US Policy on Iran

In this article, it is made clear just how tricky and difficult it is to argue with Iran. It’s a bit like the video we watched in class yesterday about how to go about winning the war in Afghanistan: everything is painted shades of gray, and it appears nearly impossible to get anything of consequence accomplished. The two most significant questions here are a) whether or not the US can successfully and/or safely try to intervene in Iran for whichever reasons, and b) whether or not Iran has or is developing nuclear weapons, and whether that’s a problem or not.

The US is not at war with Iran right now, but as of 2007, when this article was published, one could describe the tension between the countries as a “war of words.” Judging from recent news stories, I would say that the amount of distrust between Iran and the US has not diminished. We don’t like or trust them. They don’t like or trust us. We are highly alarmed by their nuclear research facilities, both for ourselves and for US allies like Israel, because the idea of Iran with a nuclear weapon is terrifying if you think of our sanctions against them, their current dislike of us, and our diminished bargaining power against a country possessing nuclear weapons. However, the other side of the issue reveals that Iran has had nuclear ambitions since before the 1980s (when we were friendly with Iran), that nuclear energy would indeed be helpful for Iran’s economy, and that, as Ahmadinejad said, the Islamic religion is against the possession of nuclear weapons. This is significant, considering that Iran is strongly Islamic (98% Muslim, mostly Shiite), with a government in which final decisions are made by a clergyman. Still, Iran has acted suspiciously in the past, and the government is pretty strongly anti-American and anti-Israeli. Many Iranians even refuse to accept foreign funds, especially from America. Therefore, America’s persistence in trying to fund Iranian human rights movements, etc., could very well be doing more harm than good.

This CNN article rather reminded me of this problem and the way the Iranian government reacted to it: http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/meast/01/04/iran.banned.groups/index.html. Iran has listed sixty groups, many of them based in America, as “soft war” agents against Iran. The list includes the BBC, Human Rights Watch, and Voice of America. Iran does not like the influences any of these groups may be trying to use on its people, and has thus called them out as being war mongers, essentially. Personally, I think this makes Iran look rather paranoid. So does this article: http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/meast/01/06/iran.press.freedom/index.html. Iran has jailed more journalists than any other country. This is a reminder of how Iran feels about free media and non government-sanctioned ideas. I can’t help but think that these sorts of incidents result in US suspicions of Iran that only increase tensions between both countries.

This last article has few direct links to the original article, but I thought it was very interesting to get a look at the Obama administration’s take on nuclear weaponry around the world, and how the somewhat cautious US-Russian relationship could foreshadow how we could work with an Iran possessing nuclear weapons. http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1951850,00.html