Which Path to Persia? Options for a New American Strategy Toward Iran by Kenneth Pollack (1-Oct-2009) Paperback

by Kenneth M. Pollack

What do we do about Iran? The Islamic Republic presents a confounding series of challenges for the Obama administration. Over the past thirty years, Washington has produced an unimpressive track record of policies - ranging from undeclared warfare to unilateral concessions - that have limited some Iranian mischief-making but have largely failed to convince Tehran to drop its support for terrorist groups, its pursuit of a nuclear weapons capability, or its wider efforts to overturn the regional status quo. "Which Path to Persia?" objectively presents the most important policy options available to the United States in crafting a new strategy toward Iran. It considers four different types of diplomacy, military, regime change, and containment. Among the diplomatic options are one approach that would employ bigger carrots and bigger sticks and a strategy of pure engagement that would abandon sanctions and focus on changing Iran's strategic perceptions. The various military options include a full-scale invasion, an air campaign to destroy Iran's nuclear program, and allowing an Israeli air strike against the same. Regime change could take the form of triggering a popular revolution, supporting an insurgency, or aiding a military coup. Last, containment would involve deterring Iran from trying to wield a future nuclear arsenal while hindering its ability to cause trouble in the region. As Iran moves forward with its nuclear program, the urgency increases for the United States to implement a new policy. This distinguished group of authors, all senior fellows with the Saban Center at Brookings, points out that no one strategy is ideal and that all involve heavy costs, significant risks, and potentially painful trade-offs. With an eye to these perils, they address how the different options could be combined to produce an integrated strategy that makes the best choice from a bad lot.

Genres: Iran, Politics

Paperback

First published January 1, 2009

Reviews

[William Razavi · Rating 2 out of 5]

Okay, so the version of this I read was a shorter draft put out by Brookings and available online than the published book version but I feel like the points remain the same either way.
You’d think this book has become obsolete since it came out so long ago now, before the Arab Spring and Winter, before Libya, Syria, Yemen, the nuclear deal, the unraveling of the deal, and before the Trump War of 2020. But this book is a very good historical marker that shows just what the problems in thinking have been and will continue to be.
I would certainly file this book under “You do know that we can all hear what you’re saying, right?”
Because the kind of thinking out loud here which lays out how an administration might, for instance, support a coup or an insurgent group or tacitly support a third party air strike while maintaining plausible deniability begs the question: plausible for who? You do realize we can all read this book, right?
When it says that the US could encourage the media to run favorable stories about possible coup plotters or insurgents (i.e. terrorists) it raised the question of why these media outlets can ever be trusted?
When it outlines how one method of luring Iran into conflict might be to make a proposal that is just bad enough that Iran would have to refuse it but that it can be sold to the world as a reasonable proposal that was rejected it again raises the question as to why any negotiations could ever be conducted in good faith and also again: you do realize we can all hear you, right?
I know the authors think they are speaking to a certain audience of fellow hegemons who talk the same way about the world but I can’t help feeling like reading this text was a lot like stumbling into a supervillains conference and overhearing their plot.
Seriously, you know we can hear you, right?

[Richard · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good book, but no longer recommended — too much has changed.

This is a well-written text on Iran's place in the world and a number of possible responses the United States could take in response.

The difficulty is that the Middle East is a fast-changing region, and after only five years this no longer addresses some important contemporary issues.

For example:

• What does the surprising sweep of the reformist moderates in the election of Spring 2016 mean? Is this a temporary and tactical defeat of the conservative Islamist hardliners? Is it possible that some of the aging holy warriors of the revolutionary era are moderating their passion, as they see the suffering that extremism can cause? Does this provide an opening for the U.S. to pull Iran further along those lines?

• Like it or not, Iran is the most successful instance of a republican theocratic state, something most people probably thought would be a contradictory proposition. Iran is nowhere near eliminating the corruption of power politics, so the tensions between the religious and democratic aspects may never resolve. But if it is possible for Iran to evolve into a peaceful republican theocracy, that means a future Middle East could resolve the state-religion conflict in a way much different than the European Westphalian solution.

• Oil, the commodity that keeps the Arab monarchies wealthy, will someday run out. The emergency of climate change tells us we should stop using it even sooner, if we can muster the determination. In either case, what is holding those economies up won't be there anymore, and quite a few Gulf states have no real prospect for other revenues. Iran, while still getting much of its international trade revenue from petroleum and its derivatives, does have a substantially diversified economy. It might makes sense to "make nice" with the Middle Eastern nation that is most likely to survive the collapse of oil as a global commodity. For that matter, Iran should be looking into their crystal ball and seeing that future as very scary, with millions of neighbors dropping into poverty and seeking assistance.