Just as the House is preparing to pass extremely counterproductive legislation on sanctions, neoconservative outlets, while supporting these measures, are now vocal in saying that if enacted they won’t work. In a rash of action in the op-ed pages today, neoconservatives were busy deploring the Iranian regime arguing that they can’t be deterred and calling on Obama to do something – and while none of these writers explicitly stated what that something is, we have a pretty good idea.

Danielle Pletka in the Washington Post argues the Iranian regime is not like the Soviet Union – it can’t be deterred:

It is wrong to think a nuclear Iran can be contained. … The Obama administration should be pressed to find a new way forward. At the very least, we must hope the president’s new policy will not find footing in the false notion that a nuclear Iran can be contained.

Bret Stephens Wall Street Journal floats a conspiracy theory that Iran is helping Venezuela go nuclear which will lead to Cuban Missile Crisis 2.0:

Forty-seven years ago, Americans woke up to the fact that a distant power could threaten us much closer to home. Perhaps it’s time Camelot 2.0 take note that we are now on course for a replay.

The Washington Times editorial page says that Iran is just two weeks away from having a bomb!

The Mullahs could have a bomb any day now… The greatest national security challenge that will face the Obama administration is coming, and Mr. Obama will either shape events or be shaped by them. He said in Oslo that “those who seek peace cannot stand idly by as nations arm themselves for nuclear war.” However, the United States has been standing idle for years, and time is running out. … According to our calendar, that window opens about two weeks from now.

These three pieces should be seen for what they really are: an attempt to beat the war drums loud enough to put the US on the path toward war with Iran.

Since even the most effective and coordinated of international sanctions regimes (such as those that the Obama administration is trying to gather support for) will take time to have an effect, neoconservatives – by preemptively arguing that sanctions are not enough or will fail – will argue from now until forever that Iran is on the verge of attacking someone (Israel or the US), that those suicidal Mullahs can’t be deterred, and that military action is needed right now. Hence, the Washington Times laughable claim that Iran will have a weapon in two weeks.

You would not be remiss for thinking this sounds an awful lot like 2002, when neoconservatives were claiming that the sanctions regime levied against Iraq had failed and began inserting frightening talk of mushroom clouds and yellow cake into a highly charged debate. However in this case, Iran actually has a nuclear program and there is considerable evidence that Iran is developing a nuclear weapons capacity – in other words right-wing fear mongering is not as completely baseless as it was in 2002. Yet the notion that time has run out on diplomatic engagement with Iran and the only way to deal with a threat is to bomb them is totally bogus.

A coordinated and targeted international sanctions regime, not the counterproductive IRPSA legislation in the House, could potentially put real intense targeted pressure on the Iranian regime, squeezing it financially, isolating it internationally, and further undercutting its legitimacy inside Iran. Sanctions that seek to contain Iran, combined with deterrence will likely be just as effective vis-a-vis Iran as it was during the Cold War. And the notion that Iran can’t be deterred or contained is exactly what we have heard about every nuclear-armed adversary of the United States since the end of the World War II. Fareed Zakaria made this point succinctly in 2007, while debating bomb-Iran enthusiast Norman Podhoretz. Watch it:

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In a 60 Minutes interview that aired last Sunday night, Steve Kroft asked President Obama why there “were no exhortations or promises of victory” in his West Point speech announcing an escalation in the war in Afghanistan. Saying that it was “probably the most emotional speech” he has made yet, Obama said that he wanted “recognize that there are costs to war” with “a sense of sobriety and clarity about what we’re getting into.” “I think that one of the mistakes that was made over the last eight years is for us to have a triumphant sense about war,” said Obama.

On Fox News last night, former Bush press secretary Dana Perino fumed about Obama’s “triumphant” comment. “I hope President Obama didn’t mean it the way it came across,” said Perino, who interpreted it as “indicating that President Bush didn’t understand the weight of the decision that is made when you send men and women into war”:

PERINO:I hope President Obama didn’t mean it the way it came across, but when he suggested that President Bush was too triumphant in his rhetoric when talking about war and that President — indicating that President Bush didn’t understand the weight of the decision that is made when you send men and women into war, is demonstrably false.

And take it from someone who knows. I was there. I got to see President Bush visit the wounded warriors. I got to see him visit with families of the fallen and make those decisions that were important. But he also put them in a position when he thought they could win and told them that they could, which is what any president or general before President Bush used the same type of rhetoric when he — when making those decisions.

Watch it:

While President Bush did regularly “visit the wounded warriors,” as Perino says, it is demonstrably true that he too often spoke about war using loose, “triumphant” rhetoric that downplayed the costs. In July 2003, when asked about soldiers dying at the hands of insurgents in Iraq, Bush glibly taunted the attackers, saying “bring ‘em on.” Bush’s “irresponsible and inciteful” comments, as Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) described them, came just two months after he prematurely declared that “major combat operations in Iraq have ended” under a “mission accomplished” banner. In 2008, Perino tried to explain the banner by saying it should have read: “Mission Accomplished For These Sailors Who Are On This Ship On Their Mission.”

The Bush administration sent the men and women of the military to risk life and limb in the Iraq war using claims that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction (WMD). Despite no such weapons being found, over 4,000 Americans have died in Iraq since Bush declared “mission accomplished.” In March 2004, however, Bush joked about the lack of WMD found in Iraq.

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