Senator Joe Lieberman’s hawkish comments from over the weekend regarding Iran received much media attention, but Gregory Scoblete in this TCS op-ed makes the case that Pakistan is actually the more toubling foreign policy problem:
While the 2008 presidential candidates are busy fielding questions about how they would confront Iran’s nuclear ambitions, few seem interested in addressing a much more pressing issue: Pakistan. [. . .]
The truth is Pakistan represents a far greater danger to the U.S. than Iran, at least for the foreseeable future. Let us count the ways. Pakistan is a nuclear power. Iran is not. Pakistan has a proven track record of proliferation, including a dalliance with al Qaeda. It was Pakistani nuclear scientists, after all, who met with bin Laden. Indeed, it was a Pakistani scientist, A. Q. Khan, whose black-market network significantly expanded the reach of nuclear equipment and know-how. Meanwhile, Iranian scientists are still laboring to master the basic elements of the nuclear fuel cycle (though progress continues).
Pakistan was one of three countries prior to 9/11 to recognize and provide significant material support to the Taliban – the one regime whose accommodation made 9/11 possible. Iran opposed the Taliban. Elements within the Pakistani military continue to support rump Taliban elements as they battle NATO and U.S. forces in Afghanistan. The New York Times reported that Pakistani army elements have gone so far as to directly fire on Afghan forces (though Pakistan denies it).
Ideologically, Pakistan is vastly more sympathetic to al Qaeda than Iran. Its religious schools preach the extremist variety of Sunni Islam that animates bin Laden’s jihad. While Iran’s Shiite theocrats preach “death to America,” few Iranians have actually embraced the mantra. There are, for instance, 65 Pakistanis in Guantanamo Bay; there are zero Iranians. Unlike al Qaeda, Iran’s Shiite proxy Hezbollah has not embraced mass-causality suicide terrorism against American civilian targets. Indeed, Hezbollah’s most significant anti-American strike was against a military target 24 years ago: a Marine barracks in Lebanon.
The single most important element, however, is the presence of a reconstituted al Qaeda leadership network in Pakistan. The country plays host (whether willingly or not) to the architects of the largest massacre on U.S. soil in history: Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri. In contrast, Iran reportedly harbors a small number of lesser al Qaeda figures.
In Senate testimony earlier this year, intelligence chief John Negroponte described Pakistan as a “secure hide-out” within which al Qaeda plots further carnage. In February, the New York Times reported that al Qaeda “had been steadily building an operations hub in the mountainous Pakistani tribal area of North Waziristan” including full-fledged terror training camps. In Waziristan, al Qaeda inhabits a failed state within a functioning, nuclear-armed one.
In sum, the danger to Americans in America is emanating principally from Pakistan, not Iran. . .
Read the entire article. Scoblete makes a compelling case.
