Reuel Marc Gerecht on the U.S.'s "terrorist" designation of Iran's cadre of holy warriors:
America's unilateral efforts, particularly its use of the international financial system to block Iran's access to dollars and credit, have proved more successful than many thought possible. But without greater international support, they probably won't force Tehran to moderate its behavior. The Europeans, who are among Iran's largest trading partners, must agree to biting measures—something these states, which are as addicted to noncoercive diplomacy as they are to commerce, seem unlikely to do. In the meantime, the diplomatic process over Iran's nukes will crawl forward or stagnate but is unlikely to lead to war.
Deja vu, with minor exceptions. It's quite easy to take the pulse of the nation by how such a pro forma shift in diplomacy — Gerecht points out that the entire Iranian state has long been classified by the U.S. as an apparatus of terror — can distract us from the necessary conversation. Instead of asking what else can be done to stop Iran from sponsoring the murder of coalition and Iraqi troops (provocations that lie somewhere on the cold war spectrum between proxy warfare and open "skirmishes"), the worry of the hour is instead how much closer a reckless president just moved toward bombing Iran.
The likelihood of this happening is actually decreased by the U.S.'s amplification of coercive diplomacy, not to mention the passage of sanctions, the removal of which were the happy concomitant of the last war. There is precious little time left for Bush to start a coordinated military campaign against another rogue regime, even assuming he'd again skimp on the post-campaign planning. However, Bush's thinking here is clearly motivated by his failure to appreciate the true threat that Saddam's Iraq posed.
The Ba'athist equivalent of the Revolutionary Guard, the Fedayeen Saddam, we now know had been planning attacks against the West long before the 2003 invasion. The Iraqi regime had also been training jihadists of all stripes, including the Bin Ladenist one, out of camps like the Salman Pak "weapons facility" south of Baghdad, and it was looking to end U.N. sanctions in order to being the slow, steady process of reactivating its nuclear weapons program.
Only a fool thinks that we were responsible for turning Iraq into a cynosure for global terrorism. It had already become this, from housing Abu Nidal, to courting OBL via the future genocidaires of Khartoum, to making alliances with Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi and Mullah Krekar and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Much like our present dilemma with Iran, these riffraff had been stationed in one seemingly "stable" country and setting about their bloody business in neighboring countries.
What's different? There's a more vocal and media-hyped opposition movement within Iran; a more ostentatious Iranian leadership that begs for the kind of international attention that Saddam, in his autumn, actively eschewed; and an already large U.S. military presence in the Middle East. The latest move against the mullahs is therefore designed as an act of soft power preemption, and also a butt-covering policy adjustment on the part of a vitiated executive. Should we find ourselves the victim of a terrorist attack that can be traced back to Tehran, the last thing this former administration will want to hear is: Why did you never warn us?
UPDATE: Sarkozy speaks about Iran in the uncertain terms Chirac would never use.