In a column entitled “Talk Tough with Tehran,” Dennis Ross calls for “smart statecraft,” which he describes as a combination of “smart sanctions” and “appetizing carrots.” As usual, the devil is in the adjectives.
His “smart sanctions” would target the broader Iranian economy, which he says could be effective if we get China to support them (thus addressing European fears that participation in sanctions would only throw business to the Chinese). The proposal reminds me of the old joke about the plan one expert pitched to another when they were trapped at the bottom of a well: “First, assume a rope . . .”
It is, of course, always best to use “appetizing” carrots, but Ross does not specify what he has in mind, or how it differs from the menu that has been repeatedly offered to Iran by the Europeans and the U.S. over the last two years.
Ross does relate something, however, that provides an insight into the fundamental test facing the next administration:
One Arab ambassador told me recently that the Iranians are reminding Arab leaders that America didn’t help Fuad Siniora, the prime minister of Lebanon, or Mikheil Saakashvili, the president of Georgia, when they got into trouble – that in fact Washington left them high and dry. Iran, by contrast, is close by and not going anywhere. If the Iranians are throwing their weight around now, imagine what will happen if they go nuclear.
What Ross describes as the Iranians “throwing their weight around now” consists of their simply pointing out what happened in Lebanon and Georgia. The Iranians’ “weight,” in other words, is currently not so much Iranian power as the perception of American weakness.
In one of his first statements as president-elect, Barack Obama called Iranian pursuit of nuclear weapons “unacceptable.” His first — and perhaps defining — foreign policy test will be not the manufactured crisis his vice-president predicts, but rather the one already front and center: whether the perception of American weakness will not only be confirmed but supplemented by actual Iranian power.
