The Arab Spring (which, incidentally, has claimed no Arab scalps; perhaps calling it the Maghreb Spring would be more accurate) was a bizarrely rare one-off. Western media got caught up in the idea that a sufficiently commited population can overthrow any dictator, but there’s plenty of counterfactuals to that – China, Iran, Zimbabwe, Libya, and North Korea, to name but a few.

Assad has a few things in his favour that suggest that he may be in this privileged majority. The Army of Syria is not independent, as it is in Libya and Tunisia; it was set up by Assad Snr and its upper echelons are packed with loyalists, loyal to the family more than the regime. The resistance hopes for rank and file desertions, but entropy has been slight thus far and there’s no reason to suspect that it will quicken. That alone is enough – as long as Assad has might, he can reign.

Russia will almost certainly continue to support the regime. Russia has a naval base at Tartus and won’t throw that away lightly. As long as Russia continues to veto international action, China will join it, to give credence to a counter-western voting block.

The international community, for that matter, has nothing. No more room for sanctions, no will to act unilaterally, no capability to overturn Russian intransigence. Syria reflects the West’s impotence back upon itself and gets away with it. The Syrian airforce hasn’t taken off so they can’t use the no-fly zone excuse again. And the longer it goes on, the more it gets normalised. While there are some limited options – like arming the rebels, flooding the region with guns and destabilising it for decades to come – they are almost all awful. So change probably won’t come from without.

The Syrian Resistance is a mess; the Libyian Liberation was co-ordinated by NATO, and without that the guys in Syria are basically an aimless mob.

The Syrian population is too fractured to unify. Syria is a tribal, sectarian country, and the protests are being led by the repressed Sunni majority. Not only do the country’s other factions fear reprisals if the Sunnis regain power, they increasingly fear that Syria’s secularism and pluralism will be under threat from a hardline Wahabist influence. Somewhere between a half and a third of the country will not support a Sunni rebellion under any circumstances.

Taken together, it appears that the ingredients to see the regime deposed just aren’t there.

Paul argues that America’s twentieth century saw its competitiveness and prestige tarnished through a series of ideologically incoherent, politically unnecessary wars, which also happened to be massively expensive and left the country’s political class in hock to its military industrial complex. He doesn’t just want to pull US troops out of its remaining one-and-a-half wars; he wants to root the military out of government payrolls entirely, proposing to shut bases from Germany to Korea, ending foreign aid entirely (which of course plays into a broader political point, part of which is that much of that aid goes to countries who simply use it to buy American kit), and reducing both economic and military support to Israel. The last paragraph tells you one important thing about Ron Paul: namely, that he will never be the President of the United States, or even a nominee for that office. Nevertheless his ideas resonate, both with young libertarians and rightward-leaning centrists. They have a long tradition in the US – military intervention is a post-war innovation, and it has been noted that Paul’s policy really only echoes those of the country’s thirteenth President Millard Fillmore.

But Fillmore lived in simpler times. Do the politics of a complex, interconnected world allow for the isolation of its greatest power?

The short answer is probably no. Obama has found disentanglement harder than his campaign rhetoric suggested; the Afghan war drags on, drone bombings have massively increased and offences against human decency, such as corpse desecration and Guantanamo Bay, remain as problematic as they were under President Bush. This is partly a reflection of the world in which we live. Retired Colonel Pat Lang today asked

It is not clear to me what Ron Paul’s actual position is. Someone should ask him what he would do if the Iranians actually attempted to close the Strait of Hormuz to international maritime traffic. What would he do as president and commander-in-chief of the armed forces?

Presumably Paul’s counter would be that, by pulling its military out of Iran’s vicinity and reducing its support for Israel, the US would reduce tensions and improve its leverage sufficiently that such a situation would be less likely to arise. But this is optimistic, not least because the US is hardly alone amongst Iran’s agitators (Britain is arguably even less popular in Iran than the US). Disrupting oil traffic is an extreme case, but the truth is that the US is implicated, either directly by dint of supplied equipment, economically by dint of strategic interests, or morally by way of training or political support, in more or less every conflict that could conceivably take place. The international system is immensely complex. The US can not extricate itself from the web of coercive force that partly constitutes the international political order. One way or another, all wars are about power, and therefore all wars inevitably factor in the superpower. Declaring isolationism will never protect the US from being attacked.

