Many Opinions but Little Nuance on Iran Deal

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) can move the world, if you give him a big enough lever and a place to stand. Just ask him.

Objecting to the interim deal with Iran that trades modest sanctions relief for limits on that country’s uranium enrichment, Graham told CNN that the Obama administration had done it all wrong: “Once you get them to the table, you let them know what the final deal will look like and say, ‘take this or else,'” he explained to CNN.

Because this is exactly how things have worked for American power in the Middle East. Negotiation is the act of American declaration and foreign submission. We dictate, and they take it. That’s why there have never been any unintended consequences to U.S. policy in the region. Also, unicorns.

No reality can penetrate the imperial city. On a list of reasons why politicians on both sides of the aisle object to the deal with Iran, CNN lists the fact that “it gives legitimacy to Iran as a major player in the Middle East.” Maybe look at a map—how might it be possible for Iran to not be a major player in the Middle East, considering it’s sitting on one of the world’s major oil shipping chokepoints, nearing a population of 80 million people, and parked near a good share of the world’s oil and next door to Afghanistan and a few other minor little countries like Pakistan and Iraq? Nothing can give as much legitimacy to Iran as a major player in the Middle East as the American war in Iraq, which crushed Sunni power in Iran’s neighborhood and installed a pro-Iranian Shiite regime in the place that used to be Iran’s most powerful local rival. Strategically insane American belligerence worked well for Iran, so let’s bluster some more. What could go wrong?

Twelve years after 9/11, the United States finds itself trapped in Afghanistan, tied to breathtakingly corrupt partners, and operating with allies who keep killing their partners. A haphazard and nominally international American intervention in Libya replaced a longtime dictator with a shitstorm. President Obama declared the end of President Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria a few years ago; he’s still there, and gaining ground on the forces that seek to overthrow him. And on and on: What evidence do we have that American intervention has stabilized the Middle East, or made it more friendly to our interests? What evidence do we have of effective American power there? And what would it really take to destroy Iran’s nuclear ambitions by military action?

And so Lindsey Graham says, noticing nothing at all, that we ought to just go tell Iran what to do, and they ought to just knuckle under.

Of course, this isn’t the most inane thing an American politician has said about the Iran deal this week, so maybe we should be grading Lindsey Graham on a curve.