Who cares about Iran?

I am so sick and tired of hearing incessant news chatter about Iran. The fact is, Iran poses a negligible threat to the United States.

My anger surrounding this issue is primarily the disconnect in American public opinion regarding foreign policy. For example; conservatives love to hyperventilate and wring their hands about the specter of an Iranian threat. This is ironic, because most American conservatives view themselves as foreign policy realists. Foreign policy realism, as a technical theory; holds several key tenets. Namely; there is no morality in foreign affairs, power is fungible, the ability to project power against a discrete enemy is paramount, etc. According to any rational realist foreign policy approach, the only threat Iran poses to the United States is in a disruption of global oil. This is a non starter, however, because Iran's economy is entirely dependent on trading oil, and the kind of global chaos that would ensue from an oil-related military conflict in their country would vastly outweigh any tangible benefits to the nation.

Additionally, people in the United States have wild misconceptions about Iran. First and foremost, Iran does not have a powerful military. Iran spends less on military spending than Sweden. In a traditional military sense, they project almost zero power against US interests, militarily.

Iran has no interest in selling nuclear weapons to terrorists who will blow up the world. In international affairs theory; nation-states typically follow something called the rational actor model. Historically, Iran has followed the rational actor model to a tee. Iran has nothing to gain from selling nuclear devices to people who would actually use them. There is vast foreign affairs literature on nuclear proliferation and game theory. Essentially, the point is that nuclear weapons are blackmail chips for poor countries. They are bargaining points that these countries use to maximize multilateral negotiations. There is not a single thing Iran has done in its history that belies the rational actor model. Even if they had a nuclear weapon, and they are nowhere near obtaining one, selling that nuclear weapon is the absolute last thing Iran would do. It is the least efficient use of a nuclear weapon. Iran would do with a nuclear weapon what all other countries do with nuclear weapons; use them as bargaining chips in negotiations. Arguing that Iran would "sell a nuclear weapon to a terrorist" is like arguing that a gem collector might hurt you by throwing heavy diamonds at your head.

The reality is that a country like Iran is no worse than some countries that make the clothes we wear, or the places we occasionally go on vacation. Iran's domestic politics are no more harsh or crooked than say, Saudi Arabia, yet President Bush can hold hands with the Saudi leader while walking through a park, yet people show up to boycott the Iranian President when he speaks at an American University.

Ultimately, my main problem with American popular perception of foreign policy is that it is very childish, and naive. We have popular boogeymen that we build up as posing threats, without understanding the underlying causal relationships behind the international stage. We feign outrage when a country like Iran kills a few protestors or builds a nuclear facility; yet yet we don't bat an eye when our government bribes a far worse country with millions in cash payments so that we can use their air space for military operations.