Obama has already demonstrated that imprudently promising an end to American war. In truth, the call to war for any country is often driven more by events outside that country’s borders, and the intentions of a single leader can rarely stand in the way of the inevitable – remember, George Bush Jr came to power expecting to be a peacetime President. Paul’s rhetoric is hopeful, but it is based on a fantasy that can never be realised unilaterally. Were Ron Paul ever to find himself in the unlikely position of holding office, his principles would not survive first contact with the enemy.

I saw “may be right”, but the only real doubt is to whether a state of declared war will exist in the near future. Because the US and Israel have been pursuing covert war against Iran for decades; STUXNET, drone incursions, explosive sabotage and targeted assassination of nuclear scientists, the last of which is arguably an act of terrorism. The ostensible casus belli is Iran’s nuclear programme, but Iran has consistently denied that it is making a bomb, claiming that its programme is purely civilian. That this is a lie has become an almost unchallenged public orthodoxy in Washington and Tel Aviv.

To those in the know, however, broad uncertainty does exist, which explains the emergence of articles like this one in today’s Haaretz – Israel ‘very far off’ from decision on Iran attack – which claims that Israel’s intelligence community believes Iran itself has not yet decided whether to make a nuclear bomb.

The Israeli view is that while Iran continues to improve its nuclear capabilities, it has not yet decided whether to translate these capabilities into a nuclear weapon – or, more specifically, a nuclear warhead mounted atop a missile. Nor is it clear when Iran might make such a decision.

This rings true to me. To an extent, the fate of the nuclear programme depends on both the extent to which external provocation backs the regime into a corner, as well as the extent to which internal pressure allows the government a free hand. 2012 could be a pivotal year in Iran – a parliamentary election in March offers a threat for fresh political instability, and an oil shock or the collapse of the Syrian regime could increase the ability of Iran’s enemies to tighten the screws. Any of these factors could bring even Iran’s robust political construction tumbling down.

Because that’s what the good men of SEAL Team Six did – they were given a kill order and they executed it, no pun intended.

It’s a complex question and gets tangled up in a lot of other problems, both emotional and intellectual. This post aims to unpick some of that.

Was it legal?

Many will hardly care whether it was legal or not, arguing that right and wrong are not always reflected in law. That’s a fair point, but legalities are still important, if only because they’re the difference between the subjective opinion of an individual and the agreed parameters established by a society.

On this issue the rules are actually very straightforward and relatively unambiguous: killing Osama bin Laden was inalienably legal under international law.

Under international humanitarian law, a member of an armed organised group can be killed as an enemy combatant, and as al Qaida was a recognised participant in the war in Afghanistan his death is an entirely justifiable act of war. The only strictures on such an action are the principles of distinction and proportionality, and the action in Abbotabad seems not to violate either of those restrictions.

Under international human rights law (a separate and oftentimes contradictory code), targeted killings are harder to justify but still not impossible. The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights of 1966 is the document that governs this code, and it states that “no one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his life” – meaning that assassination is legal so long as it can be justified. If he had attempted to surrender then the case would be sticker, but the White House claims that bin Laden resisted arrest and that is certainly consistent with his own pronouncements of the issue. Given that the White House holds video of the killing – which can be subpeona’d – we can probably assume that they are being truthful in this regard.

Was it morally justifiable?

The question of moral right or wrong breaks in two – ‘can it be coherently justified to others’ and ‘is it, at a fundamental level, consistent with the moral norms established in our society’. One can be critically examined; the other is conceptually much more woolly.

The question of whether the killing could be justified is straightforward. Yes; it is clearly possible to build a coherent and convincing argument asserting that killing bin Laden was morally preferable to taking him alive. Here’s how you do it:

• He was an enemy combatant, not a civilian. While taking him alive was an option, killing him was an equally viable one, and the question needs to be viewed in that light.

