You see a title that says “Plan B” meant to solve a problem that has been intractable for a long time, and you get excited because you believe that someone has finally come up with the creative solution that you and everyone else were hoping for.
You go over what you believe is an ingenious
plan, but the deeper you get into the article describing it, the more you
discover that it is a quilt of all the plans that came previously and proved
unworkable. You feel worse than disappointed; you feel deceived and cheated.
This is the feeling you’ll get when you read
the article that came under the title: “A plan B for Iran,” and the subtitle:
“Washington Needs to Turn Up the Pressure on Tehran.” It was written by Michael
Singh and published on October 25, 2021 in Foreign Affairs.
After an introductory paragraph that tells
what the article is about, Michael Singh hits the reader with two contradictory
images of Iran that say this article is not a serious discussion. Here is one
image of Iran: “The maximum pressure sanctions campaign left Iran’s economy
reeling.” And here is the other image of Iran: “Iranian officials believe that
returning to compliance with the nuclear deal is inferior to the alternatives.”
The first image is that of a country on its knees, about to collapse and ready
to take any deal shoved down its throat. The second is that of a tiger giving
the middle finger of its giant paw to America’s monkeyshine. Will the real Iran
please stand up.
How can someone hold those two images of one
and the same thing simultaneously in his head? The answer is in the use of the
word “reeling.” Even though no one has bothered to define that word, dozens
have attributed it to the state of Iran’s economy. They did so not because they
were thinking of a specific image, but because it sounded fashionable to say
“reeling.” And so, copying and stitching into a quilt what was fashionable at
one time or another, has been the pattern that Michael Singh adopted throughout
the article while adding nothing new of his own, and yet pretending to do so.
And then, as you would expect, Michael Singh
proceeded to build on what he borrowed from the others, by adding to it still
more of what he borrowed from the others. And he called all that, a Plan B of
his own creation. Here is how that went:
“By
developing a credible Plan B that sharpens the consequences for Iran should it
continue to rebuff diplomatic overtures and expand its nuclear activities while
simultaneously offering Iran a diplomatic proposal that has a better chance of
outlasting his tenure in office, President Biden may be able to change Iranian
leaders’ calculus”.
So, you wonder what exactly does the Michael
Singh proposal come down to? Well, it suggests, two components. One is to
sharpen the consequences for Iran if the tiger does not pull back the extended
middle finger he is throwing in America’s face. The other is to offer Iran a
new diplomatic proposal of the kind that will outlast Biden’s tenure in office,
which means will not be repealed in case Donald Trump or a clone of his, gets
elected President of the United States in 2024.
The fact that, so far, the threat of
sharpening the consequences for Iran has not been defined, and neither was the
promise that a new diplomatic proposal will be made to Iran, rekindle your
expectation that Michael Singh will define them both after all. And so, you
look forward to seeing flesh put on what has so far been a barebone skeleton
description without recognizable features that can be assessed. And so, you go
over the article with a magnifying lens, looking for a description in depth of
those consequences and that diplomatic proposal. Unfortunately, you find
neither but encounter the following instead:
“First
and foremost, the United States must demonstrate that Iran will face
consequences. The assurances that future administrations will not again leave
the deal, are assurances that Biden could not provide even if he wished to do
so. Should Iran’s obstinacy persist, the Biden administration should enforce
and expand existing economic sanctions. In order to accomplish this, the Biden
administration will need to underscore its commitment to enforcing Trump-era
sanctions on Iran. Foremost among these are Iran’s sales of oil to China, but
concerns about Iran’s reaction and competing priorities in the fraught
US-Chinese relationship will make it difficult to pull the trigger”.
In other words, Michael Singh is recommending
that the current administration should maintain the status quo as put down by
the previous administration, and call that achievement a brand-new plan B. Can
it get any worse from here on? Yes, it can and it did. Here is how that went:
“It is the case that any US
president would consider military action if confronted with urgent and credible
intelligence that Iran had decided to dash for a nuclear weapon. It is thus
preferable that Iran understand the consequences of such a decision. The
real challenge is how to ensure that threats of military action are credible as
the United States executes a long-delayed strategic shift away from the Middle
East and toward Asia. Maintaining the credibility of US threats will require
continuing to act when Iran and its proxies target American interests”.
How so refreshingly original! Why didn’t I think of that?