Iran update

It's difficult for me to tell if the recent events relating to Iran's nuclear program are really critical elements that signify a possible breakthrough, or are just more of the same bluff and bluster that has characterized much of the negotiations over the past months. Last Wednesday, the United States and the other permanent members of the UN Security Council issued a joint statement stating their commitment to the NPT and urged all non-signatory countries with nuclear programs to accede to the treaty as non-nuclear weapons states.

There has been some talk that the Obama administration may be adjusting the US's tacit acceptance of Israel's nuclear program, and seeing it as an intractable stumbling block to negotiations with Iran. Israel, not surprisingly, has not recognized any change in its relationship with the United States.

Also of note is the progress that Brazil and Turkey have made mediating a resolution between Iran and the West. Iran has agreed "in principal" to a Brazil-Turkey fuel swap proposal that would involve Iran trading 3.5% enriched uranium for 20% enriched uranium for use in Tehran's medical research reactor.

I can't help but get excited about events like these. They make me think that a mutually beneficial resolution might actually be feasible. However, I am pretty sure that the level of trust needed to conclude any resolution between Iran and the United States is lacking.

I usually do not like drawing comparisons between Iran and Iraq, but I think there is a strong similarity between the weapons inspections that were carried out prior to the Iraq invasion, and the current push for IAEA inspectors in Iran. The US did not trust that Saddam Hussein was not manipulating the inspectors, and Iraq did not have any assurances that the US would keep its promise not to invade if it gave up any weapons that it had. Whether or not Iraq possessed chemical or biological agents was beside the point: once the US made a commitment to invade Iraq based on a condition that it could never verify with any certainty, the administration was stuck between carrying out its threat or backing down and losing credibility.

The Obama administration has taken pains to avoid the appearance that it is even considering invading Iran, but it is still suffering from the same problem the Bush Administration had with Iraq: if Iran and the US cannot trust each other to abide by any agreement they reach, then negotiations will always break down when they come to commitment and verification mechanisms. Whether or not Iran actually has a nuclear weapons program is just as irrelevant as whether or not chemical and biological agents were in Iraq. If the US cannot trust Iran to abide by the NPT, then any inspections and negotiations are meaningless.

However, there is a way out of this problem and the Obama administration knows it: unilateral commitment. If one party decides to take on a burden in order to show that it is committed to a deal, it will signal to the other party that they should do the same if they are truly interested in a resolution. The US's recent change in its nuclear posture is a good start. It shows that the US is truly committed to nonproliferation and disarmament. Increased pressure on Israel to join the NPT will also go a long way toward showing Iran that the US is serious. Now would be a good time for Iran to make some accommodations, but if they keep holding war games then that warm, fuzzy optimism I had earlier will quickly evaporate.

Slim, Frosty: what are your thoughts and opinions on the Iran nuclear talks?

Ought to Know Better Nominee

In honor of the guy I'm about to trash, let's start a new tradition: nomination for awards (with all nominations going in for next year right now). This is the "WTF you are normally a smart, intelligent pundit and should know SO MUCH better than this" award. (Better name pending.)

That said, Andrew Sullivan yesterday said that, while he regretted voting for Bush, Gore would have taken us into war with Iraq anyway.

This is so utterly ludicrous on so many levels, as even a quick google search will show that Gore was against the Iraq war in September '02, about 4 years before Andrew Sullivan himself came out against the war.

When his readers called him on it...he doubled down.

I guess my sense is that Gore opposed the Iraq war in part out of bitterness. If you look at Gore's record - and at TNR, I was hardly unaware of it - it was full of extreme vigilance about Saddam, willingness to use military force for moral ends (as in Bosnia), and completely conventional neocon views on the Middle East. I can absolutely see him going to war against Saddam if goaded sufficiently. Maybe he would have been persuaded by the intelligence that we didn't actually have the goods on WMDs; maybe his hawkishness would have waned in office as it did in opposition. But knowing Gore, I stick with my point. In office, I suspect he would have been much closer to my position on invasion at the time than he was.

These are the kinds of stupid counerfactuals that are impossible to disprove, and thus there is no end to the arguing. But if Bill Clinton (who was just as hawkish as Gore) didn't attack [edit: by attack, I mean invade; I know that Clinton bombed Iraq plenty] Iraq, and Gore explicitly called on focusing on Afghanistan...I think we can safely assume that Gore would have focused on Afghanistan. Saying that he was just bitter is nothing more than petty nastiness. I could go on a rant about the strange, bizarre double standard applied to Gore by all pundits, but as someone who talks about treating people fairly pretty often (and holding political figures to the same standard), this is just ridiculous.

Nothing Like Good Old-Fashioned Hypocrisy

Washington Post:

Senate Republicans failed early Friday in their bid to filibuster a massive Pentagon bill that funds the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, an unusual move designed to delay President Obama's health-care legislation.

On a 63 to 33 vote, Democrats cleared a key hurdle that should allow them to approve the must-pass military spending bill Saturday and return to the health-care debate. After years of criticizing Democrats for not supporting the troops, just three Republicans supported the military funding...

If the filibuster on the $626 billion defense bill had succeeded, Democrats would have had to scramble to find a way to fund the military operations, because a stopgap funding measure for the Pentagon will expire at midnight Friday. Such an effort to come up with another stopgap defense bill might have disrupted the very tight timeline on health care.

Looks it's perfectly fine to oppose funding the wars on principled grounds. See the section of the article on Russ Feingold for a good example of how this should be done. It's also perfectly fine to oppose the bill due to earmarks, which John McCain is quoted about in the article.

However, it's not fine to oppose the funding because you just want to delay the health care bill. And excuse us if we don't consider your opposition to the bill rooted in good faith when you just spent the last several years screaming about how anyone who voted against a war funding bill was a) with the terrorists and b) against the troops.