{"id":16312,"date":"2014-10-13T15:39:09","date_gmt":"2014-10-13T04:39:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?p=16312"},"modified":"2014-10-14T06:03:29","modified_gmt":"2014-10-13T19:03:29","slug":"iran-bigger-and-badder-than-isil","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/iran-bigger-and-badder-than-isil\/","title":{"rendered":"Iran\u2014\u2018bigger and badder\u2019 than ISIL?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Nuclear<\/a>Once alerted to the menace posed by brutal terrorists in Iraq and Syria, the world has swung into action with vigour and resolve\u2014and enough potent military hardware to make even the most hardened terrorist think twice. Already ISIL\u2019s decentralising its main force elements to hide amidst innocent women and children. Truly, atrocity and cowardice are bedfellows.<\/p>\n

But focusing excessively on ungoverned spaces in Iraq and Syria can distract from broader strategic priorities. Highlighting one dilemma can diminish our international peripheral vision, to the point where other pressing issues seem to have abated or disappeared.<\/p>\n

Part of the challenge with ISIL is to degrade and contain it, while not constraining the international community\u2019s broader focus. Admittedly, ISIL casts a long and fearful shadow, but there are potentially worse\u2014albeit quieter\u2014threats lurking, which also demand urgent attention.<\/p>\n

They include the maverick trifecta of Iran, Russia and North Korea. Unlike ISIL, each of those international \u2018problem-states\u2019 comes disproportionately better armed, including a ready-made or emerging nuclear capability, accompanied by an unpredictable senior leadership.<\/p>\n

The first unresolved problem confronting the world is what exactly to do about Iran. The threat of a nuclear-armed Iran would dwarf that which is posed by ISIL, whose mayhem and carnage Australia now works to suppress. For almost a decade, since September 2006, Iran has steadfastly and with contempt thumbed its nose at the international community, by remaining deliberately in breach of its nuclear arms control obligations.<\/p>\n

It has taken that sustained and obdurate stance for three reasons. First, because of the prestige, power and authority which Iran believes such weapons would give it, both regionally and beyond. In some Iranian eyes it would be a much stronger player to be feared by all parties; even an equal to Israel. Second, Iran\u2019s strategic leadership remains fundamentally and violently opposed to a world order in which both the United States and Israel continue to retain disproportionate influence. And, third, Iran probably interprets longstanding international inaction on their nuclear weapons program to date as a strong indicator of longer-term vacillation and weakness.<\/p>\n

The issues of ISIL and Iran overlap in at least two ways. The international community\u2019s focus on the former gives Iran more time and enhanced cover to develop its thinly-veiled nuclear capability. And depending on how current to mid-term events unfold in the Middle East, Tehran might see a pretext, or reason, to initiate military action against ISIL in its own right, at least to further extend or expand proxy-military actions against the West.<\/p>\n

Doubtless, those sensitivities and threats are well appreciated by the war\u2019s principal leaders, including ISIL\u2019s own twisted hierarchy. But what\u2019s perhaps less acknowledged, at least publicly, is the growing need now for ISIL to be degraded and contained, concurrent<\/em> with a broad and holistic internationally-agreed approach to Iran.<\/p>\n

By having put Iran on the backburner for the last decade\u2014for obvious and understandable reasons called \u2018Iraq\u2019 and \u2018Afghanistan\u2019\u2014the world, and especially the West, has forfeited the opportunity of solving the problems separately.<\/p>\n

Now, the issues of both ISIL and Iran must be confronted and resolved closer together. At the least, it\u2019s time for the international community to engage and agree upon an effective strategy to contain Iran.<\/p>\n

Almost certainly, such a strategy will include multiple and complementary lines of engagement across the international community and with Iran itself.\u00a0Those will embrace the broad sweep from diplomacy, to international consensus and coalition building, to economic sanctions, and in extremis<\/em>, the possibility of military action.<\/p>\n

By default, the US, as it has done with ISIL, must inevitably lead the way, notwithstanding its inherent national war-weariness.\u00a0But whichever combination of the above is agreed, the time for action on Iran is now much closer than it has ever been.<\/p>\n

The wider world was finally roused to the true menace of ISIL by its evil mix of malevolent atrocity exported by social media.\u00a0But replace the ghastly spectre of ISIL\u2019s severed heads and slain thousands, with an Iranian nuclear device used somewhere in the Middle East\u2014and the mind is concentrated wonderfully, about the broader potential for a worse crisis.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s time the international community took Iran off the backburner.<\/p>\n

Andrew Nikolic is the federal member for Bass and a member of the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security, and the Joint Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade. He is a former senior Australian Army officer and first assistant secretary in the Defence Department. Image courtesy of Flickr user Pierre J<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Once alerted to the menace posed by brutal terrorists in Iraq and Syria, the world has swung into action with vigour and resolve\u2014and enough potent military hardware to make even the most hardened terrorist think …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":126,"featured_media":16313,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[247,191,993,837,895,172,356,274],"class_list":["post-16312","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general","tag-iran","tag-iraq","tag-isil","tag-isis","tag-islamic-state","tag-nuclear-security","tag-nuclear-weapons","tag-syria"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nIran\u2014\u2018bigger and badder\u2019 than ISIL? | The Strategist<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/iran-bigger-and-badder-than-isil\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Iran\u2014\u2018bigger and badder\u2019 than ISIL? 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