{"id":907,"date":"2012-03-15T22:13:18","date_gmt":"2012-03-15T22:13:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/victorhanson.com.108-166-28-151.mdgnetworks.com\/wordpress\/?p=907"},"modified":"2013-02-27T22:16:47","modified_gmt":"2013-02-27T22:16:47","slug":"iran-senses-western-weakness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/iran-senses-western-weakness\/","title":{"rendered":"Iran Senses Western Weakness"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Bruce S. Thornton<\/p>\n

FrontPage Magazine<\/em><\/p>\n

As the clock ticks closer to a nuclear-armed Iran, the Western powers are girding their loins for \u2014 more talks. Actually, they\u2019re getting ready to talk to Iran about the\u00a0conditions<\/em>\u00a0for talking some more. EU foreign policy head Catherine Ashton announced that the \u201cP5 + 1\u201d powers (the permanent Security Council members plus Germany) hoped to persuade \u201cIran to move away from its nuclear program,\u201d and expected \u201cfrom the contacts we\u2019ve had that this process can now move forward swiftly and seriously.\u201d Ashton didn\u2019t produce any evidence why the Iranians would voluntarily give up the bomb, or how yet one more round of negotiations, like the so-called \u201ccrippling sanctions,\u201d will produce anything other than giving Iran more time to \u201cswiftly and seriously\u201d achieve nuclear-weapons capability.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the Obama administration keeps shifting the conditions under which the US would take military action. Secretary of State Clinton on February 29 three times told the House Foreign Affairs committee that \u201cit\u2019s absolutely clear that the president\u2019s policy is to prevent Iran from having nuclear weapons capability.\u201d A few days later anonymous \u201cadministration officials\u201d said Clinton had \u201cmisspoken,\u201d which Obama confirmed in his speech to AIPAC where he several times asserted that \u201cobtaining a nuclear weapon,\u201d not capability, would be the\u00a0casus belli<\/em>, even though he has no clue exactly how we\u2019d know the mullahs had nuclear weapons before they announced it to the world, the same way we found out Pakistan and North Korea had them. The purpose of this shift is obvious: it provides more time for \u201cdiplomacy\u201d and \u201csanctions\u201d to work their magic, and puts more pressure on Israel not to do anything that might make unpleasant headlines compromising Obama\u2019s reelection. However, the history of Pakistan and North Korea\u2019s acquisition of nuclear weapons shows that the consequence of this delay will be a nuclear-armed Iran.<\/p>\n

But that contingency doesn\u2019t seem to bother Obama\u2019s academic allies like Bruce Ackerman, who recently provided a specious justification for inaction in the\u00a0Los Angeles Times<\/em>. The Yale law professor asserted that American support for a preemptive strike on Iran \u201cwould be a violation of both international law and the US Constitution.\u201d The Hoover Institution\u2019s Peter Berkowitz\u00a0dismantled<\/a>Ackerman\u2019s tendentious and erroneous interpretation, which Berkowitz shows is an attempt \u201cto bend the precedents and provisions of international law and twist the facts of American politics to conform to their policy preferences.\u201d The left\u2019s hysterics about the illegality and immorality of \u201cpreemption,\u201d of course, has always been an ideological pretext for demonizing and hence discouraging US military action, which to the left is almost never justified, given America\u2019s neo-colonial crimes and oppression.<\/p>\n

But preemption has for millennia been an obvious common-sense response to an aggressor. The 4th century BC orator Demosthenes used a memorable metaphor for preemption when he was trying to rouse the indolent Athenians to use force to resist Philip II of Macedon\u2019s aggression: \u201cTo manage war properly, you must not follow the trend of events but must forestall them . . . But you Athenians, possessing unsurpassed resources \u2014 fleet, infantry, cavalry, revenues \u2014 have never to this very day employed them aright, and yet you carry on war with Philip exactly as a barbarian boxes. The barbarian, when struck, always clutches the place; hit him on the other side and there go his hands. He neither knows nor cares how to parry a blow or how to watch his adversary.\u201d In other words, anticipate the aggressor\u2019s actions, and, as Nathan Bedford Forrest supposedly put it, \u201c Get there firstest with the mostest.\u201d<\/p>\n

