Ahmadinejad's Win-Win Strategy

by Richard Bulliet

Released: 25 Sep 2006

Is Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, trying to goad the United States into staging a military attack? The question could not be avoided after his two-hour breakfast meeting with academics and journalists last week in New York.

He didn’t bluster. He didn’t boast. He never mentioned Islam. In most people’s opinion, he came across as a skilled debater with a cheerful and informal manner. Yet he stated several times that the United States would not attack Iran. No elaboration. It just flat out wasn’t going to happen.

When an attendee observed that in a month’s travel throughout Iran over the summer he never met an Iranian who expressed concern about an American attack, Ahmadinejad concurred. No Iranian, he said, feels that an attack is in the offing. And rumors of American military preparations don’t appear in the Iranian press.

Americans, however, think differently. Sooner or later, with the smart money betting on sooner, they believe the United States is going to make a move to take out Iran’s nuclear facilities. Many are horrified at the prospect of launching another war, and are praying that the common sense of a Pentagon that already has one war too many on its hands will keep it from happening. Many others are convinced that there is no other way to stop a Holocaust-denying madman.

So what is going on? The underdog players bask in blissful denial while the team with the monster linemen bang one another’s shoulder pads and shout anti-Iran slogans to get their war juices flowing. Shouldn’t it be the other way around? America cool, confident, and a bit disdainful while the mullahs quake in their sandals and fanatically scream defiance?

No one with an ounce of sense, of course, believes that Iran’s military brass are as insouciant as their president. Armchair strategists in the United States make lists of the cards Iran might play in response to an attack. Iran’s generals can scope out a dozen ways to fight back just by reading American newsmagazines. But nothing of this comes through in the smooth talk of their president.

Is denial, then, a political strategy? Let’s look at a comparison.

Ever since 9/11, President Bush has been preparing his fellow Americans for another big terrorist attack here at home. The resulting fear has worked for him politically and has dampened down America’s weariness with the quagmire in Iraq. Now, with another election coming up, the terrorism talk is back, and no one is surprised. If Mahmoud Ahmadinejad attacks, it proves Bush right in the War on Terror. If it doesn’t, it’s because the War on Terror is so successful. Win-win.

President Ahmadinejad is taking the opposite tack but aiming at the same result. He deliberately tweaks the lion’s tail by stalling on nuclear negotiations and infuriatingly calling for “more research” on the Holocaust, as if it were not already the most thoroughly researched event in history. Yet he declares that neither he nor his countrymen have the slightest worry about an American attack. Politically this is a win-win tactic. If the sabers are never drawn from their scabbards, he wins because he kept his cool -- and he is a very cool customer -- and faced down Bush’s bluff.

But if someday soon the cruise missiles do home in on Natanz and Bushire, he wins the 9/11 way. A country of 70 million people pull their heads out of the sand in tears, horror, and outrage at what they will surely see as totally unprovoked aggression by the world’s superthug. In response they rally around their blameless president the way Americans rallied around President Bush in the aftermath of the World Trade Center, or rallied around President Roosevelt, another “war president,” after Pearl Harbor.

Quenching the Bush/Cheney war fever at this point may be beyond Iran’s capacity. True, Ahmadinejad could abruptly terminate his nuclear program, profess eternal love for Israel, and deliver Sheikh Nasrallah to Tel Aviv to stand trial. But that would probably not be enough. Today’s Iran-bashers want “regime change” the way yesterday’s Saddam-haters -- pretty much the same people -- would accept nothing less than his head on a platter.

So acting naïve while poking a sharp rhetorical stick at the collective American-Israeli butt might be a sensible strategy. Iran is big enough, and daunting enough as a war target, to make it all but certain that Ahmadinejad will still be president after his labs and atomic reactor are blown to bits. And he will then enjoy not just the full-throated support of the Iranian people, but also international political support in growing numbers -- and in countries that don’t believe it’s right for the United States to initiate wars without solid justification.

Richard Bulliet is Professor of History at Columbia University and author of Islam: A View from the Edge and The Case for Islamo-Christian Civilization.

Copyright © 2006 Richard Bulliet / Agence Global
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Released: 25 September 2006
Word Count: 777
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Afghanistan

Africa

Arab World

China

Europe

Iran

Iraq