The Peace Movement's Plan For Iran

Three years ago last month, in more than 600 cities around the world, as many as 14 million people marched in their streets to prevent the United States from launching a unilateral, preemptive, illegal, unprovoked, and unwise invasion of Iraq. The "Guinness Book of World Records" has identified Feb. 15, 2003 as the largest global antiwar mobilization in history. Now this same peace and progressive community (which the New York Times has called "the other superpower") is slowly beginning to turn its attention from the last war to the next war -- a looming military showdown between the West and Iran.

The only problem? We haven't quite figured out what we want to say.

At least two military options are probably being "war gamed" today somewhere in the bowels of the Pentagon. One is a full-scale invasion of Iran, directed at changing its regime. The other is "surgical strikes" -- air operations, cruise missiles, lethal commandos on the ground -- aimed not at overthrowing the Iranian government but at "taking out" its nuclear program. It all sounds very precise, very swashbuckling, very dramatic.

And very much like what the Japanese did at Pearl Harbor.

Opposed to military action

We, of course, reflexively oppose both options. The costs of war always exceed the benefits. The use of force always causes more problems than it solves. And thousands of innocent souls who have nothing to do with the dispute in question always end up paying the steepest price.

But to forestall a unilateral, preemptive, illegal, unprovoked, and unwise assault on Iran, the forces of peace need to say more than "war is unhealthy for children and kittens and other living things."

We need to say that any kind of military attack on Iran will do enormous harm to America.

Although Iran would put up an almost infinitely better fight than Saddam's Iraq, the invincible U.S. military could probably dislodge Iran's theocratic regime if ordered to do so. But what then? Another interminable and bungled occupation? In a country with three times the population, four times the area, and a 3,000-year heritage of fierce national pride? After the economists Linda Bilmes and Joseph Stiglitz concluded that the Iraq fiasco will eventually cost the U.S. between $1 trillion and $2 trillion?

It would be a long time before America would see any light at the end of that tunnel.

But the "surgical strike" option would be a disaster for American national security as well. If we attack Iran -- as we did Iraq -- without UN Security Council authorization, we would again flout the UN Charter and further enfeeble the international legal system. If there's anything the peace community stands for, it's that long-tem structures of enduring world peace can only be built through the world rule of law. If one country repeatedly disregards the law of nations, all countries will end up with only the law of the jungle.

In immediate retaliation for any kind of attack, Tehran might well launch missile strikes on both Israel and the many American military bases throughout the region. With its extensive ties to the Shiite majority in Iraq, Iran could cause U.S. casualties there to skyrocket. Tehran might also enhance its sponsorship of suicide bombers in Israel (or Palestinian terrorists might react on their own).

Although a great deal of discord exists within Iran about the balance between theocracy and liberty, virtually all Iranians come together in their defiance of American bullying. Most ordinary Iranians would react to any military strike like the one who told a CodePink delegation in 2005, "We may want freedom and democracy, but we can only achieve those by working within our own country. No one from the outside can impose these on us, especially not the U.S. through unwelcome military aggression. If the U.S. was to bomb us it would unite us against them immediately."