So much is mere common sense, but common sense is woefully lacking in the West\u2019s response to a regime of religious fanatics in pursuit of nuclear weapons. Unwilling to act, whether because of fear, ideology, or political self-interest, Western leaders continue to camouflage their inaction with sanctions and diplomatic palaver. Yet the historical record of both in deterring a committed aggressor is one not just of failing to stop aggression, but of enabling it. The Thirties, of course, provide numerous examples, starting with the League of Nations\u2019 toothless response to Japanese aggression in China, moving on to the flaccid reaction to Mussolini\u2019s invasion of Ethiopia, and culminating with the Munich conference that delivered Czechoslovakia to Hitler and paved the way for World War II. In each case, sanctions and talk led to more aggression, because the aggressors correctly interpreted that sanctions and words were the face-saving excuses of nations afraid to act.<\/p>\n

The reason aggressors think this way is obvious. As Demosthenes told the Athenians, \u201cAll words, apart from action, seem vain and idle.\u201d So too today. The mullahs in Iran have carefully listened as Obama has pressured Israel not to take action, shifted the grounds for US action, and demanded time for sanctions and negotiation \u201cto work,\u201d and they have made the correct calculation that such statements cancel out the rhetoric about \u201chaving Israel\u2019s back\u201d and acknowledging Israel\u2019s right for taking unilateral action at the same time such action is discouraged and proclaimed to be futile. The mullahs further calculate that this administration, and the American people, do not have the stomach for an attack, and thus Iran can continue to work toward creating nuclear weapons, as long as they provide a diplomatic fig leaf for Western leaders to hide their weakness.<\/p>\n

Worse yet, even if the negotiations achieve their aim, which is to allow inspectors to monitor Iran\u2019s suspension of uranium enrichment, the problem won\u2019t be solved. As John Bolton pointed out three years ago, \u201cAny resolution that leaves Iran\u2019s current regime with control over the entire nuclear fuel cycle is simply a face-saving way of accepting\u201d that Iran will possess nuclear weapons. \u201cGiven Iran\u2019s fulsome 20-year history of denial and deception, there is simply no doubt that its efforts toward building nuclear weapons would continue.\u201d Indeed, what makes us think that Iran will be any less adept at gaming inspections than was Saddam Hussein, who for years rope-a-doped the inspectors until he felt confident enough simply to kick them out of the country? Or North Korea, which wrote the playbook for deceiving gullible Westerners with \u201cnegotiations\u201d and \u201ctalks\u201d until it could present its nuclear bombs as a\u00a0fait accompli<\/em>?<\/p>\n

And surely Iran must be heartened by the recent restart of \u201csix-party talks\u201d\u00a0with North Korea, a patent ploy to acquire more food aid for feeding the regime\u2019s army and cronies, as North Korea has done now for decades. The mullahs have to be laughing at comments like the following, from a German representative to the talks: \u201cI can say that based on the amicable and candid interaction among the participants, the organizers believe that the conference achieved its final result of building trust despite remaining political differences.\u201d Such myopic gullibility reminds me of Neville Chamberlain\u2019s report to his cabinet during the Munich negotiations that Hitler \u201cwould not deliberately deceive a man whom he respected and with whom he had been in negotiation, and he was sure that Herr Hitler now felt some respect for him. When Herr Hitler announced that he meant to do something it was certain he would do it.\u201d Indeed, but what Hitler had announced years earlier in\u00a0Mein Kampf<\/em>\u00a0was the conquest of Europe and the solution to the \u201cJewish problem.\u201d<\/p>\n

And now another anti-Semitic aggressor is sitting down to talk with representatives of Western nations unwilling to take seriously the genocidal threats of a regime rushing to create the weapons that could make those threats reality. Instead, our highest military official calls the mullahs \u201crational,\u201d and the president says they are \u201cself-interested,\u201d both dismissing the religious motives of a regime that for thirty years has made plain its world-historical mission to make Islam triumph over the infidels. So the Western negotiators gather once again to talk and talk and talk until they\u2019ve talked Iran into the bomb.<\/p>\n