• There was no gain to be had from taking him alive, for the following reasons:
• He would not have given up information except under extreme torture, and the compulsion to use that torture would have been acute.
• Taking him alive would not have changed the ultimate outcome. He confessed to the crime, he only would have been tried in America, and he would have been put to death.
• The only difference is that taking him alive would have subjected the world to the spectacle of a court case, which would have had no real value. It would have been impossible to try him fairly, it would have been perceived to be a humiliating sham amongst our enemies (and many of our allies) overseas, regardless of how rigorous the trial actually was, and it would have given him one last prime-time podium from which to agitate for further slaughter. I accept that we should not be afraid to face extremist rhetoric, but that doesn’t mean we have to give it our network airtime.
• The key point in the above section is that it wouldn’t actually win us any friends. People don’t like that we assassinated him and that’s sad, but the shitstorm we would have faced for trying him would have been much worse. The Nuremburg trials would have been invoked, and probably not entirely unfairly. America’s own divisions would have come to the fore as everyone’s favourite bigots – Beck, O’Reilly, Palin, Trump – would have vied to be toughest on the terrorist. Even our allies in the region would have been forced into the position of defending Islam, and bin Laden by proxy, from the acid tongues of America’s most divisive assholes.
• Every day that he spends on TV in an orange boiler suit and shackles, his friends get more pissed off. That means reprisals, and not just against us – against anybody.
• The videotapes of bin Laden’s final hours would be passed from hand to hand like relics. It’s a short-cut to martyrdom.
• All of these would be equivocations from a moral imperative, though, were it not for one thing: he was an enemy soldier in a time of war. If he was a political leader, a civilian, then it would be a different matter, but he was a man whose life was war. Ultimately, this was the end he chose, and we shouldn’t let an obsession with abstract principles interfere with that.

So it’s certainly morally defensible. If the Dalai Lama can bring himself to recognise the justification then it seems bizarre to suggest otherwise.

Was it right?

If it’s legal and justifiable, then surely that shouldn’t be in question?

And yet. Outside of ground zero, away from the gates of the white house, many people – not just the airy-fairy left – are uneasy. The policy of whacking terrorist leaders is from an Israeli playbook that has a tendency to inspire revulsion, as Alan Dershowitz notes:

Among others, these critics include officials in Britain, France, Italy, Russia, the EU, Jordan, and the United Nations. [Jack Straw, the former British foreign secretary] once said, “The British government has made it repeatedly clear that so-called targeted assassinations of this kind are unlawful, unjustified and counterproductive.” The French foreign ministry has declared “that extrajudicial executions contravene international law and are unacceptable.” The Italian Foreign Minister has said, “Italy, like the whole of the European Union, has always condemned the practice of targeted assassinations.” The Russians have asserted that “Russia has repeatedly stressed the unacceptability of extrajudicial settling of scores and ‘targeted killings.’” Javier Solana has noted that the “European Union has consistently condemned extrajudicial killings.” The Jordanians have said, “Jordan has always denounced this policy of assassination and its position on this has always been clear.” And Kofi Annan has declared “that extrajudicial killings are violations of international law.”

Yet none of these nations, groups or individuals have criticized the targeted killing of Osama Bin Laden by the US. The reason is obvious. All the condemnations against targeted killing was directed at one country. Guess which one? Israel, of course.

I disagree with Dershowitz’s conclusion – I think that bin Laden is a qualitatively different name from Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, and politicians tend to be sensitive to the political sensitivities of condemning the killing of such a widely despised man. But nevertheless, a bad taste lingers. No-one is quite sure if they’ve passed through the looking glass.

Bin Laden wore no uniform. Is the argument that he was an armed combatant not a legal fudge? Yes, putting him on trial would be politically difficult. Isn’t that the kind of difficulty a strong society, with a sound ideological basis, should welcome? And aren’t the flag-waving crowds at ground zero… kinda crass?

