When a Peace Deals Means War

Some say a bad peace is better than a good war. I’m not sure. Perhaps it would be if it lasted, but a bad peace is usually just a prelude to a bad war.

I think “a prelude to war” describes the “interim” Geneva agreement with Iran. The nuclear ayatollahs of Tehran will hardly abandon a stance that keeps benefiting them — that is, belligerence — and neither the Israelis nor the Saudis, let alone the Egyptian junta, have enough confidence in the Obama White House to rely on it for protection. This means preparations for war, plus a near-certain re-entry of Russia as a Middle East player, with incalculable consequences.

Notice that I’m not even contemplating the consequences of the resumption of Iran’s quest for nuclear weapons, a development this agreement all but ensures. Letting the ayatollahs play with explosive toys is criminally negligent of big powers, and suicidal of small powers in the region. Stopping the ayatollahs at the next “red line”, as Obama proposes, if they continue, is ludicrous, for it requires believing his administration would do the hard way what it didn’t do the easy way. Just continuing the current sanctions regime — in essence, doing nothing — would have cost the West little and it was clearly hurting the theocrats in a big way. Unfortunately, it wasn’t hurting them enough to desist, just enough to bring them to the conference table — and triumph.

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In a recent article, Clifford D. May, one of the foremost advocates of the sanctions regime, quoted a line from the Geneva plan’s preamble: “Iran reaffirms that under no circumstances will Iran ever seek or develop any nuclear weapons.” May, president of a policy institute focusing on national security, went on to make his own point, but the quote stopped me cold.

Read the full article here.