The folly of war with Iran

Perhaps the most egregious error policy planners make is their assumption that once wars are started, their outcome is predictable. Who among the Politburo mossbacks in 1979 could have foreseen that the Soviet military venture in Afghanistan would become a major factor in the collapse and death of the Soviet Union? Mr. bin Laden and much of the Muslim world take full credit for the Soviet implosion after Moscow's defeat there. Wars simply do not end the way those who launch them expect. Iraq was supposed to be quick and clean, and Iraqis, we were told, would welcome their American liberators. The Taliban, ousted from Afghanistan in 2001, has risen again like a phoenix.

President Bush should begin with the premise that war with Iran is not an option and the realization that constructive engagement may well be the labor of decades. That may not prevent Iran from building a bomb. But states that join the nuclear club, India, Pakistan, and China, have historically tended to behave more, not less responsibly, and treaties between adversarial states have worked.

Second, because of the brief time Bush has left in office, it is a given that Washington's problem with Tehran will not be solved while Mr. Bush is in office, bombing or not bombing.

Third, the White House should remember the West's profound frustrations in trying to engage the Soviets in the first 25 years after World War II. A virulently hostile Stalin malevolently tried to provoke the United States in Korea, Berlin, and elsewhere. But decades of patience by wise American presidents and diplomats slowly engaged the Russians, and over four decades gradually defused the cold war. Presidents Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, and Reagan all lived and worked with belligerent communism. In the modern world, greatness is more often a consequence of wise restraint and measured responses such as economic sanctions. Restraint over Iran married to engagement on a broad front could well be Bush's greatest foreign-policy legacy.

No one now can predict the scope, let alone the duration or cost, of the war that would ensue if the White House launches attacks on Iranian targets. But the absurdity of thinking that war with Iran would resolve much is illustrated in the following truism from an Iranian friend: "In Iraq, the leadership loves the Americans, and the Iraqi people have killed close to 4,000 American soldiers. By contrast, in Iran, the leadership hates Americans but the people generally like them." This is the conundrum the Bush administration should consider as it reportedly calls on the Pentagon to revisit a battle plan for attacking Iran.

One sad consequence of bombing might well be a rallying of the Iranian people around their flagging leadership, boosting popular support for an unpopular regime. You can almost hear Iran's neoconservative leadership saying, "Make my day."

• Walter Rodgers is a former senior international correspondent for CNN.

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