I am somewhat dumbfounded by the calls coming out of the US/France State Visit in Washington today to strike a new deal with Iran on nuclear proliferation (https://www.yahoo.com/news/trump-macron-call-nuclear-deal-iran-174020256.html).
These are my initial reactions:
- What would a new deal accomplish?
- Why bother?
Let me explain my questioning with a brief digression that is utterly simplistic but perhaps useful. I am a huge hockey fan and it's playoff time right now. The Toronto Maple Leafs are my team and I was reminiscing the other day about a series they had 25 years ago (yeah, I was quite young) with the Detroit Red Wings. I won't bore you with details but there was one story that stood out. A player on Detroit named Dino Cicarelli had a notorious reputation for standing in front of the other team's net to disrupt the goaltender. He did this to great effect in the first two games of the series and Toronto was quickly behind 2-0. After they pulled out a tough victory in the third game, their coach, a man named Pat Burns, made a simple philosophical adjustment. He said in his office before the fourth game, "You know what we do? We just leave him alone." After this, Cicarelli wasn't nearly as effective, either as a scorer or an irritant. There was some logic to this idea. For one thing, Dino was maybe the 10th best player on Detroit. So why give hi all the attention. Secondly, He was maybe 5"10. If he didn't cause a small riot every time he went in front of the net, Toronto's goalie could easily work around him well enough to win games. Great idea.
In this case, for those of you who haven't figured it out yet, Iran is Dino Cicarelli. Why not just leave them alone? Is this thousands of years old society really just a pure evil menace or have they been able to be irritated and cause irritation to the point that they could spark a conflict that far outweighs their stature. Why fuss over the small guy who relies on being able to piss everyone off? Why not see what would happen if everyone stopped trying to militarily surround them? Maybe they would just focus on trying to improve their respective lots in life and stop acting like they are trying to deter the world's great military powers.
As I disclaimed, we are talking about a very simplistic take on things here but not a lot has been accomplished with the complicated takes. If the hawks in Washington want to pull out of the Iran "deal", what is their plan? A war? Nuke them? Let them get the bomb but continue to piss them off enough that they might use it. Iran might indeed hate Israel but there are perhaps better ways of getting them to calm down about it than provoking them and not stopping them from acquiring nuclear capabilities.
What would a new "deal" actually bring? Why not just try leaving them alone? The Leafs beat Detroit that year, by the way.
CW