by Victor Tomseth, Guest Contributor
The following oped was published in the Eugene, Oregon, Register-Guard on September 18. 2008. Victor Tomseth of Vienna, Va., was born in Eugene, grew up in Springfield and graduated from the University of Oregon. He worked for 30 years as a Foreign Service officer in Thailand, Iran and Sri Lanka, and was U.S. ambassador to Laos from 1993 to 1996. He was among the 50 Americans held hostage for 444 days in Iran. Since retiring in 1996, Tomseth has worked for the Department of State in Croatia and Vienna, and as a consultant supporting the United States Pacific Command’s military exercise programs. He is a member of a group of over 300 retired Foreign Service officers supporting Barack Obama’s candidacy.
In January 2006, Sen. John McCain perhaps best summarized his approach to the Iranian nuclear conundrum: “There’s only one thing worse than the United States exercising the military option — that is a nuclear-armed Iran. The military option is the last option, but cannot be taken off of the table.” In July of this year he told journalist Jeffrey Goldberg, “While we don’t go around launching pre-emptive strikes all the time, we can’t afford to wait until a terrorist organization, or a nation which is an avowed enemy of the United States, has the capability to use weapons of mass destruction — or even uses them.”
As McCain’s friend Sen. Lindsey Graham, when asked by Goldberg to name something unusual about McCain, put it: McCain believes that “some political problems have military solutions.” Perhaps McCain’s response in April 2007 at a campaign stop in South Carolina when an audience member asked when we would “send an air mail message to Tehran” was not as facetious as he later claimed: “Bomb, bomb, bomb … bomb, bomb Iran,” he sang to the tune of the Beach Boys’ standard, “Barbara Ann.”
The McCain campaign has ridiculed Sen. Barack Obama’s assertion at a rally in May that Iran does not pose a serious threat to the United States in the way the Soviet Union once did. According to a McCain campaign commercial, these comments demonstrate that Obama is dangerously unprepared to be president.
Even Israel has a military budget larger than Iran's
In fact, Obama’s comments demonstrate a more sophisticated understanding of Iran’s relative power than the McCain view that Iran poses an existential threat. According to the Central Intelligence Agency’s World Factbook, in 2006 Iran spent approximately $7.35 billion on defense. Compare that to the region’s other significant military powers such as Saudi Arabia ($37.6 billion) and Turkey ($35.16 billion), and Iran’s military capacities begin to come into better focus. Even tiny Israel has a military budget more than half again as large as Iran’s.
Granted, the possession of nuclear weapons is a qualitative advance in military capacity (provided it is accompanied by a capability to deliver such weapons). At the moment, however, it is highly doubtful that Iran possesses either a nuclear weapon or the capacity to deliver one against even Israel, let alone the United States.
Could that change? Obviously it might at some point. However, it does not appear that day has arrived or that it soon will (see the November 2007 National Intelligence Estimate key judgments, “Iran: Nuclear Intentions and Capabilities.”
Iran does not hold all the nuclear cards
An understanding that Iran does not hold all the nuclear cards — and indeed that its hand in certain fundamental aspects is a weak one — underlies Obama’s policy approach to the Iranian nuclear issue. He believes that the United States has not exhausted nonmilitary options, and in many respects has not even tried seriously to apply them. He proposes a comprehensive settlement with Iran: In exchange for abandoning dual-use nuclear technologies and support of terrorism, the United States will offer incentives such as support for Iran’s entry into the World Trade Organization, economic investment and a process leading to normalization of diplomatic relations.
If, however, Iran continues its troubling behavior, the United States will instead step up efforts to isolate Iran economically and politically.
Experience shows Obama's approach can work
Experience shows that Obama’s approach can work. Nearly 30 years ago, Iranian authorities first condoned and then facilitated the holding of more than 50 American hostages at the U.S. embassy in Tehran. At that time, too, there was a war faction in the United States that called for bombing Iran back into the Stone Age.
President Jimmy Carter chose a different course, one of patiently negotiating a resolution using nonmilitary sticks and carrots. It took 444 days to drive home the point to Iranian leaders that there are real costs for international isolation, not the least of which was Iran’s discovery that it had few friends when Saddam Hussein seized the hostage crisis as an opportunity to launch a military attack.
The hostage crisis contributed significantly to President Carter’s 1980 loss to Ronald Reagan. But he succeeded in resolving the crisis without resort to war because he understood that, even with a regime as radical as that of Iran at the time, it was possible to use the United States’ nonmilitary power to achieve his policy goal of returning the hostages safely home.
Senator Obama understands the salience of that reality. It is questionable that Senator McCain does.
See also: Ambassador Peter Sebastian, "Former Diplomats for Obama" and Vicki Gray, "Jim, Barack . . . and Me."
Victor Tomseth has given WhirledView permission to post this article.