Is It Time to Bomb Iran?; Interview With Mohamed El-Erian
FAREED ZAKARIA, HOST: This is GPS, THE GLOBAL PUBLIC SQUARE. Welcome to our viewers in the United States and around the world. I'm Fareed Zakaria. We have a terrific show for you today. It goes all over the world. We start with the news about Iran's nuclear program and a debate as to whether the time has come for military action. Then, Europe at the breaking point. We ask Mohamed El-Erian, one of the world's most respected financial minds, to tell us whether the Eurozone is about to come apart. Why in the world can't North Korean nurses and doctors come back home from the Middle East? It's a fascinating tale. And, finally, back home, the former governor of Michigan, Jennifer Granholm, tells us what her experience of cutting taxes and reducing spending taught her. All this, coming up. But first, here's my take. Last week the International Atomic Energy Agency issued its most serious warning about Iran's nuclear program. It argued that Iran seems to have experimented with various technologies that suggested it was trying to build not just a nuclear program but a nuclear weapons program. This finding, to be clear, is at odds with the views of the former head of the IAEA, Mohamed ElBaradei, as well as the report issued a few years ago by the United States' National Intelligence Council. It's difficult to be sure what to make of these intelligence judgments because they are judgments that try to determine the intentions of the Iranian regime. One thing is clear - Iran is developing an increasingly robust nuclear program. Having read all the reports, I'm still not sure that anyone knows what Iran's plan is. Is it to develop a breakout capacity, meaning a nuclear program and a missile program, but not actually marry the two together? That would keep Iran within the legal framework of the nonproliferation treaty, which it signed and takes pains every year to prove that it adheres to? Or is it to develop the weapons themselves? Frankly, the former would be the smarter course. It would get the benefits of increased influence. It would be seen as having a nuclear capacity, but not attract a total clampdown on trade and other kinds of sanctions that would come from actually having nuclear weapons. But let's take the IAEA report as valid. It still makes the case for some kind of contact with Iran. As he left office as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Michael Mullen said that one of his greatest worries was that we had no communication with Iran. He worried about miscalculations, the misreading of intentions and, thus, war. Look, at the height of the Cold War, we talked to the Soviet Union, an adversary we were contesting in dozens of countries around the world. We talked to Mao, a man with a large nuclear arsenal who several times said that he would welcome a nuclear war that would destroy half the world. We talked to Moammar Gadhafi. Meanwhile, we do have a containment policy toward Iran that appears to be having some effect. Its neighbors are allied against it, and with the United States. The pressure has restricted the regime's room for maneuver. There appear to be internal tensions within the regime. And yet, rather than keep the pressure on and see if we can find a way to get inspectors in, we now hear calls for war one more time. Let's be clear - we are talking about a preventive war against a country that has not attacked us on the basis of intelligence reports. It is easy to start a war. It is very difficult to predict how it will go and where it might end. I think we need to ask some hard questions before we start launching the missiles. Let's get started.</s>ZAKARIA: And now, time for that debate on Iran. Bret Stephens is with the "Wall Street Journal" where he writes a column; and Karim Sadjadpour from the Carnegie Endowment in Washington. Welcome. Bret, you talked about, in your column this week, having a real debate about whether or not there should be military strikes against Iran. But, clearly, you take one side of that debate. You think, despite all the problems, it would make sense to move militarily against Iran, correct?</s>BRET STEPHENS, FOREIGN AFFAIRS COLUMNIST, WALL STREET JOURNAL: I do, because we've exhausted all the other semi-plausible alternatives. The Obama administration came to office offering its extended hand to Iran, offering diplomacy. That, of course, was tried and failed. We have ratcheted up sanctions. We're now on the fourth round of U.N. sanctions against Iran. Clearly, from the IAEA report, those sanctions are not having the desired effect on their nuclear programs. So we're really now faced with the option of either effectively doing more of the same, which means doing nothing, or biting the bullet, so to speak, and taking military action to stop them. Hopefully American, not Israeli military action.