How do you solve a problem like Iran? President John Adams refused to be drawn into war with revolutionary France despite serious provocations, and Presidents Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower pursued a “containment” policy that avoided direct confrontation with the Soviets, even at the cost of sacrificing Eastern Europe.
Containment is a policy of patience; it succeeds when a revolutionary regime runs out of steam and a successor government seeks to rejoin the community of nations. But in Iran, the grip of the mullahs has not yet weakened, no matter how disaffected ordinary citizens may be.
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But a more serious flaw is that Crist cannot tell us what we need to know about Iran. In his last pages he writes that “deeper even than the Shia religious motivations is an ingrained sense of Persian historical entitlement.” The wish for imperial rejuvenation need not be a destabilizing force: it fuels Russia’s drive to subordinate its neighbors, but also Turkey’s peaceful attempt to regain influence in the old Ottoman space. If Iran wants a seat at the table, it can be accommodated. But does it? Crist doesn’t really profess to know.
We will not be able to figure out how to alter Iran’s behavior unless we understand its motives. If Iran’s orientation is fundamentally defensive, it can be contained, as the Soviet Union was. And if Iran is a rational calculator, it can be moved, as other states can be moved, by a combination of blandishments and threats. But the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, insists that Iran is a messianic state obsessed with annihilating its enemies, above all Israel. In that case, almost any price, including war, would be worth paying to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon.
President Obama has agreed that Iran cannot be contained, and thus that patience is not a workable policy. But he also seems far more concerned than Netanyahu — or Mitt Romney — about the potentially cataclysmic consequences of a military strike. It may be, in fact, that a contained Iran is less dangerous to the global order than an Iran with nothing to lose
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/19/b...war-by-david-crist.html?pagewanted=2&src=recg
Containment is a policy of patience; it succeeds when a revolutionary regime runs out of steam and a successor government seeks to rejoin the community of nations. But in Iran, the grip of the mullahs has not yet weakened, no matter how disaffected ordinary citizens may be.
..........................
But a more serious flaw is that Crist cannot tell us what we need to know about Iran. In his last pages he writes that “deeper even than the Shia religious motivations is an ingrained sense of Persian historical entitlement.” The wish for imperial rejuvenation need not be a destabilizing force: it fuels Russia’s drive to subordinate its neighbors, but also Turkey’s peaceful attempt to regain influence in the old Ottoman space. If Iran wants a seat at the table, it can be accommodated. But does it? Crist doesn’t really profess to know.
We will not be able to figure out how to alter Iran’s behavior unless we understand its motives. If Iran’s orientation is fundamentally defensive, it can be contained, as the Soviet Union was. And if Iran is a rational calculator, it can be moved, as other states can be moved, by a combination of blandishments and threats. But the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, insists that Iran is a messianic state obsessed with annihilating its enemies, above all Israel. In that case, almost any price, including war, would be worth paying to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon.
President Obama has agreed that Iran cannot be contained, and thus that patience is not a workable policy. But he also seems far more concerned than Netanyahu — or Mitt Romney — about the potentially cataclysmic consequences of a military strike. It may be, in fact, that a contained Iran is less dangerous to the global order than an Iran with nothing to lose
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/19/b...war-by-david-crist.html?pagewanted=2&src=recg