Iran is America's new Iraq

In the face of all of this bad news, there is one positive development: Thanks to the economic sanctions imposed by President Obama, Iran is in dire straits. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has achieved an almost-technological-victory, but his country is on the verge of economic collapse. That’s why B1 bombers are not needed in order to stop the centrifuges of the Islamic Republic of Iran. All that is needed is to continue to apply the financial levers that have been used so successfully against the likes of Putin’s Russia and Swiss banks. The United States might be seen as weak by some witless brutes. But it is not. Its dominance of the global economic system allows it to present Iran with a stark choice between true nuclear disarmament and political survival.

Yet now those levers may be lifted against Tehran, and the Lausanne agreement should be examined in this dramatic context. Will an agreement that is essentially a ten-year agreement mollify the Saudis and the Egyptians and the Turks, or will it it push them toward an accelerated nuclearization? Because if an Iran-mistake does occur, it will resemble the Iraq-mistake. On the face of it, the Democratic, liberal President Obama is the opposite of the Republican, conservative President Bush. On the face of it, Washington’s neoconservatives of 2003 are very different from Washington’s would-be placaters of 2015.

But the truth is that there is quite a worrying resemblance between the Iraq war project and the Iran peace project. In both cases, intentions are noble. In both cases, ambitions are far-reaching. In both case benign American idealism is completely disconnected from the cruel reality of the Middle East. Just as the 43rd president wanted to promote democracy but instead sowed destruction and chaos, the 44th president wishes to advance reconciliation but instead might sow destruction and chaos. But if Iran becomes the new Iraq, the ramifications will be far, far greater than those of the previous Middle East adventure. They might actually transform the world we live in.