Tehran wants the bomb because it fears foreign intervention. Nuclear weapons are appealing to Tehran because they guarantee security. No nuclear power has ever seen its government overthrown from abroad. The U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, the overthrow of Muammar al-Qaddafi and the civil war in Syria have made it very clear to Tehran that its overthrow is not far from impossible. Consider the Soviet Union in the wake of Hitler’s invasion, France and Britain in the face of communist expansion, Israel surrounded by hostile neighbors, Taiwan in the shadow of mainland China, and North Korea. Throughout history, most states that developed nuclear weapons did so because they perceived an existential threat to their existence. It wants nuclear weapons as an insurance against foreign intervention. It won’t simply nuke Israel – or give nuclear weapons to terrorists. Iran’s leadership, despite its lunacy, understands the concept of mutually assured destruction. But nuclear weapons serve none of these aggressive purposes. This may seem like a very bold claim, given that Iran has many highly aggressive foreign policy goals – from its involvement in Lebanon and Syria to its indirect war with Israel. Unlike Nazi-Germany’s claims on Czechoslovakia in 1938, Iran’s nuclear program is not aggressive in nature. The Iran deal, on the other hand, has a good chance of achieving its goal in the long run – preventing a nuclear arms race in the Middle East. Instead of preventing aggressive expansionism, as was intended, the Munich Agreement made it more likely in the long run. It greatly emboldened Hitler in his quest to subjugate Europe, and a case can be made that Stalin saw Munich as an encouraging sign that his own annexation of Czechoslovakia into the Soviet bloc after the war would not lead to conflict. The agreement set a dangerous precedent by showing that Britain and France would accept the annexation of smaller European states for the sake of continent-wide stability.
Munich was a disaster because it led to the exact opposite of what it intended to achieve. But in the long run, the case for military action is much weaker today than it was in 1938. In the short term, such a strike would stop Iran’s nuclear program – provided it’s successful (a big if). The only way to get Iran to completely end its nuclear program, then, is through some form of military strike. The best sanctions can achieve is some form of compromise such as the one achieved in Geneva. Caving in would be an unacceptable humiliation for the Iranian leadership, and the example of North Korea shows that a stubborn regime can survive under sanctions.
Proponents of sanctions continue to argue that they will eventually force Tehran into capitulation, but all evidence suggests otherwise. More importantly, in 1938, as in 2013, the only alternative to compromise was war. Iran may have to put its nuclear program under strict scrutiny for six months, but it won’t have to shut down any reactors and it will still get some sanctions relief. Much like Munich, the Geneva accord offered the hostile power significant concessions. There are certain similarities between Geneva 2013, and Munich 1938. Have John Kerry, William Hague, and the other authors of the Iran deal forgotten this lesson? It left Czechoslovakia unable to defend itself, gave Hitler’s expansionism an air of legitimacy, and convinced the dictator that Paris and London were weak.Įver since, the Munich Agreement has stood as a powerful lesson for diplomats: if a hostile foreign power has no interest in peace or compromise, trying to appease them will do more harm than good. It was France’s and Britain’s attempt to appease Hitler and prevent war. But war happened anyway, and the Munich Agreement became a symbol of failed diplomacy. The agreement allowed Hitler to peacefully annex large parts of Czechoslovakia inhabited by Germans. To refresh your memory: The Munich Agreement was signed on September 30, 1938, between Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, France, and the United Kingdom. The nuclear deal is “worse than Munich”, claimed Bret Stephens in The Wall Street Journal’s opinion pages. Days after a deal was reached on Iran’s nuclear program, the comparisons with Munich 1938 began trickling in – of course unfavorably.