And ultimately, those are justifiable concerns. I agree with the decision as it was made, but still, I am uneasy. It’s never comfortable to see an act of war feted on a widescreen TV.

Perhaps this moment will be a moment of closure, a final transgression that allows America to move past its dirty wars, to put Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay behind it, and to close the door on “enhanced interrogation” and extraordinary rendition. If that turns out to be the case then the moral qualms will have to be quashed, because it will have been worth it, this final destruction of the mirror that reflected America back upon itself. If not then America will continue to owe us a little more justification for this than it has yet been able to give, to quiet that tiny voice of conscience; but in that case, more and greater atrocities await.

[...] all government of the Gambia projects and programmes, which were implemented in co-operation with the government of the Islamic Republic of Iran have been cancelled.

[...]

The Gambia government hereby requests all Iranian nationals representing the interest of the government of Iran in the Gambia to leave the country within 48 hours from the effective date stipulated through a notification issued to the government of Iran.

What’s interesting, though, is that ties between Nigeria and Iran were strained earlier this week when Nigeria intercepted a shipment of arms that the Iranian government was routing through their ports. Also long-term allies, the Nigerians stopped just short of freezing the relationship but demanded a full and frank accounting from the Iranian government. Under pressure, Iran claimed that the shipment was from a private company and was on its way to Gambia… No reason was given by Gambia for the suspension of ties but it doesn’t seem especially likely that the two incidents are unrelated.

Shipments of arms going to Africa without the knowledge of the African governments in question are rarely innocent. The question is: is Iran arguing factions in Gambia? Or is it throwing its relationship with Gambia under a bus to hide its real activities elsewhere – possibly in Nigeria itself?

This is a complex situation, clearly, and large sections of the internet have devoted considerable time to overreaching in search of hard conclusions. Mondoweiss, for example, which does this by raising false equivalences. Meanwhile, Al Jazeera calls it “the selective application of the law against Arabs” and “just plain racism.” Even Feministe concludes that “there are certain circumstances where rape by fraud is a legitimate claim” but “this… is not one of them, and opens the door to even greater abuses.”

One thing is clear: the crime of rape by deception is a legitimate complaint, and not in an abstract sense. Cases have been successfully prosecuted where the man has lied about his sexual health, passing HIV onto his partner; where a man posed as a senior official and promised increased social security payments in exchange for sex; and where a woman consented to sex with a man who she believed to be her boyfriend but was actually her boyfriend’s brother. The statute is not used for situations where a man, say, claimed to be 27 when he’s actually 25, or a woman who claims to be a supermodel in a bar.

For many, though, the overtly racist nature of the complaint seems to be the deciding factor. My own personal feeling is perhaps dangerously relativistic, but my gut tells me that racism needs to be viewed through a different prism when dealing with Israel and Palestine. From a western perspective, the explicitly racial justification for the suit can be nauseating; but then, racial issues – although by no means defused in Europe or America – are less of an immediate concern than they are in the Levant. It is impossible not to decry the institutional racism and xenophobic nationalist tribalism exhibited by both Israeli and Arab political and social elements.

But the heart of this case isn’t an abstract principle; it’s rooted in personal actions and responses. The woman felt genuinely and legitimately deceived and violated. That in itself isn’t enough to determine guilt of course. What is, however, is the fact that the man knew that the deception was of decisive magnitude and did it anyway. The problem here is that the man chose to tell a lie of sufficient magnitude to deny the woman the opportunity to give consent. That the woman’s objection to the deception was racist in nature is vile but to some extent beside the point.

In many ways, Israel and – to a lesser extent – the occupied territories (particularly the Hamas-dominated Gaza Strip) are fundamentally racist. They are societies constructed on a nationalist ideal, defined by opposition to an alien “other”. Widespread societal changes are needed to prevent citizens of Israel from viewing non-Israeliness as a defining flaw. But the fact remains that, for now, it is a defining flaw, and that fact is a factor that must have been known to the defendant.

