM

Why yes indeed George III, it seems that the present crisie management methode is being dealt with with the Neo-Réaliste school of international relations, who's number one rule is that all States are rational and seek the same simple but hardlyquantifiable objective: power.

So the whole question is, how rational is Iran? Personaly, my opinion is that to brush their heads of State as mere fundamentalists who have no notion of survival is a bit too easy. I believe that Mr. Ahmadinejad is brave enough to equipe a shady group of terrorists with nukes, but that he wont do anything himself that will bring the end of his country. They probably can be dealt with like Russia was.

But I agree, as you pointed out, that small rogue States without concept of balance of power, with little to lose and a lot to gain, and who are facing a West who's only military arm is overstreched and unwilling to commite boots on the ground, can certainly manage to navigate in this crisie without much problem.

Until this March.

Posted by: Elliot at January 31, 2006 5:01 AM

george iii -> what a succint, piercing analysis of the current situation. thank you for that contribution.

Posted by: archduke at January 31, 2006 5:24 AM

Maybe Kofi will end the problem by publishing a map withotu Iran on it, thus ending the entire issue since they won't exist anymore

Posted by: epaminondas at January 31, 2006 7:06 AM

It would be a tragedy to allow the Mullahs of Iran to pull the proud Persian people into an abyss. I can only hold out hope that civil war is still an outcome that we might see. The wise and resolute among the Iranians have long used the U.S. Constitution as a model for Hope, and perhaps they will come to understand that if they truly wish to emulate the United States and its history in any real way, they will have to be willing to FIGHT for the freedom they desire.

There are far too many places in the world where the will to fight for what's right seems to be choked out of the population. If this was not the case, tyrants and madmen would have far less reach.

Iran's best chance is to take back its own will to live among the community of nations and depose these Islamofascists that have held them in the grip of madness for far too long.

Posted by: Foehammer at January 31, 2006 9:29 AM

"They probably can be dealt with like Russia was."
Elliot:

Yes, indeed, that is the question; whether we can deal with the Iranians as we dealt with the Russians. I have always been an advocate of deterrence, or the notion that rational actors in their self-interest are actually more likely to come to a modus vivendi when faced with utter destruction. Edmund Teller actually developed the thermonuclear weapon with that in mind. Who would use a weapon of some tens of kilotons against a power that could respond with megatons of retaliation?

The answer to that is, unfortunately, only a group of true believers who see their own destruction as martyrdom in a cosmic cause…a group whose self-interest is delusional. The great majority of the Iranian people are fully responsible, adult, sane and moral. The problem is, that could have been said about the German people in the 1930’s. Hitler and his cadre high jacked a great country and promoted an ideology that was inconsistent with modern history, science and civilization, and proceeded to behave in a self destructive, demented fashion.
It took the rest of the world a long time to realize that they couldn’t rely on Nazi Germany to behave in a rational manner. Had the Nazis produced a bomb before the start of WWII, I have no doubts they would have used it, either literally, or as a means to blackmail.

I am worried that something similar is happening in Iran. Too many public statements made by Amadinejad and his cronies contain a reference to the End Time, or the Occulted Imam. This sort of apocalypticism isn’t unique to Islam. There are many fundamentalist Christians who believe the same sort of thing—but Pat Robertson, fool that he is, doesn’t seem bent on obtaining a nuclear weapon and using it to start the whole thing. This is a matter of perception. Perhaps I am wrong.

Posted by: george III at January 31, 2006 2:33 PM