\n

\u00a92012 Bruce S. Thornton<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Bruce S. Thornton FrontPage Magazine As the clock ticks closer to a nuclear-armed Iran, the Western powers are girding their loins for \u2014 more talks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[124,22,196],"tags":[366,12,91,66,1053,401,1039,1071,1056,1068],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-eD","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":984,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-final-countdown-israel-vs-iran\/","url_meta":{"origin":907,"position":0},"title":"The Final Countdown: Israel vs. Iran","author":"victorhanson","date":"February 8, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce S. Thornton FrontPage Magazine The 33-year farce of Western appeasement of Iran may be reaching its denouement. For the last few months, the pace of events have quickened as the West sanctions and threatens, and Iran blusters about closing the Strait of Hormuz, cutting off oil to Europe,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Israel"","block_context":{"text":"Israel","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/the-middle-east\/israel\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":8001,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/obama-midwifes-a-nuclear-iran\/","url_meta":{"origin":907,"position":1},"title":"Obama Midwifes a Nuclear Iran","author":"victorhanson","date":"November 11, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce S. Thornton \/\/ FrontPage Magazine The news that President Obama has sent a secret letter to Iranian leader Ayatollah Khamenei\u2013\u2013apparently promising concessions on Iran\u2019s nuclear program in exchange for help in defeating ISIS\u2013\u2013 is a depressing reminder of how after nearly 40 years our leaders have not understood\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "The Middle East"","block_context":{"text":"The Middle East","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/the-middle-east\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":949,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/iranian-threat-heats-up\/","url_meta":{"origin":907,"position":2},"title":"Iranian Threat Heats Up","author":"victorhanson","date":"February 26, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce S. Thornton FrontPage Magazine Iran announced Sunday that it was cutting off crude oil sales to France and England, a mostly symbolic act given that Iran provides England less than 1% of its crude, and France claims that it \u201cpractically stopped importing Iranian oil,\u201d according to the head\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Iran"","block_context":{"text":"Iran","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/the-middle-east\/iran\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1090,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/iran-on-the-brink\/","url_meta":{"origin":907,"position":3},"title":"Iran on the Brink","author":"victorhanson","date":"January 11, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce S. Thornton Defining Ideas Just in the last few months, events have hastened to a crisis in Iran\u2019s long confrontation with the West. The ongoing civil war in Syria looks more and more likely to end with the ouster of strongman Bashar al-Assad, one of Tehran\u2019s most stalwart\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Iran"","block_context":{"text":"Iran","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/the-middle-east\/iran\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":8544,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-iran-failure-has-many-fathers\/","url_meta":{"origin":907,"position":4},"title":"The Iran Failure Has Many Fathers","author":"victorhanson","date":"July 17, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"The dangerous belief that words alone can transcend an eternal truth of human nature. by Bruce S. Thornton \/\/ FrontPage Magazine Everybody knows the deal with Iran is a disaster. Why is equally obvious: Iran will get $150 billion to spend on weapons and its terrorist proxies, will keep its\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "The Middle East"","block_context":{"text":"The Middle East","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/the-middle-east\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Photo via FrontPage Magazine","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/sw-500x281.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":8163,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-dangers-of-obamas-cognitive-dissonance\/","url_meta":{"origin":907,"position":5},"title":"The Dangers of Obama\u2019s Cognitive Dissonance","author":"victorhanson","date":"January 26, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce S. Thornton \/\/ FrontPage Magazine There are many moments from the past 6 years that demonstrate the criminal incompetence of this president and his administration. But for me, Obama\u2019s interview with GloZell\u2013\u2013whose claim to YouTube fame comes from eating Cheerios in a bathtub filled with milk\u2013\u2013represents best the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Our Contributors"","block_context":{"text":"Our Contributors","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/our-contributors\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Photo via PJMedia","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/ol-450x253.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/907"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=907"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/907\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":908,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/907\/revisions\/908"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=907"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=907"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=907"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}