As much as it galls me, I have to accept that in this case the verdict was probably correct.

EDIT: For an interesting comparative, check out how rape is handled in the UAE.

Two stories have emerged concurrently that cast the question into new light. While most citizens tend to be happy with the theoretical notion of covert defence, security agencies usually try to keep the visceral practicalities of that defence obscured, as support for their methods often vanishes like spit on a hot rock when exposed to the full scrutiny of public opinion.

Yesterday, I discussed the story of Shahram Amiri the Iranian who was kidnapped by / defected to the CIA in 2009. To my chagrin, the post was overtaken by events almost as soon as it was posted; Amiri was flown back to Iran and has started to talk about the events that led to his disappearance:

Speaking to Al Jazeera during a transit stop in Qatar, Shahram Amiri said he was interrogated for 14 months by US agents who refused to allow him contact with his family, but that he “never cracked” and had not revealed any secret information about Iran’s nuclear programme.

Washington has denied the claims, saying Amiri had lived freely in the US, had himself reached out to US officials, and was free to come and go.

[..]

“They gave me a shot which made me unconscious and then transferred me to the US onboard a military plane,” Amiri said in Tehran, before making allegations that he was tortured during interrogations in the US.

“Within the first two months, I was subjected to fierce mental and psychological torture by agents and interrogators from the US Central Intelligence Agency.”

Speaking to Al Jazeera during his journey back to Iran, Amiri said he had been forced by US authorities to say in a video released on the internet that he was enjoying life in the state of Arizona.

Although it seems unlikely that the US will receive the censure it deserves for this, it is still unquestionably a scandal of severe proportions. The US government kidnapped a man on a religious pilgrimage, held him against his will for over a year and subjected him to torture and coercion. The man in question was not a military target, nor even a political one. Both the US and Iran deny that he was involved in the country’s nuclear programme, so whatever paltry justification the CIA may have had has become noticeably thinner.

Meanwhile, this morning the Guardian is reporting that the UK has also been complicit in kidnapping and torture, this time of its own citizens. The Guardian has helpfully highlighted many of the key passages, but the entire document is worth reading.

A few thoughts emerge from this. Firstly, dragging these revelations into the light of day is hard and the organisations that have done so deserve to be praised. Iran will probably not receive any credit for this in the wider world, but by doggedly and tenaciously pursuing the fate of its citizen it exposed a cruel double-standard at the heart of America’s security apparatus. Here in the UK, civil liberties organisations such as Liberty and, in particular, Reprieve deserve a tremendous amount of credit for their lobbying and legal action in exposing the worst excesses of the government in the early days of the Global War on Terror. These organisations should be celebrated for their achievements and offered every support.

Secondly, citizens should not be content to give abstract permissions to government in any situation, let alone one as broad-ranging as security and defense. We have an obligation to understand exactly what is being done in our name, and if we don’t ensure that the government is acting in accordance with our wishes then we are complicit in whatever acts they undertake.

Third, it is distressing that this is so unsurprising.

That’s Shahram Amiri.

Mr. Amiri is an Iranian who vanished while on hajj in 2009. What happened to him is a mystery. A video released by the Iranian government in June suggested that he was an Iranian nuclear scientist, that he had been kidnapped by the CIA and tortured, and that he was being held within the US against his will. In a concurrent video, a person who appears to be the same man explains that he wasn’t kidnapped – he moved to the US of his own volition, to complete his PhD. Further muddying the waters was this ABC report, which cited unnamed CIA officials, and which claimed that Amiri is a nuclear scientist, but that he defected to the CIA of his own free will.

That’s the straightforward bit.

Yesterday morning, both the Pakistani and Iranian governments claimed that he had taken refuge in Pakistan’s Washington embassy – which serves Iran’s interests in America in the absence of its own diplomatic mission – and was trying to get home. America flatly denied the claim, however, and Wired’s Danger Room blog has a repudiation from a spokesperson at the Pakistani embassy.

