If you like Iraq, you'll love Iran

Are you saying that we need to defer to Iran to keep the peace?

I would never say that we should simply accommodate Iran, but we need to keep their interests in mind. If we're going to make any move against Iran, whether it's in Iraq or elsewhere, I think we need to keep in mind that they have the ability to retaliate against us in Iraq. They're not omnipotent, by any stretch of the imagination, but they have a great deal of influence and a lot of personnel who are a great deal more capable than the Iraqi insurgents.

If the Iranians ever declared war on us in Iraq, they could make Iraq a hellish place. Remember what they did in Lebanon, and keep in mind that there they had a very small contingent of Revolutionary Guards, it was very far away, and they cared much less. So I think we need to be careful of how we handle Iran because we're vulnerable to them in Iraq.

Your book argues that our best hope for convincing Iran to end its nuclear program is to work with the Europeans to develop a unified "carrot and stick" approach. What do we need to do to make this happen?

A lot really depends on whether the Europeans are serious about Iran. I think that there is reason to believe that they are now, though during the 1990s, when I talked with European diplomats, they would do anything to pretend that the Iranians weren't supporting terrorism and weapons of mass destruction. They were desperate to look the other way.

Why was that?

The answer isn't as easy as people think, but I believe it comes down to economics. Germany's trade with Iran is $5 billion, and that's not a lot of money in the context of the German economy, but the money is very concentrated in a few very big German firms that have a great deal of political clout. And while $5 billion may not be a lot of money to Germany, it is a lot of money to Siemens. But I'm hopeful that the Europeans have seen the light and will put security interests ahead of crass commercial interests. The real issue here is whether the Europeans are serious, and whether our administration can get its head out of the sand to strike the deal with them.

You book mentions that the decision to include Iran in the "Axis of Evil" speech was made entirely by Bush's speechwriting team. Do we have a coherent policy toward Iran, or did I just answer my own question?

To some extent you did. I always bristle when somebody says, "The administration doesn't have a policy toward X, Y or Z." Because usually that means the person either doesn't like the policy or just doesn't understand it.

But in the case of Iran in the second Bush administration, it's actually true. The principals have never sat down and met and decided on an Iran policy. Senior administration officials will tell you that their policy is to refer the problem to the Security Council, but that's not a policy. They know damn well that the Chinese will veto any measure directed against Iran in the Security Council. So at best, they're kind of kicking the can down the road.

I think that this is a huge mistake. I think there's a real shot at influencing Iran's decision making over the next couple of years, and I don't think we're going to have this shot for very long. If we work with the Europeans and present the Iranians with a fundamental choice about what kind of a country they want, and what they want their country's role in the world to be, I think there's a very good likelihood that they'll be forced to make the choice we want them to. But the Europeans aren't going to stick with this policy forever if the United States doesn't come around, and at some point, the Iranians are going to become self-sufficient in terms of acquiring a nuclear weapon. Once that happens, our ability to shape their decision making goes out the window. We'll wind up being forced to choose among a bunch of really bad options, air strikes, or invasion, or just trying to live with Iran.

You wrote that "living with a nuclear Iran will not be easy, but it will not be impossible, either." If Iran becomes a nuclear state in the next four years, do you think the Bush administration would reach the same conclusion?

In a perverse sense, I think the administration agrees with that sentence of mine. When you hear from even the most hawkish senior administration officials, they don't believe that invasion is a good option. I've had a couple of fairly senior neocons outside of the government tell me that at the end of the day Iran's going to get nuclear weapons, and there's no way to stop them. The only difference between our policies, they say to me, is that you're going to make concessions to them and we won't.

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