Friedman on the Mullahs

So I'm reading the new column by Thomas Friedman, "Sleepless in Teheran" in the New York Times. Ordinarily I'm not a big fan of Friedman's, but in this column he advocates talking with Iran, an idea I find appealing. Even when I like some of his ideas, I'm startled by the shoddiness of his column. Now, I understand that being a regular op-ed writer is probably the newspaper equivalent of academic tenure, and so you're allowed to run free, or freer, without the rigorous scrutiny (presumably) applied to non-"name" journalists. And, of course, I am aware of the ongoing tribulations of the Times on the financial side---stock about to be downgraded to junk status, all that.

But read these two paragraphs, and riddle me whether or not an editor might have wanted to take a look at them:

After all, it was the collapse of global oil prices in the early 1990s that brought down the Soviet Union. And Iran today is looking very Soviet to me.

As Vladimir Mau, president of Russia’s Academy of National Economy, pointed out to me, it was the long period of high oil prices followed by sharply lower oil prices that killed the Soviet Union. The spike in oil prices in the 1970s deluded the Kremlin into overextending subsidies at home and invading Afghanistan abroad — and then the collapse in prices in the ‘80s helped bring down that overextended empire.

Hmm. So it was the collapse in global oil prices in the early 1990s that brought down the Soviet Union, except that it was also the collapse in prices in the '80s that helped bring down that overextended empire.

Friedman goes on a review of the economic missteps and miscues of the mullahs, the heavy social spending, the domestic subsidies of the FIRE sector (wait, I made that one up) and concludes that if "(oil) prices stay low, there is a good chance Iran will be open to negotiating over its nuclear program with the next U.S. president."

Like Thomas Friedman, I think that would be a very good thing. I still think his reach is exceeding his grasp when he writes:

That is a good thing because Iran also funds Hezbollah, Hamas, Syria and the anti-U.S. Shiites in Iraq. If America wants to get out of Iraq and leave behind a decent outcome, plus break the deadlocks in Lebanon and Israel-Palestine, it needs to end the cold war with Iran. Possible? I don’t know, but the collapse of oil prices should give us a shot.

Wait, we're going to get out of Iraq, AND leave behind a decent outcome? To paraphrase Moynihan, only if we define decent outcome down. (And I think that's inevitable.) And while we're at it, we're going to break the deadlocks in Lebanon and Israel-Palestine? That's mighty ambitious.

While I can stipulate Friedman's assessment of the straitened economic circumstances Russia and Iran now find themselves in, I think he's overlooking another country undergoing some straitened economic circumstances. (That would be us, or at least, the US.) I don't mean to get all OODA-loopy here, but the process of weighing your assets and liabilities against your potential gains and your potential losses, discounted for risk, is something that has to be ongoing and dynamic. (To Mametize this, "things change.")

Personally, I want to get the Iranians back on our side. Not necessarily the mullahs, not necessarily this regime, but somehow, someday, I want the Iranians back on our side, and so when Friedman calls for ending the cold war with Iran as the key to Middle Eastern progress, I'm down with that, homey.

Doubtless all good liberals will cringe when Friedman quotes Karim Sadjadpour on negotiating with the Iranians by analogizing to negotiating with a Persian carpet merchant---and it do have a whiff of "ethno-cultural stereotyping" to it!---but it doesn't really bother me, and I think it shows a good grounding in reality. (I look forward with equal enthusiasm to Freidman's comments on negotiating with Israel being like negotiating with a Jewish money-lender. Yes?)

Unfortunately, of course, a big dollop of love for the Democratic nominee for president lies in the middle of this poorly edited but reasonably sensible article.

Barack Hussein Obama would present another challenge for Iran’s mullahs. Their whole rationale for being is that they are resisting a hegemonic American power that wants to keep everyone down. Suddenly, next week, Iranians may look up and see that the country their leaders call “The Great Satan” has just elected “a guy whose middle name is the central figure in Shiite Islam — Hussein — and whose last name — Obama — when transliterated into Farsi, means ‘He is with us,’ ” said Sadjadpour.

You know, I wish I could see the magic of Obama, but I don't. For me he's like Seinfeld: a politician about nothing, and what's worse, an uninteresting politician about nothing. While the GOPniks are running around screaming "He'll get tough on Israel! He'll sit down to negotiate with Iran! He'll slash the defense budget by a quarter! He'll yank us out of Iraq!" I find myself muttering under my breath, "If only." But I think he's just another politician, blither-blathering whatever he thinks people want to hear until he gets his hands on the keys to the executive washroom. Still, I curiously find myself loathing him somewhat less than John McCain, because I fear that McCain really would start a serious war somewhere, like with Iran or (God forbid) Russia.

I have a final nit to pick with the closing paragraph.

“When you ask young Arabs which leaders in the region they most admire,” said Sadjadpour, they will usually answer the leaders of Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran. “When you ask them where in the Middle East would you most like to live,” he added, “the answer is usually socially open places like Dubai or Beirut. The Islamic Republic of Iran is never in the top 10.”

Could any of that be due to the fact that most Arabs probably don't speak Farsi? How much business does the Islamic Republic conduct in Arabic? Is there any anti-Sunni prejudice, or any anti-Sunni policies, in effect in Iran? I, frankly, have no idea, but wouldn't be surprised if there were. Then again, people frequently voice admiration for revolutionary leaders while preferring to maintain their own safety, security and stability.