But a Pakistani embassy official tells Danger Room that the reports of Amiri turning up in the embassy are ”incorrect information” and “we have no one here” matching his description. That’s from an individual at the press office who didn’t identify herself and said she could not speak for the record. She added she couldn’t explain why a spokesman for the Pakistani Foreign Ministry in Islamabad told reporters that the scientist is at the embassy’s Iranian interest section, about two miles away from the main facility in D.C.’s Glover Park neighborhood. But she also didn’t split hairs: “He’s not in the embassy at all.”

That said, the Iranian interest section is staffed by Iranians, not Pakistanis. A spokesman for the Iranian interest section, Ali Shahrazi, tells Danger Room, “When we arrived this morning, [Amiri] was here.” He dodged a question about whether the Pakistanis assisted in Amiri’s alleged arrival, saying that it was the job of Iranian staff to help Iranian nationals. But there are lots of questions remaining about Amiri’s true identity, to say nothing of his whereabouts.

What to make of this? Firstly, if you think that the CIA isn’t trying to abduct Iranian scientists and hold them against their will then you’re out of your mind. The only question is, would they do so so badly? If true, this shows a frightening lack of finesse, not least in allowing the captured scientist the liberty to broadcast his unexpurgated thoughts onto YouTube, and then permitting him to wander into Pakistan’s embassy unimpeded. Also, the still above – of Amiri’s pro-Merican-version video – is so obviously staged it hurts. The chess set? The globe, artfully set to show America on its visible face? The warm, structured lighting rig (note how the light illuminates Amiri on the face, despite the low, mood-lighting behind)? C’mon, you can almost see the camera crew and military escort just offstage.

On the other hand, this could quite easily be an Iranian stitch-up, although it would be hard to see the benefit to Iran to escalate the story to the level that it has unless it had something worth revealing.

One thing is for sure, though, and that is that you couldn’t pay me enough money to be an Iranian nuclear scientist. Wherever he is right now, I’m quite sure that Mr Amiri is wishing for nothing more than a quiet life.

EDIT: Looks like answers may be forthcoming, as he’s on his way home.

Shorter – there really is an urgent and perilous threat to Israel. It’s called “the Israeli government”.

A neat line, but that’s not really what this is about, and that’s the problem.

The Zionist argument has always been that certain ethical contortions have to be made to protect the state of Israel from its aggressors, and from the threats that imperil its very existence.

This argument resonates with those who were alive to remember the Yom Kippur War, in which Egypt and Syria used Judaism’s holiest day to pour across the border and reclaim their lands, leading to a scramble for mobilisation in which the existence of the state of Israel itself looked, very briefly, to be genuinely imperilled. Israel rallied, and the US (who viewed Egypt as a Soviet proxy) shipped in emergency military assistance; the invading armies were thus pushed back, losing the land that they had reclaimed and more.

The argument hasn’t changed, but the truth is that the situation has. Israel is, up to a point, at peace with its neighbours. In the aftermath of Yom Kippur, Egypt fell out of the Soviet periphery and is now as much a client state of the US as Israel is. Even if that wasn’t the case, neither Egypt nor Syria have the hardware to mount a serious invasion of Israel that wouldn’t be immediately and brutally punished by the Jewish State’s comprehensive and well-equipped war machine.

In short, despite the protestations of those – from both the left and the right – who remember the day when it looked like the Jews were going to lose the only state they’ve ever had, Israel faces no real external threats today. Israeli commandos killed more people last night in international waters than Hamas has killed in Israel during a decade of resistance.

Israel is no longer defending itself.

What it is defending is the siege. It is defending the status quo in Gaza and it is defending its steady encroachment into the West Bank. But it is continuing to use the language of self-defence in order to do so, and that’s a huge problem. For those who remember Yom Kippur, it’s an emotive issue. But times have changed.

It’s no longer possible to argue that criticism of Israeli actions automatically implies a rejection of the legitimacy of that state, because it’s no longer the case that Israel is acting purely in self-defence. By continuing to assert otherwise, the Israeli government and the Zionist movement is perpetrating a deceit that cannot be upheld.

