Qajar-Era Iran in the Mind of a Former Diplomat?! Mr. Diplomat, Take Off Your Surrender Glasses

Remarks by a former foreign minister on US military capability and the cost of resistance have once again raised discussion of his view of the Iran-US confrontation and the need to back down before Washington?

According to Ambassador Arjan, the former foreign minister's recent comments about America's military power and the costs of resistance raise the question of where is the line between diplomatic realism and accepting the superiority of the other side in advance. The view that America can disable Iran's defense system with a bomb and that resistance to the aggressor power has no result other than increasing the damage, finally comes to the conclusion that the sooner we kneel before the superior power, the less we will pay. The issue is not just a military assessment; Rather, it is the kind of view from the heart of which submission to the superior power is introduced as the most logical choice.

Such an analysis reduces American power to an absolute variable and Iran's power to an almost ineffective factor. It is as if the outcome of any confrontation is already clear and the national will, ability to respond, defense capacities and costs imposed on the attacker have no role in the equation. This is the point where purported realism can turn into calculative error. No serious analysis of war is complete simply by counting bombs and comparing military equipment; Because the ability to destroy is not the same as the ability to impose political will, and military superiority does not mean achieving all strategic goals.

In a situation where the experience of contemporary wars has revealed more than ever the limitations of military power in realizing political goals and the debate about the resilience of countries and the strategic costs of war continues in international circles, today's issues are still viewed with the equations of the unipolar world and America in 1991. In this image, America is assumed to be the same unrivaled power of the past, and Iran is also portrayed as if there is no difference with Iran during the Qajar and Pahlavi periods. A country that has no choice but to retreat against foreign pressure. This type of view not only ignores the evolution of power in the international system, but also removes Iran's accumulated capacities and experience from the calculation.

It is not a matter of denying American military power or ignoring the costs of war; And the danger of war should not be underestimated. The question is why in this calculation, the cost of resistance is highlighted, but the cost of surrender, the consequences of retreating and the possibility of increasing the demands of the other side are not equally considered? Diplomacy is not supposed to remind the country of the power of the other party; Its task is to turn all national capacities into negotiation levers and defend the interests of the country. If the starting point of the analysis is Iran's weakness and the end point is the need to cut corners, we are no longer faced with diplomacy based on calculating power; Rather, we are facing an approach that leaves a part of the result to the other party before the beginning of bargaining.