Geopolitical Landscape Surrounding Iran

Iran is providing to be a very tough question for the world to answer. I am going to argue, that in the short 27 years that the current Iranian leadership has been in power, they've been the beneficiary of circumstances where the United States has had limited options in dealing with them (a lot of it self-inflicted). Iran isn't purely serendipitous either; they've schrewdly taken the advantage at times where they know we were most vulnerable.

In 1979, there was a "student uprising" backed by the Ayatollah Khomeini. Internal politics provided an opportune time for the overthrow of the Shah, but they also struck to the heart of the resolve of the United States. Stephen Green summarizes this event rather nicely:

How in the world did Iran get the idea that we'd rather pay them tribute and talk it out than fight?

That's an easy one: We taught them that.

Tehran took over the American Embassy – an act of war - in 1979, and President Carter quickly responded months later with a half-assed military operation which failed completely. Three years later, Iran's proxies in Lebanon killed hundreds of Marines, and President Reagan responded by forcefully withdrawing the survivors back to the homeland.

To be fair to Stephen, his specific argument points to how every President from Carter to Clinton in some way contributed to the Iranians knowing full well they can get away with murder. I fully agree with him, but, my point here is to discuss how prior internal factors within the United States contributed to creating poor options for the United States on the geopolitical landscape leading up to 1979.

In 1979, the United States was still haunted by the spectre of Viet Nam. A full analysis of the complexities of the Viet Nam War are far beyond the scope of this post (however it should be a worthy effort at some point as I believe about 10% of Americans actually understand Viet Nam in anything beyond pure hyperbole), but the results of Viet Nam were far reaching and undeniable: the United States was forced out of a war not due to the reality of events on the ground, but primarily by a campaign to sway the American population from support to opposition through the simple change of its narrative. Our poor leadership at the time didn't help as, even though the War was far from actually being lost on the ground, the media seized on this weakness to prove that we were, "in reality," losing. The ideological disinformation campaign by the media made Americans weary of following their civilian and military leadership to go forth into the hell that is war again without a heavy degree of skepticism.

The fire of skepticism was burning with Viet Nam, but Richard Nixon threw gasoline on it with Watergate. At no point in this country had we ever felt lower and more shameful about being American; we were reeling from a decade-and-a-half of bad leadership, and the media was there to keep the fire raging. The subsequent election of Jimmy Carter was the perfect embodiment of how we felt about ourselves.

While we were sitting around sulking in our bedrooms, the world continued to act without our permission. The Iranians smelled blood and took one the boldest shots at us in the history of our country. They literally invaded our sovereign territory, took our own people hostage and dared us to do something about it. 444-days later, Americans had simply had enough, and elected an optimist that rejected our self-loathing and promised to restore our confidence and resolve in ideals of our great nation. But, even though the Americans would pick themselves up off of the mat, the Iranians would hold and solidify their power, while initiating a proxy war aimed at controlling the Middle East.

To summarize our situation with Iran at this time: the Iranians took a bold step when they knew we were politically at our weakest. Bad leadership, along with the media, convinced Americans that our ideals were not worth fighting for; our backbone turned to mush.

Today we are in a similar situation, in that Americans are questioning our own ideals and whether we can morally drive change in a dark world. Unlike Viet Nam, the surrounding events of Iraq and Afghanistan have actually revealed strong (but not perfect) leadership in combination with a military that is clearly demonstrating it has no equal. However, just like Viet Nam, we have an ideologically driven media that is attempting to twist actual events into a narrative that was prevelent during the 70's. The effects are real, and Americans have not questioned their nature in such stark terms since that time.

This leads us to the one glaring blemish on our current leadership's resume: they have been very late in joining the information war we are fighting (once again, Stephen Green gives us a fanstatic essay, the Arm of Decision, on just what this fight is, where we have fallen short, and what needs to be done about it).

The Mullahs defecated in their robes after they saw how easily the United States handled an army they fought to a stalemate for eight years. But, the Mullahs cleaned up and went back to work. In the past they had perfomed masterfully in orchestrating prior proxy wars. They also knew the American tendancy towards civil implosion, and began to covertly and incrementally act against the American-led efforts towards stablizing Iraq. Iran didn't have to set up a puppet government to win, all they had to do was to keep the United States off-balance enough to the point where the American public would start questioning if the price was worth it.

Three years later, the Mullahs have learned that the United States is still extremely vulnerable to internal strife. In an act with similar boldness to taking the embassy in 1979, the Iranians have showed their hand, outwardly challenging the resolve of the United States once more by continuing their nuclear program. They are betting that the United States doesn't have enough political capital to follow-through.

However, the Iranians may be operating under a fallacious assumption. In spite of all the efforts to paint Iraq in a bad light, support meraculously hovers around the 50% mark, with a solid majority, whether they think we are winning or not, still supportive of staying in Iraq until victory. These numbers have ebbed and flowed a bit with current events, and the vitriolic attacks from the opponents for the war can make these numbers appear lower than they are in actuality. Does this mean that the Iranians may have overplayed their hand in thinking we don't have the guts to answer their challenge?

This puts the United States at the crossroads. If you can believe it, our response in this matter will affect more than just nuclear weapons in the hands of madmen. More importantly, it would demonstrate that the United States has the ability and the will to stop terror supporting regimes with force if neccessary. We are not at an ideal place politically right now, but we are in a much stronger position than we were in 1979. If we were able to strike at the heart of Iran and destroy their weapons programs, it would be an ideal follow-through to our efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan. While ultimately, democracy is the long-term solution in Iran, we need to act fast to show that we mean what we say.

Who has the courage to answer boldness with boldness? Bush did it twice already, and although he has wavered at times, he has come through with the big ones. Well George, this may be the biggest one of them all. What's your move?