The Disaster of Silence

Iran, America and Israel are blundering down a dangerous path towards disaster in the Middle East. Indeed, Iraq is already a disaster. But a nuclear mishap in the region will make Iraq look like a cake-walk.

Iran and America and Iran and Israel desperately need to open diplomatic communication to avert the marginal possibility, albeit an extremely dangerous one, of a quasi-nuclear mistake via an American or Israeli attack on Iran. The obstacles involved in opening telephone line are already obvious. George W. Bush and Dick Cheney are too pigheaded, as is Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. They fail to see open dialogue as potentially beneficial, and instead would rather shoot from the hip and pray that God makes everything okay. Israel and Iran are equally as troubled. Ahmadinejad himself is a Holocaust denier, and hence both his and Israel's desire to open a Cold War-era hot-line seem limited. This is extremely unfortunate.

The stakes are rising, and they rise higher when states can't correctly interpret signals from others. Although Ahmadinejad himself is extremely blighted, Iran's power does not all rest in his hands. His wishes are not necessarily that of Iran, however unfortunately without communication his wishes may become the de facto future course of Iran's international policy.

It is hard enough for great powers locked in silent battle to refrain from war even with communication; The Economist very accurately makes this point in its Leaders article from last week. Even when the Soviet Union and the United States had communication lines open, nuclear war was barely averted during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Without a private channel to convey wills, wishes and intention via diplomatic speak (or blunt assessments), countries with political capital will engage in an escalating public-relations battle that eventually leaves no choice but for conflict. To show the dismal state of America/Israel and Iranian foreign relations, even America and Kim Jong Il's Hermit Kingdom have done far better at communicating with one another.

Through all this, however, Iran appears to be a rational state actor. This is a good start, but a rational actor may believe its acting in a rational way, only to learn that for lack of accurate information about its foe in hindsight such action was truly irrational. Because Israel seems loathe to accept a nuclear armed Iran, Iran's presumed nuclear weapons ambitions may prove to be just that.