North by Northwestern

The U.S. has a one in three chance of going to war with Iran, said the director of foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute, a non-profit think tank in Washington, D.C., in a campus event on Tuesday.

Christopher Preble addressed more than 60 students and faculty at University Hall in a town hall meeting hosted by the student group Americans for Informed Democracy. Preble based his opinions on politicians’ general attitudes in Washington, D.C., he said.

“I’m very worried that President Bush will not want to leave office with the legacy of an Iran that is the regional hegemon and soon-to-be nuclear power,” he said.

Preble said he advises the administration to make a “Grand Bargain” instead of war. The “carrot” of this bargain would be promises to not attack Iran and to resume diplomatic and economic relations, which the U.S. cut off after the Islamic Revolution in 1979.

“In exchange the Iranians would agree to open their nuclear program to rigorous, on-demand inspections to ensure that there is no diversion of nuclear material from a peaceful power program to a nuclear weapons program,” he said.

The key to this bargain is that the U.S. would also agree to drop the policy of a regime change, which is the source of Iran’s fear and their desire for nuclear weapons.

Weinberg junior Holly Rehm, co-president of Americans for Informed Democracy, said she was pleased by the turnout for the event.

“We ran out of seats and food,” said Rehm, a political science and international studies major. “Iran is such a big issue now, and recent events like the capture of British sailors really generate interest with students.”

Scholars at the Cato Institute developed the “Grand Bargain” concept after concluding that the administration’s current policies would not be effective in relieving the nuclear threat Iran poses to the U.S.

Preble rebutted popular strategies of politicians in Washington, D.C., such as imposing additional economic sanctions, overthrowing the regime and launching a preventative war.

Preble’s arguments are as follows:

Economic Sanctions: The U.S. and Iran do not have economic or diplomatic ties to each other, but Iran still trades with other countries, such as Japan.

“If [economic] sanctions were that effective, Castro wouldn’t still be the president of Cuba and Kim Jong Il would not be the leader of North Korea.”

Subverting the Regime: By stamping a U.S. seal of approval on reformist movements in Iran, the U.S. undermines the country’s legitimacy in the eyes of the Iranian people.

“This argument that we can foment regime change peacefully without resorting to force might be more plausible if we hadn’t heard similar things with respect to Iraq,” Preble said.

Preventive War: War would not eliminate Iran’s nuclear potential, even if the U.S. had the proper intelligence to launch an attack. Much of Iran’s nuclear infrastructure is either buried or located in urban areas, making it difficult to identify and dismantle materials. Even if the attack was intended to liberate Iranians, Preble said there is no reason to believe that 70 million Iranians would support the country that had bombed their people.

“These are the types of questions that were not asked prior to the Iraq War, and knowing what we now know about Iraq, we should at least ask these questions and – I would hope – demand some decent answers before we go down that road,” Preble said.

Even the most extreme mullahs, or religious teachers such as Ayatollah Khomeini in the Iran-Iraq War, will make rational decisions when it comes to war, he said.

Preble said he is worried the U.S. administration will try to correct its mistakes in the Iraq War by launching an attack against Iran. There is no “magic bullet” to eliminate the Iranian nuclear program, he said, and the U.S. needs to negotiate instead.