It is now the will of most people – even in the Arab states surrounding it – that Israel be allowed to live in peace. By clinging to a past version of the truth, which asserts that Israel is surrounded by enemies and in a state of constant peril, the Israeli government and its supporters risk creating a self-fulfilling prophecy. Israel will always have enemies, but by pursuing the politics of arbitrary cruelty it risks creating more.

We’re seeing an example of that this week with the latest series of twists in the Iranian nuclear drama. For those who missed the background, Brazil and Turkey brokered a deal with Iran, similar to one agreed several months ago which Tehran reneiged upon, under which they would transport their raw uranium to Turkey in exchange of low-enriched fuel rods – suitable for fuel, but not suitable for weapons. I’ve blogged a little about Brazil’s foreign policy before, but this is the strongest and most visible piece of fruit it’s bourne yet.

The success of these negotiations – where previous bargains between Iran and Europe have failed – is a heavy endorsement of the growing clout of the so-called “emerging” powers. The success seems to have been predicated on the capability of Turkey and Brazil to resolve the most critical obstacle in the stand-off: the issue of trust. Both through the modalities of the new deal as well as by virtue of who they are, Turkey and Brazil have succeeded in filling the trust gap. The collapse of the previous deal hinged on this issue; they were unwilling to hand their nuclear assetts over to a West that had proven its capability to reverse its own agreements and seize Iranian property. But if the enrichment take place in Brazil, rather than Europe or Russia, then Iran can take a lot more on trust.

Stephen M. Walt, professor of international affairs at Harvard and Middle East specialist, has a good overview of the deal and its implications. The key passages, though, are these:

Here’s why I think the United States should welcome the deal. The only feasible way out of the current box is via diplomacy, because military force won’t solve the problem for very long, could provoke a major Middle East war, and is more likely to strengthen the clerical regime and make the United States look like a bully with an inexhaustible appetite for attacking Muslim countries. (And having Israel try to do the job wouldn’t help, because we’d be blamed for it anyway). I think George Bush figured that out before he left office, and I think President Obama knows it too. So do sensible Israelis, though not the perennial hawks at the Wall Street Journal’s editorial page, who appear to have learned nothing from their shameful role cheerleading the debacle in Iraq back in 2002.

[...]

So what should the United States do? It should welcome the deal in principle, while making it clear that it will monitor implementation carefully and emphasizing that this particular agreement does not resolve the larger question of Iran’s nuclear ambitions. Rejecting the deal would do nothing to advance broader U.S. objectives and would be an unnecessary slap in the face of Turkey and Brazil. Trying to scotch the deal would also allows Iran to blame Washington should the deal fall through, and it will only reinforce Iranian assertions that U.S. leaders are lying when they say they would like to improve relations.

So far, so sensible. It would be nice to think that America’s foreign policy establishment would manage to get to the end of that thought chain on their own; but, sadly, no.

There are a number of unanswered questions regarding the announcement coming from Tehran, and although we acknowledge the sincere efforts of both Turkey and Brazil to find a solution regarding Iran’s standoff with the international community over its nuclear program, the P-5+1, [...] are proceeding to rally the international community on behalf of a strong sanctions resolution that will, in our view, send an unmistakable message about what is expected from Iran.

What is expected from Iran, if not this? Well, America’s stated desire is for Iran to give up all fuel enrichment, for civilian purposes as well as military, despite it having a inaliable legal right to produce fuel for power. But the truth is that America has other reasons for wanting this to fail. It had just finalised a tortuous agreement with Russia and China for further sanctions, and politics demanded that America take its bow on the world stage for that. Doubtless there was some desire to slap down the rising powers – and make no mistake, this is a diplomatic humiliation for Brazil and Turkey, who negotiated in good faith and secured a major breakthrough because of it. And its current Middle East policy is calibrated towards containment and demonisation of Iran. For all these reasons and more, the US Government was never likely to agree a deal that was anything short of Iranian capitulation.

In other words, politics overtook principles.