Suppose the Shoe Was on the Other Foot

So, William Barr is troubled by the investigation of Trump.  What if the shoe was on the other foot, he asks.  During the 2008 election birther rumors were flying about Obama being born in Kenya and being a secret Muslim in league with America's enemies.  Suppose GW Bush had investigated those rumors?

Well, first off, I will admit that our side got a bit paranoid about GW Bush.  His "unitary executive" theory that allowed him to do anything so long as he said "national security" first was alarming, but not as much a threat to domestic liberty as we thought at the time.  His defense of indefinite detention and torture were intolerable from the perspective of universal human rights, but not a threat to domestic liberty.  His claims to warrantless surveillance were alarming on several levels, but he really does not appear to have surveilled domestic enemies, as Nixon did.  And I will also admit to being more than a little paranoid about Trump -- seeing many contacts with the Russians as sure signs of collusion when they turned out to be less than they first appeared.

Nonetheless, let us try to imagine if the shoe had been on the other foot in the 2008 election.  First, we would have to assume that Islamic terrorists, or some Islamic state with strong terrorist ties were hacking the RNC server and McCain's campaign manager and posting the contents in a manner calculated to cause maximum harm to the McCain campaign.1  

Well, okay, you may say, sure that would be troubling, but Obama would hardly be to blame. 

Next, we must assume that Obama, far from denouncing this interference, built his campaign around what was being released, and also that he regularly parroted jihadi talking points in his speeches.  And suppose that he called on the jihadis to hack McCain's personal server in a public speech on national television,

Scandalous, you may say, but not in way a crime.

Well, then, we must also assume that Obama's campaign manager was a former adviser and unregistered lobbyist for an organization believed to be a terrorist front group.2  And let us also assume that one of Obama's foreign policy advisers was on the FBI radar screen as a target for recruitment by terrorist several years before he signed up with team Obama.  And we must also assume that during the summer of 2008 this adviser traveled to some Islamic country with terrorist ties (fill in the blank as you wish) and gave a public speech condemning US interference in the Middle East, going so far as to suggest that terrorist attacks on the US were understandable reactions to such intervention.

At this point you may be thinking it over and saying that really investigation would not be necessary, since a candidate like that would stand zero chance of actually being elected.  That might seem like a reasonable assumption, but it leaves to key factors out.  One is the support of the mainstream media and its ability to sway large swaths of voters.3  The other is the unique circumstances of the 2008 election.  There was no October Surprise in that election, but there was a major September surprise -- the worst financial crisis since 1929.  With the financial crisis causing major damage to the incumbent party, US authorities would have to take the possibility of an Obama victory seriously.

OK, so all this is pretty shocking, one may say, but there is still nothing to suggest that the Obama campaign is in any way in league with terrorist.  Scandalous and improper, but no evidence of anything actually calling for an investigation.

But then suppose that routine surveillance of Islamic countries tied to terrorists, or Islamic organizations believed to be fronts for terrorists keep picking up a most abnormal volume of contacts with the Obama campaign.  Nothing incriminating is being said, you understand, but the volume is disturbing.  And then one of the campaign's foreign advisers  makes comments to some foreign diplomat(s) suggesting that he may have had advance knowledge of the hacks.4  And are you still going to say that the feds should definitely not have investigated possible Obama ties to terrorists?  Is asking friendly intelligence services to see what they can learn about these communications totally out of line?  What about sending in an informant to ask the foreign policy adviser some discrete questions about just what he knew and when he knew it?

Then suppose the RNC hires and opposition research firm.  (Anyone who believes hiring an opposition research firm is dirty pool, as opposed to a smelly but absolutely routine part of any national campaign, practiced by both parties, is uncommonly naive).  Suppose the RNC tells its opposition research firm to investigate Obama's possible ties to terrorist or fellow travelers.  (Not to do so under the circumstances would be political malpractice).  The opposition research firm employs a retires British counter-terrorism expert who has cultivated informants in a variety of terrorist organizations. Is it your position that this retired counter-terrorist should absolutely not, under any circumstances, have contacted his informants to find out what they know?  Does doing so mean that the McCain campaign has now colluded with terrorists, and that what it has done is worse than anything the Obama campaign has done to date? 

