{"id":1642,"date":"2008-02-16T02:37:10","date_gmt":"2008-02-16T02:37:10","guid":{"rendered":"0"},"modified":"2008-02-16T02:38:01","modified_gmt":"2008-02-16T02:38:01","slug":"weekend_mustrea_1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/?p=1642","title":{"rendered":"Weekend Must-Read #2"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Over at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.armscontrolwonk.com\/1793\/russias-subtle-shift-on-iran\" target=\"browser\">Arms Control Wonk<\/a> a discussion on Russia&#8217;s &#8211; surprisingly &#8211; hardening line on Iran&#8217;s weapons programs.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><i>I suspect that the main driver, however, is the remarkable shift in U.S. politics in the aftermath of the November 2007 <a href=\"http:\/\/www.dni.gov\/press_releases\/20071203_release.pdf\">Iran <span class=\"caps\">NIE<\/span>.<\/a> The <span class=\"caps\">NIE<\/span>&#8216;s headline finding that Iran abandoned nuclear warhead and weaponization in the fall of 2003 has eliminated the possibility of U.S. military action against Iran&#8217;s nuclear facilities for the foreseeable future. This frees up Russia and other countries to toe a harder line against Iran without worrying about legitimating U.S. military action.<\/p>\n<p>\nIf this interpretation is true, it means that the litany of pundits and commentators complaining that <a href=\"http:\/\/www.economist.com\/world\/asia\/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10601584\">the <span class=\"caps\">NIE<\/span> plays right into Iran&#8217;s hands<\/a> have it exactly backwards: by effectively taking U.S. military action off the table for now, the <span class=\"caps\">NIE<\/span> makes it <em>easier<\/em>, not harder, for countries like Russia to send Iran a stronger signal about its enrichment program. After all, Russia (and China, for that matter) do not want Iran to develop the capability to deploy nuclear weapons; until the Iran <span class=\"caps\">NIE<\/span>, however, this concern was counterbalanced by a worry that the United States might launch another war in the Middle East.<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Interesting. I can see some strong counterarguments, but want to do some thinking first.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Why is Russia hardening it&#8217;s line against Iran?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1642"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1642"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1642\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1642"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1642"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1642"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}