Fareed Zakaria On Iran

I might be starting to question Fareed Zakaria. Actually no, I questioned him after he maintained that soon we would be entering into a global order where America would be increasingly irrelevant. Those who think that somehow the heyday of American power is on the wane in any immediate and substantial way are out of touch with international relations (and history). Let me clarify that before we get sidetracked: yes, since the end of the Cold War, the US has enjoyed sole superpower status. And yes, the relative power of other states is on the rise. But just look at a simple bar graph of how much the US spends on its military if you need any reassurance. We aren't going anywhere, and that's a really good thing. It's called Pax Americana, and the world would be a chaotic, hellish place without it. If Zakaria lived as long as Methuselah he would still be thanking his lucky stars for his American passport (and what it signified). That Zakaria was managing editor at Foreign Affairs made his theory all the more surprising. But hey, he sold lots of books.

Anyway all that is to say that his new piece for Newsweek on Iran is an embarrassment. Do people really still believe that Iran is enriching uranium solely for purposes of a civilian infrastructure and not for weapons capabilities? The simple question is why then would they refuse repeatedly to declare their enrichment and reprocessing with the IAEA? And why on earth would (most) leaders of the free world be investing so much time and energy in diplomatic and strategic initiatives to try and bring the purported clandestine program to a halt. I know the topic of Iran will sell a magazine, but running this story was a poor editorial decision (it's even poorly written). It offers up very little in the way of evidence to make its argument and what it does offer Goldblog does a great job of rebutting:

The second point: Zakaria writes that "over the last five years, senior Iranian officials at every level have repeatedly asserted that they do not intend to build nuclear weapons. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has quoted the regime's founding father, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who asserted that such weapons were 'un-Islamic.' The country's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, issued a fatwa in 2004 describing the use of nuclear weapons as immoral."

When ayatollahs start talking about Islamic morality, I run for the exits. Their ideas about what constitute moral acts are not, generally speaking, ours. Here's one obvious example, from the Iran-Iraq war, courtesy of the German writer Matthias Kuntzel:

During the Iran-Iraq War, the Ayatollah Khomeini imported 500,000 small plastic keys from Taiwan. The trinkets were meant to be inspirational. After Iraq invaded in September 1980, it had quickly become clear that Iran's forces were no match for Saddam Hussein's professional, well-armed military. To compensate for their disadvantage, Khomeini sent Iranian children, some as young as twelve years old, to the front lines. There, they marched in formation across minefields toward the enemy, clearing a path with their bodies. Before every mission, one of the Taiwanese keys would be hung around each child's neck. It was supposed to open the gates to paradise for them.

At one point, however, the earthly gore became a matter of concern. "In the past," wrote the semi-official Iranian daily Ettelaat as the war raged on, "we had child-volunteers: 14-, 15-, and 16-year-olds. They went into the minefields. Their eyes saw nothing. Their ears heard nothing. And then, a few moments later, one saw clouds of dust. When the dust had settled again, there was nothing more to be seen of them. Somewhere, widely scattered in the landscape, there lay scraps of burnt flesh and pieces of bone." Such scenes would henceforth be avoided, Ettelaat assured its readers. "Before entering the minefields, the children [now] wrap themselves in blankets and they roll on the ground, so that their body parts stay together after the explosion of the mines and one can carry them to the graves."

These children who rolled to their deaths were part of the Basiji, a mass movement created by Khomeini in 1979 and militarized after the war started in order to supplement his beleaguered army.The Basij Mostazafan - or "mobilization of the oppressed" - was essentially a volunteer militia, most of whose members were not yet 18. They went enthusiastically, and by the thousands, to their own destruction. "The young men cleared the mines with their own bodies," one veteran of the Iran-Iraq War recalled in 2002 to the German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine. "It was sometimes like a race. Even without the commander's orders, everyone wanted to be first."

How do I say this as bluntly as possible? A leadership that could murder its own children in such a horrible way is capable of absolutely anything. Including lying about its nuclear intentions.

Fareed Zakaria's type of thinking on Iran is dangerous. There is still time to piece together a solution to this problem (though it obviously will not be easy). But deluding ourselves by crossing our fingers that the mullahs are not up to something is not an option.