</s>ZAKARIA: Karim, what do you think?</s>KARIM SADJADPOUR, CARNEGIE ENDOWMENT FOR INTERNATIONAL PEACE: Fareed, I don't think the case for military action is at all compelling. It's a simple mathematical question. According to Israel's best estimates, if they were to bomb Iran's nuclear sites, they would set back Iran's nuclear clock two to three years. My argument is that Israeli or even U.S. military strikes on Iran would resuscitate a deeply unpopular, ideologically bankrupt regime and perhaps prolong the shelf life of the Iranian regime another decade or another generation. So if the Israelis came and said, listen, we could set back Iran's nuclear clock 10, 15 years with a military strike, I think it would be a much better case. But two to three years, I don't think this is a real serious argument.</s>STEPHENS: As for the internal dynamics of Iranian politics, I'm not persuaded that having a prestige program destroyed by - by bombs would be - would do very much domestically for this regime. I fear that they would consolidate their position both internationally and domestically if they were able to develop or acquire nuclear weapons in the teeth of so much international opposition.</s>ZAKARIA: Karim, what do you think the effect would be in Iran?</s>SADJADPOUR: Well, Fareed, there is a historical precedent here in the Iranian context as well, and that is in the early days of the revolution, Saddam Hussein's Iraq invaded Iran and allowed the hardliners, the Khomeinis in Iran, to essentially consolidate power. And what I see now, three decades after the 1979 revolution, is a population which is incredibly weary, incredibly unhappy with the state of the regime. It's - the regime is ideologically bankrupt, as I mentioned. And one thing I constantly hear from Iranians - young people, intellectuals, professional classes - is that they're opposed to any type of military action. And what I would like to see is far more focus on what Israel or the United States might do and more focus internally on what's going on in terms of the repression and human rights abuses within Iran.</s>STEPHENS: Well, I think here Karim and I agree entirely, but the interests here are not simply the interests of the Iranian people. There's also the interest of the international community. It's notable that the country that has been most vociferous in calling on the United States to take military action against Iran is not Israel. It actually is Saudi Arabia. The rest of the - the rest of the region deeply fears the implications of a nuclear Iran for their - for their security and for their future, and - and rightly so. And so should the United States. We're not just talking about fears for the region. An Iran that is able to marry a nuclear warhead to a ballistic missile will at some point be able to strike not just Tel Aviv or Dubai, but London and possibly even Washington, D.C. We have a deep security interest, something that we - American leaders of both parties, including President Obama, have said - have said it's an unacceptable outcome, a nuclear - a nuclear Iran. I fear for the credibility of the United States spending a decade calling this outcome unacceptable and then more or less sliding right towards - right towards it.</s>ZAKARIA: Every time America has gotten involved in military actions for fear of its credibility, it doesn't always work out as well. You say at the end of your column, you know, this would probably give President Obama a boost if he were to strike Iran militarily. Don't you think it would depend not on how he - how the - how the action begins, but really how it ends?</s>STEPHENS: Possibly true, although I think Americans recognize that - have long memories about this regime, long memories going back to 1979, the hostage crisis, its responsibility in the death of 258 Americans in Beirut in 1983, the Khobar Towers. And I think Americans also understand that the stakes aren't simply the immediate day-after consequences of what might happen in the Straits of Hormuz or elsewhere in the region, but, over the long term, what it means for American security to have the world's leading sponsor of terrorism armed with nuclear weapons.</s>ZAKARIA: Karim?