Locked In -- Who Wins?

How do civilized, democratic countries possibly deal with unrecalcitrant human-rights-abusing terror-inducing governments? Like unsavoury, brutish neighbours one would far prefer to leave to their own devices, ignored in the best of all possible worlds. On the other hand, consideration must be given to the reality that such regimes are oppressive, repressive, brutal and lack compunction in their zeal to tyrannize and terrorize to achieve utter obedience from the shuddering masses under their control-and-command.

If it is considered unseemly interfering for other nations to protest in the abuses of their neighbours in the hope of persuading them to moderate their punishments against their own populations, it becomes downright imperative that intervention of some kind be hugely considered and finally acted upon when it becomes abundantly clear that the activities of that oppressive dictatorial state reach beyond its population and into the wider world to there also commit atrocities.

And then, the final assault on the fears and sensibilities of the assembled nations looking on in horror at the unbridled determination of a tyrant to take ownership of an arsenal of weapons of such mass destruction that nowhere on Earth becomes safe from their depredations, it becomes an absolute necessity that restraining action be taken.

Restraints such as physical force, equalling declarations of war. Restraints such as an alternative; applying the pressure of isolation.

In the Iran of the Shia Islamist Ayatollahs and their gloriously fearsome Republican Guard Corps women face systematic discrimination and harm, homosexuals commit capital crimes punishable by flogging and execution, Baha'l faithful are persecuted and imprisoned, and a proxy terrorist group is called upon to act in concert with the Republican Guard in assisting a crony-tyrant in suppressing a popular revolt by committing mass atrocities against civilians.

All of that is forgiven, when a studied analysis of the character of an influx of Islamist terrorists exemplifying the jihadist values of a counter-sectarian Islamism is considered. And that inconvenience to global visions of human rights and war crimes is set aside. For another greater concern has raised its threatening head, that of a regime that butchers its own and aspires to destroy other nations, is on the cusp of acquiring atomic weapons.

"Going to war with Iran to try to prevent it from obtaining a nuclear arsenal would be a worse course of action than containing Iran, even a nuclear Iran."
"As long as Iran is left with the capacity to enrich uranium, the right to perform some enrichment activity, and a stockpile of LEU [low-enriched uranium] ... then Iran will have a breakout capability. It could be a breakout window as wide as many months, perhaps even a year, but Iran will have the capability to manufacture the fissile material for a nuclear weapon."
Kenneth M. Pollack, Brookings Institution: Unthinkable: Iran, the Bomb, and American Strategy

Iran claims righteously, indignantly, that its nuclear program has a well-defined purpose. Its inalienable right to enrich uranium is for power generation and for the production of medical isotopes. Those, including the inspectors of the International Atomic Energy Agency who claim otherwise do so with malicious intent. Iran will simply refuse to comply with their demands, as is its sovereign right. As in: stop us. If you can.

The risible notion that the just-concluded and -signed negotiations ostensibly placing all options on hold for a six-month experimental period presumably leading to a more permanent, long-lasting contract between entities who despise and distrust one another comprise a utility that will contain an nuclear-aspiring Iran represents a reality-averse daydream.

Israel is now in a bind. It is reliant upon the United States for support and backup. Its superb but limited resources through its air fleet and bunker-penetrating bombs, if used before the six-month period of the initial negotiation has completed, will result in condemnation from all its allies save those in Sunni Arab nations of the Middle East. The sanctions would disappear, the Republic's nuclear plans might see a set-back of a year or so before they take up again.

The United States has stated unequivocally through a president who has demonstrated his capacity of equivocation, that it is prepared, should negotiations fail, to use brute force in the form of a disciplinary war to avert the potential of Iran assembling a nuclear arsenal. Their more extensive and powerful munitions would create far more damage to Iranian nuclear infrastructure. And buy the world a year or even two before resumption.

But who knows what the future may bring? Some knowledgeable experts in the field remind that Iran has a far larger population than Iraq does, with a much larger geography; how to invade such a country when the invasion of Iraq failed so miserably, delivering that country into the hands of Iran's sphere of influence? The comparative sizes of Iran and Iraq didn't cause much hesitation to Saddam Hussein, and their eight-year-long war of attrition came to naught but the deaths of millions.

In March of 2012, President Barack Obama issued a warning: "Iran's leaders should understand that I do not have a policy of containment; I have a policy to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon." This red line like the red line issued as a warning to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad on the use of chemical weapons is also susceptible to back-tracking.

For the simple fact of the matter is, in signing that negotiation, an agreement that was strengthened somewhat from the original -- thanks to France's objections -- that was even looser in its opaque ambiguity, the American administration handed on a silver salver to the far more sagacious bargainer the very open-ended treaty it had negotiated for. Entirely reversing President Obama's cautionary warning.

And the world will have to become accustomed to performing an agonizing and slow dance of preventive survival in desperately hoping to contain a nuclear-armed Islamic Republic of Iran. That will make for three loose cannons, and perhaps more to come after North Korea, Pakistan and Iran.

Unless Iran suddenly turns itself inside out and the population manages to grow a collective spine to unseat their terminally sinister ayatollahs and bring down the Revolutionary Guard Corps and install a government whose interest in humanity and nation-building may result; something more along the lines of the Shah whose excesses appear now to be those of rare reasonableness.