Published July 16th, 2006 by Future Atlas
Iran: scenario — the Great War of 2007
Writing in The Telegraph, historian Niall Ferguson attempts to make the case for immediate military action against Iran via a future scenario perspective.
His scenario includes these ideas:
- It would not be difficult to stop Iran’s nuclear program with preventive airstrikes.
- This is a repeat of the history of the 1930s, with a dictator arming for war.
- Iran will have nuclear-armed missiles by 2007.
- China will threaten to intervene on the side of Iran in the resulting 2007-2011 war.
Analysis
Ferguson’s assumptions are weak:
- It appears doubtful that bombing will easily arrest Iran’s nuclear program. According to Seymour Hersh, definitive targets have not even been identified.
- Ferguson strains to invoke the Hitler analogy, but Hitler was absolute dictator of one of the most powerful, technologically advanced nations on Earth. Ahmadinejad is the bureaucratically constrained head of a weak nation highly vulnerable to disruption.
- Ferguson explicitly criticizes as delusion the idea that “the West” is still in a position to dominate the Middle East, but a ready resort to force depends on that very idea.
Ferguson exaggerates the pace of change:
- No credible sources foresee a nuclear arsenal in Iranian hands by 2007. A decade after that appears more likely.
- China will have neither the capability nor the inclination to intervene in the Middle East in the next few years.
He may be accelerating the plausible timetables of his scenario in order to heighten the apparent urgency.
Given that he is a historian, Ferguson’s strangest omission is that he fails to address the possible medium- and long-term consequences of the course he advocates. These include:
- heightened support for the current Iranian regime
- Iranian interest in nuclear weapons for much longer than a bombing campaign could be sustained
- long-term enmity from an Iran that is still fairly likely to end up with nuclear weapons