</s>SADJADPOUR: Well, Fareed, there is no doubt that this is an odious regime, but we have to differentiate between regimes which are homicidal and - and regimes which are suicidal. The Iranian regime brutally suppresses its own population. It has homicidal tendencies at home. But it's a regime which ultimately wants to stay in power. That's what's paramount for them. They're not suicidal. And, you know, I think, to - to coin a phrase, Fareed, this U.S. foreign policy challenge that it faces with Iran is really a post- American foreign policy challenge, in that we're not going to resolve this issue absent a wide - a kind of a robust international coalition. And I think the Obama administration, when it comes to options for coercion, basically has two options before it. The first is to pursue very strong sanctions or very strong action with a very weak coalition, or to pursue relatively milder action and have a more robust - a much more robust international coalition. And I think the reality is that we - Iran is so dependent these days on countries like China and Russia and India and it's been so isolated from countries like the United States and Europe, that option two is really the best option we have.</s>STEPHENS: I think we shouldn't get carried away with the notion that this is a post-American world or that America doesn't have options before it, or that it can't effect its will against what ultimately means perhaps a dozen, perhaps 20 nuclear installations in relatively poor country. We - we can do that. And I would add one more point about Karim. You know, he talks about homicidal versus suicidal regimes, and I - I have no doubt or I'm confident that an Iran armed with a nuclear weapon wouldn't lob it at Tel Aviv or somewhere else as a first order of business. But let's imagine a scenario where Iran is facing a slow motion rebellion in the model or in the mold of what Syria faces today. Is this a regime that, armed with nuclear weapons, is going to go quietly into the night? That is the scenario that really keeps me awake at night when I think -</s>ZAKARIA: What I don't understand, do you mean - do you mean it would use the nuclear weapon on its own people?</s>I - STEPHENS: No, that it would use the nuclear weapon on perhaps Israel or one of its neighbors if it felt that its - that its life was - that it was facing imminent extinction.</s>ZAKARIA: Isn't that problem far more acute in Pakistan? Yet I don't see you calling for military strikes on Pakistan's nuclear - in other words, if you assume that a regime would just go crazy when faced with instability, why have you decided that Iran, which doesn't - let's be clear, does not actually have nuclear weapons, is - is the one that you should preemptively strike against?</s>STEPHENS: Well, let's - let's remember that Pakistan remains, for all of its many problems, a country that has a civilian - that has a civilian government. But the example of - but the example -</s>ZAKARIA: A civilian government that has absolutely no control over the nuclear program, and you know it -</s>STEPHENS: Well, that's true. But - but then, that's all the more - I mean, look, I'm not - unfortunately, our options have been foreclosed precisely because Pakistan does have a nuclear option, which should make the argument that - or should - should advance the argument that I'm trying to make, which is that regimes like this should not be allowed to acquire nuclear weapons in the first place. Pakistan is that much scarier a country because it is so unstable and because it has this arsenal of 100 and - or 150 nuclear - nuclear weapons. Why should we want Pakistan redux in a regime that is, if anything, more fanatical and potentially more unstable than Pakistan is today?</s>ZAKARIA: Karim, you get the last word.</s>SADJADPOUR: Well, I should make clear, Fareed, that we should vigorously try to prevent the possibility of a nuclear armed Iran. But, for - your friend, Jon Stewart, had a great line. He was talking about Dubai, and he said that Dubai is what happens when Las Vegas and Saudi Arabia have a baby. And if I had to use that Jon Stewart formulation about Iran, I would say that the Islamic Republic of Iran is kind of a hybrid between the Taliban and the Soviet Union. It's kind of a diluted version of each. It's a Byzantine, authoritarian Islamist regime, which is deeply unpopular and ideologically bankrupt. And I think that U.S. foreign policy towards the Soviet Union in the 1980s can be a useful template. That was a regime which had hundreds of nuclear weapons. We dialogued with them at a high level. We contain them, and we exhibited moral clarity, and we supported the forces of democracy and human rights. And, actually, that was one of the last great victories for the neo- conservatives, so I'm surprised that Bret wouldn't champion that approach.</s>STEPHENS: Well, they also have Gorbachev.</s>ZAKARIA: On that note, gentlemen, we will reconvene to do round two of this. But thank you very much.</s>STEPHENS: Thank you, Fareed.</s>ZAKARIA: And we'll be back.</s>MOHAMED EL-ERIAN, CEO, PIMCO: One of the tragedies of the Eurozone crisis is that we've waited so long that there is no costless solution. Every solution has enormous consequences, collateral damage, and unintended results.