Try to Remember

A couple thoughts about the Iran conflict. First a reminder about the JCPOA deal with Iran, set in place during the final year of the Obama administration. While not securing every single thing the US might want from Iran, it did put a cap on uranium enrichment and guaranteed inspectors extensive access to Iranian sites to verify compliance with that cap. At the time the US withdrew from the deal in 2018 Iran was in full compliance. As far as we can tell, and we were looking hard, they weren’t producing any weapons grade uranium. Second that there’s some good reasons to doubt that there was solid evidence of an imminent threat of Iran getting a bomb in February of this year when we went to war with them. This feels familiar.

I was 23 in 2003 when the second Iraq war started. It’s the first event I’ve lived through where I’ve really noticed the development of a historical narrative. Nowadays, when I hear about that decision to go to war I hear descriptions on a spectrum from “We thought they had weapons” to “the administration got themselves into an echo chamber and ended up believing intel that wasn’t particularly strong”. And the (real) paranoia caused by the 9/11 attacks a year and a half prior sometimes gets a mention as well. I never hear anymore how Iraq had allowed UN weapons inspectors back into the country under pressure from the UN. At the time we went to war the inspectors had secured permission to inspect everything they wanted to, weren’t finding anything, and were asking for more time to complete their task. The other thing I don’t see in popular accounts now is that support for unilateral invasion was the minority position, that most of us wanted the inspections to run their course. You don’t hear how while the Bush administration was sneering and condescending at their critics and ultimately taking us to war that a lot of us were pulling our hair out and screaming at the radios in our 98 VW Golfs. A CBS/NYT poll in January of that year showed only 31% support for immediate military action and 63% support for a diplomatic solution. In March, days before the invasion, another poll showed that a majority conditioned their support for the war on UN support (which never came).

I guess it’s nice that some of us get to feel smug that no weapons were ever found. But being vindicated for my arguments that the war was a bad idea doesn’t overcome the bad outcomes. Over 4000 Americans killed, around 32000 injured, somewhere around half a million Iraqis killed, something like $3 trillion dollars spent. The destruction of the Iraqi institutions created a power vacuum that both Iran and non-state groups like ISIS rushed in to fill. And while Saddam was a murderous leader we’re better without, Iraq today is hardly the bastion of freedom that George W. Bush promised we’d be getting. It is hardly better off economically now than it was in 2003 after decades of war with the US and Iran and has problems with corruption and unreliable civilian infrastructure.

Like I said, current events feel familiar.

In 2016 through 2018, we had inspectors in Iran verifying that uranium wasn’t being enriched to weapons grade. Just as in Iraq we had a non-military solution to our concerns that was producing results. Then in 2018 we decided that it wasn’t enough and we could get more by bullying them with even larger sanctions than they’d been under before 2016. In retaliation the Iranians eventually threw out the inspectors and went back to enriching uranium, taking them closer to the outcome we’re trying to avoid, an Iranian nuclear weapon. But enriched uranium is not a nuclear weapon and the Iranians were at the bargaining table willing to make a deal over their nuclear program (again). Multiple neutral parties observed that progress was being made but before a deal could be reached we decided it would be better to just bomb them into submission. No one has offered up a concrete, specific, evidence backed reason why this was necessary. Enriched uranium isn’t a great thing for the Iranians to have but it’s not a bomb. Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard’s March 18th congressional testimony was notable in her refusal to say that the US had intelligence indicating an imminent threat of attack from the Iranians. Also notable is the March 17th resignation of Joe Kent, director of the National Counterterrorism Center, saying he can’t in good conscience support the war because there was no imminent threat. In that same testimony Gabbard told us that the evidence for an imminent threat was essentially that President Trump said there was one. That’s not even close to good enough. Just like in Iraq we’ve gone to war based on assurances of threats without any credible evidence of them. Once again, we preemptively discarded working diplomacy to get what we want from these nations in favor of simply trying to beat it out of them.

Let’s leave aside whether this is how a moral people should behave. This doesn’t seem like a wise way to solve our problems. Our efforts in Iraq made us and the world ultimately worse off. I hope Iran doesn’t turn out the same way but this feels like a road we’ve been down before more than once. It echoes with the same arrogance, belligerence, and naiveté. We’re being steered by people who seem even less serious, even less forthright than last time. We tell our kids to solve their problems with words, that resorting to violence should be a last resort. As a nation we should follow the same advice.