IS IRAN RATIONAL? – AT 7:58 A.M. ET:  One thing we must assess in deciding on Iran policy is whether the government in Iran is rational.   This is not said glibly.  The "rationalists" say that, even if Iran gets the bomb, Tehran would never use it because the government will act like any other government...to preserve its country.

But others aren't so sure.  Yes, the Soviet Union, with all its horrors, had a rational government, and knew when it was beaten.  Emperor Hirohito, after the atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, understood that Japan was defeated, even if many of his military men did not. 

But an author I respect, and see at meetings all the time, is arguing otherwise – that we face grave danger from the mullahs because of who they are, and because of something that we aren't aware of about Iran.  David Goldman, who wrote under the name "Spengler," and made quite an impression in the years after 9-11, has written a new book called "How Civilizations Die (and why Islam is dying too)."  Having heard David speak, I would say that anything he writes is worth reading.

Goldman makes the point that the birth rate in Iran is declining rapidly, even alarmingly.  In more enlightened Arab and Muslim populations (not governments), the birth rate is in similar, rapid decline, to European or American levels.  What does that mean for the mullahs of Tehran.  Goldman paints a chilling picture:

The foreign policy establishment has always seen Iran as a rational player. That was the view that Robert Gates brought into the Bush administration, and the reason that the Obama administration refused, disgracefully, to support the democracy movement that erupted in Iran in the summer of 2009.

An individual, or a country, that knows it has no future has no rational self-interest. You can’t invert the population pyramid in a poor country within a single generation without economic collapse. Iran knows its time is running out. Ahmadinejad is giving speeches calling the low birth rate a “genocide against the Iranian nation,” and Iran’s press is warning of a “tidal wave of elderly.” That feeds the apocalyptic impulse of Iran’s leaders. There weren’t a lot of Communists in Russia outside the Politbureau, we discovered in 1989, and there may not be a lot of Muslims in Iran. But the Russian danger peaked in the early 1980s when the Politbureau realized that time was running out to make their move.

Demographic decline tells the ayatollahs that their window of opportunity is closing. But there’s a big difference. Deterrence worked with a nuclear-armed Russia. It won’t work with the apocalyptic Shi’ite leadership of Iran. As a practical matter, we must stop Iran from getting nuclear weapons, no matter how great the cost.

COMMENT:  Excellent point.  We, in this country, do not understand ideology, passion, fanaticism.  During the later phase of World War II our naval leaders could not understand how Japanese pilots could crash their planes into American ships.  Even after 9-11 we could not quite grasp why 19 men would commit suicide in airliners, while killing thousands of innocent victims. 

But an Iran that believes it is in decline might well try for the defiant stroke.  The Iranian people might be horrified by it, but the government in Iran is not run by the Iranian people, but by a cult.  Their attitude might well be to strike a blow for Islam.  We must prevent them from having the means to do so.

November 14, 2011