Saturday, December 10, 2011

Another Iran conspiracy theory

From the Miami Herald, here's a new alarmist conspiracy theory about Iran:


If we answer these questions in terms of the growing economic ties among these countries, and there are many, licit as well as illicit and covert, we would be basing our analysis on strict Western economic rationality. We mistakenly would be extrapolating our logical model to Castro, Chávez and Ahmadinejad. 
A second analytical mistake is to scrutinize Iran’s influence in discrete country-by-country terms rather than in terms of the synergies and symbiosis of the Tehran-Havana-Caracas alliance. 
We would further compound our error if we formulate U.S. foreign policy in similarly disconnected terms. As world events have repeatedly demonstrated, we eventually gain the Socratic insight that we know very little of the logical reasoning models of autocratic leaders like Ahmadinejad, Castro and Chávez.



Huh? Venezuela and Cuba aren't economically rational?  And apparently they aren't "Western" either.  And Socrates to boot?  This is a big jumble of words.  Come on, "synergies and symbiosis"?

The clear implication of the piece is that this triumvirate is going to attack us with nuclear weapons. There will, I suppose, be people who actually believe that. Hopefully none of them become policy makers with any influence.

For the most part, the Iran connection throws a lifeline to those who want to act more aggressively toward Cuba and Venezuela, but who have been thwarted by the fact that those governments don't pose any security threat to the United States. Put Iran in the mix and you can revive the Cold War, where grizzly ghouls from every tomb are closing in to seal your doom. There is no doubt that Iran bears close watching, but the rhetoric is reaching pretty absurd levels.

3 comments:

Mike Allison 10:53 AM  

It's a pretty terrible article.

However, I just take the author's point to be that Cuba, Venezuela, and Iran are driven to work together out of their shared anti-US mentality.

Maybe I'm being too generous here.

Greg Weeks 12:47 PM  

The immediate reference to nuclear weapons is what made me think that way.

Anonymous,  8:55 AM  

I think the author is over-writing, using big words and phrases that are unnecessary and unwarranted. It is a simple enough point to say that the Iran-Venezuela-Cuba alliance is based primarily on anti-Americanism and, to a lesser extent, aversion to a liberal democratic capitalist model. There is some truth that western democracies struggle to figure out the intentions of autocratic regimes (as do all countries). However, I agree you are overreacting in calling this a conspiracy theory. The reader of the article is unlikely to come away with it with a feeling that a threat is imminent, lethal or demands any new actions.

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