Jamie

Weinstein

Read Jamie's bio and previous columns

June 9, 2009

What if Everything You Think We Know About Iran Is Not Wrong?

The June 1 issue of Newsweek magazine is provocatively titled “Everything You Know About Iran is Wrong.” Newsweek International editor Fareed Zakaria writes the marquis article for the issue, trying to set the record straight on what he sees as common misrepresentations about everyone’s favorite Islamic Republic.

Zakaria takes on several “myths,” but his most important target is the “myth” that the Mullahs running Iran are suicidal. Zakaria suggests that they are not. He writes that the Islamic Republic operates in a “shrewd, calculating manner” in “advancing its interest when possible, retreating when necessary.” Furthermore, Zakaria argues, Iran’s leaders are mostly concerned with keeping power and acquiring wealth. It seems a bit odd that a regime primarily concerned with keeping power and acquiring wealth would go out of its way to constantly goad the United States, the world’s largest economy (see the acquiring wealth part) and most powerful country militarily (see the keeping power part). But Zakaria is a savvy analyst, so let’s not dismiss his argument so easily.  

“Iran’s ruling elite is obsessed with gathering wealth and maintaining power,” Zakaria writes. “The argument made by those . . . for coercive sanctions against Iran is that many in the regime have been squirreling away money into bank accounts in Dubai and Switzerland. These are not the actions associated with people who believe that the world is going to end soon.”

What Zakaria is suggesting is that the Iranian leadership is ultimately rational – that they would not launch a suicidal nuclear war because their main goal is to maintain power and they understand Israel would use its last breath to inflict great nuclear harm against Iran if Iran initiated such a nuclear holocaust. This is to say that the Islamic Republic’s leaders do not have an apocalyptic vision to prepare the way for the return of the hidden 12^th Imam. Instead of proactively preparing the way for the Mahdi, all the Mullah’s want to do is hide their moolah. Again, Zakaria could possibly be right on this. No one really knows for sure what is in the mind of Ayatollah Khamenei and what he would do if Iran got an A-Bomb.

But even Zakaria, who is so convinced that Iranian leaders are deterrable, would likely admit that there is at the very least a 10 percent chance he is wrong. A chance that when President Ahmadinejad says he wants to “wipe Israel off the map,” it isn’t just campaign rhetoric. A chance that when former Iranian President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani says the Islamic world can withstand many nuclear bombs while Israel can be destroyed with only one, he wasn’t just engaging in idle thought. A chance that when Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khameini says that Israel is a “cancerous tumor of a state” that “should be removed from the region,” Iran’s most powerful official would actually like to put some muscle behind his words.

So, surely, one hopes that Zakaria’s cautious assessment is right. But if there is even a 1 percent chance that he is wrong, much less 10 percent or more, it is hard to imagine how Israel, already in a precarious position in the world, would be willing to play those odds with its very existence. And it is hard to conceive how, after 9/11, the United States could contemplate allowing a radically religious regime that is a sworn enemy and sponsors one of the most sophisticated terrorist groups in the world (i.e. Hezbollah) to acquire the world’s most deadly and destructive weapons.  

Those who believe it is imperative to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons do not suggest that it is a certainty that the Islamic Republic would use their nuclear arsenal if they acquired one. After all, by merely possessing nuclear weapons Iran could dominate the region and spark a destabilizing Middle East arms race – as a best-case scenario, this is trouble enough. But those who argue that a nuclear Iran is containable and deterrable are equally unsure of what the Mullahs would do if they woke up one day to discover that their scientists have had a nuclear breakthrough. 

With the threatening comments Iranian leaders have made, is it really a wise idea to take a wait-and-see approach? What if everything we think we know about Iran is right after all?

© 2009 North Star Writers Group. May not be republished without permission.

Click here to talk to our writers and editors about this column and others in our discussion forum.

To e-mail feedback about this column, click here. If you enjoy this writer's work, please contact your local newspapers editors and ask them to carry it.

This is column # JW073. Request permission to publish here.