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Monday 18 July 2011Haggling Over Iranian Nukes
People in Washington have all sorts of theories about the Iranian nuclear program. But it’s rare to hear someone offer a take that actually takes the psychology of Iranian negotiators into account. For those in the West who argue that Iranians are “crazy,” and that all they understand is force and threats, Jones had this to say: “I don’t know if you’ve ever had the pleasure of dealing with truly crazy people, but slapping them around rarely makes them more sensible. It just tends to confirm the paranoias that made them crazy in the first place.” Jones alluded to another of Limbert’s rules by noting that Iranians tend to respect power and despise weakness. “Appearing weak in the face of outside pressure is fatal in the brutal world of Iranian politics. You will not last a second under those circumstances. I have seen many circumstances [in which] a very good deal, a very good deal from the Iranian point of view, would be walked away from, if it makes the Iranians look weak.” And what about regime change? Jones noted that the Islamic Republic has already survived a brutal revolution and survived a vicious war with Iraq that took hundreds of thousands of lives. It is a complex and multi-headed regime and perhaps nothing but a “massive internal uprising” can bring it down. “If the present regime does fall, there is no guarantee that what would eventually replace it would be any better for us,” said Jones. “It almost certainly would be no less interested in acquiring a nuclear option because in many ways the nuclear option is not seen as Islamic… It is seen as a hard rational choice made by them based on their history and their geostrategic situation.” He concluded his comments by saying that there is no real answer to Iran’s nuclear program but a combination of diplomacy, sanctions and indirect action. Stopping the program in its track or rolling it back is not possible. Western countries should find an Iranian nuclear program that they can live with and find ways to contain it. Deterrence has worked in the past, he said. There’s no reason why it can’t work again. RFE/RL |