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Is Iran going toward Iraq Mark II?

More than food for thought.......

"If you were in Baghdad for the shock and awe of March-April 2003, any image of the inferno on the banks of the Tigris has the power to stop you in your tracks.  

There was another this week, illustrating a cautionary tale on how the West is repeating the same mistakes that led to a disastrous war in Iraq, as it now flexes more muscle than imagination over what's going down in Tehran.    


That the piece, in Foreign Affairs, is co-authored by Rolf Ekeus should stop us all in our tracks. After his years in the squeeze between Washington and Baghdad, the silver-haired former Swedish diplomat's ''been there, done that'' savvy is instructive as, almost a decade after the invasion of Iraq, he detects an eerie similarity in the policy web in which Tehran is mired.      


A director of the international program to disarm Iraq after the 1990 invasion of Kuwait, Ekeus sees the same strategy unfolding - sanctions and isolation, espionage and low-level violence to prevent Iran acquiring nuclear weapons, but with a longer-term objective of regime change.    


''In Iraq, and seemingly now in Iran, diplomacy and inspections became a means to an end: building up a casus belli,'' he writes. ''The strategy failed miserably in Iraq … It probably will fail in Iran too.''  


He does not dispute that Iran poses a threat. But in trying to corral Tehran with threats of war, Ekeus sees no clearly defined steps being laid down for Tehran to follow and, so, no incentive for it to change course.  


The upshot is likely to be that Tehran junks the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and its requirement for regular international inspections - ''the world [then] could miss the emergence of an Iranian breakout capability, or else blunder into another unjustified war''.

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