I repeat my Iran arguments to Fareed Zakaria in response to his op-ed in Washington Post today extolling the false 'moderates in Iran/containment will work' model:
There are indeed moderates in Iran - every autocracy has its moderates - but they reside outside the realities of power. The 'reformers' in Iran are not moderates, they have co-opted moderate trappings to get what they want. Do you really believe should Rafsanjani et al wrest control away from Khameni et al that suddenly Iran is going to become a moderate state? That the Koran and Islam will no longer be held up us the unimpeachable arbiters of truth and justice? That a nearly complete nuclear program will be abandoned? That newspapers will suddenly run stories questioning the 'law of the jurists'? That young women will suddenly be seen walking the streets of Tehran unscarfed? That the Republican Guard and its allies are just going to quietly step aside? I'd like to believe you are not that naive.
No, rather I imagine you promote this false argument of moderation in order to rationalize your real argument - containment - but unfortunately that argument is also flawed, in and of itself, and obviously as a contingency of presumed moderation. Containment may work, may work in avoiding big confrontations, as evidenced in the Cold War, but it doesn't do so good when it comes to smaller aggressions, as also evidenced in the Cold War - in fact it can act to exacerbate the smaller threats and, contrary to what advocates of this theory claim, it's the smaller threats, not nuclear war per se, that worry Israel most: Syria, Hezbollah, Hamas, radicals in Egypt etc etc. In short, in touting containment you're trying to avoid the real problem: a nuclear Iran is a dangerous thing, every bit as dangerous and quite possibly more so than what a military strike by Israel to interdict would prove to be
When Clinton brought up the idea of containment the alarm bells went off in Israel because they saw it as Obama saying 'we can live with a nuclear Iran' - and Israel was right to be alarmed because that is exactly what he is saying. Whether Obama and you, for that matter, are being naive or disingenuous in promoting this 'idea', I don't know - but Israel ain't buying what you're selling - although I imagine Iran quite happily is.
