Russian Machinations

Michael Ledeen has a fascinating piece on Russian political maneuverings relating to the Iranian nuclear issue. I've come to suspect for awhile now that Russia was attempting to manipulate the situation so as to bring about an attack on Iran from either Israel or the United States, and Ledeen lays out the case for how and why they are doing this succinctly. But I suspect his analysis, while accurate as far as it goes, falls short of what's really going on.

We hear with some regularity that President Bush recognizes the threat posed by Iran and by their pursuit of nuclear weapons, and about how he feels that is his responsibility to see that the situation is resolved on his watch, not left to his successor. The president has also said, somewhat to his apparent embarrassment, that Vladimir Putin is someone with whom he can work (having come to this conclusion by looking into Putin's soul). I can't help but think that all of Russia's bluster, the mounting tensions between the United States and Russia as relations appear to deteriorate, Russia's support for Iran both materially and politically on the nuclear issue, and the apparent American fecklessness in the face of Iranian intransigence on many fronts, including support for insurgents and militias in Iraq, are a deliberate cooperative act on the part of the United States and Russia to get the Iranians to expose themselves to attack, to stick their necks out too far so that there will be no option but for the United States, either alone or with a small group of allies, to attack Iran, destroy its nuclear program and undermine the regime in Tehran.

I don't have any hard evidence of this, nor do I have any particular expertise in this field, but as the Bush administration and the American military continue to increase the rhetorical pressure on Iran, and as European negotiations appear more and more ineffective, and the deal with North Korea looks more and more like a bad deal, the more quickly the prospects of a peaceful resolution to the crisis show themselves to be empty (whether they always were is a matter for debate). And if options like diplomacy and sanctions are going to be ineffective, that leaves only options like sabotage, insurrection and military action. Recognition of this may not bring allies flocking to the United States' efforts to disarm the mullahs, but it should at least buy the political cover necessary to ensure Iran does not obtain a nuclear weapon.

Now all of this may be dead wrong. American fecklessness in the face of Iranian and North Korean intransigence may be genuine. Relations with Russia may be as bad as they appear. Russia may be more concerned with keeping the United States occupied so as to increase its own international standing than with preventing the mullahs acquiring nuclear arms. The United States government may just now be waking up to Iranian mischief in Iraq, though they've certainly known about it since 2003. In the morass that is international politics, there's no way to be sure, but it strikes me as being the height of absurdity that the president would stand for having an issue on which he places high import handled and such an inept and disjointed manner, even if some of his actions on the domestic front do not inspire confidence in this belief.