But Steele paid for his tips from informants, Republicans may say.  Yes, paying for information is one of those smelly but necessary things that spies and law enforcement do.  Police routinely pay their informants.  Anyone seeing those signs in the post office offering rewards for information leading to the apprehension of various fugitives knows as much.5 

So, let us suppose that the RNC and/or its opposition research firm decides to allow the British counter-terrorism expert to activate his sources.  They figure that if what he hears doesn't check out, they can always not use it in their campaign.6  The Brit's sources tell him some pretty wild tales about an ongoing conspiracy between terrorists and the Obama campaign.  The Brit becomes so alarmed as to take his information to the FBI.  Should the FBI have indignantly rejected the information on the grounds that it was opposition research and therefore irredeemably tainted?7  It is a rather obvious truism that anyone coming forward with derogatory information about a person will probably not be a friend or ally, or even a neutral.  Some motive of hostility will almost always apply.  Is there any reason that such information coming from Obama's political rivals would be tainted in a way that would not apply to a professional or romantic rival?

OK, we have already postulated an Obama foreign policy adviser who was previously targeted for recruitment by terrorist and who during the campaign traveled to a terrorism sponsoring country to denounce US intervention in the Middle East and at least suggest that terrorist attacks are an understandable response.  Suppose the opposition research alleges that the adviser was not just traveling to give a public speech, but was conveying information between the campaign and terrorists and planning future strategies.  Now, I would actually agree with Trump defenders that these are just third-hand rumors and not sufficient grounds for a wiretap of the adviser's phone, even if they do come from a counter-terrorist who has provided reliable information in the past.  But here is the thing.  Does the rumor's origin as opposition research so taint it that the FBI cannot even look for corroboration?  Must the FBI determine who hired the opposition research firm?  Must it specifically name the RNC instead of just an unnamed political opponent of "Candidate 1"?8

All right, so suppose that Obama is nonetheless elected.  Investigation of his possible ties to terrorism continues.  He fires the FBI director to stop the investigation.  How do we know that was why he fired the FBI director?  Because he says so on national television.  Also in a meeting with representatives of an Islamic country suspected of supporting terrorism, Obama again says that he fired the FBI director to quell the investigation, and the casually blurts out some super-top secret classified information that causes great harm to Israel.9  Might the intelligence community be justified in becoming really alarmed?

A special counsel is appointed.  The special counsel investigates for two years.  At the end of that time, special counsel finds no evidence of conspiracy or campaign related communication between the Obama campaign and any terrorist organization, front for terror, or terrorism-supporting country.  None of the information from the British agent checks out.  Many activities that on the surface looked alarming turn out to have been less than they appeared.  Nonetheless, the special counsel also reports the following:

1. At that time that Obama was running on a message of improving relations with Arab countries, he was pursuing a lucrative business deal with a country strongly tied to terrorism, and publicly lied about it.
2. The Obama campaign regularly shaped its message around the information being released by the terrorists.
3. Obama (probably) had an old friend who was not part of the campaign contact a third-party that was releasing the e-mails stolen by terrorists to ask for advance information on what was going to be released so he could modify his message to match it.
4. When Obama asked the terrorists to hack McCain's e-mails, they responded by trying, unsuccessfully.
5. Obama ordered one of this top advisers to find McCain's e-mails.  The adviser tasked two people outside the campaign with the job.  The two searched the dark web, unconcerned that they might be dealing with terrorists.10
6. Obama's campaign manager, the one who was a former adviser and unregistered lobbyist to a terrorist front organization, fed a steady stream of campaign polling data to his translator, for reasons that special counsel was not able to determine.

In this case, would you consider the report a complete exoneration of Obama.  And assuming that you did, would you find the report so exonerating as to show the investigation should never have been started at all?

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1And just to be clear, it is not necessary to assume there was anything very scandalous released.  What the DNC and Podest e-mails revealed was really nothing worse than politicians behaving like politicians -- not a very edifying sight, but nothing even remotely shocking let alone criminal.  It seems a safe assumption that the RNC e-mails would be equally unedifying.
2Not quite as crazy as it sounds.  John Bolton, for instance, has strong ties to the MEK, a group of Iranian revolutionaries classified as terrorists until recently.
3And just for the record, I don't share the right wing assumption that the MSM is hopelessly biased against them.  But for a right winger this would invariably have to be factored in, just as we factor in the right wing noise machine in understanding support for Trump.
4Most famously, George Papadopoulos spoke to the Australian ambassador to Britain, who alerted the FBI and started the investigation. The Mueller report says that Papadopoulos also spoke to the Greek foreign minister, although it does not say how they found out.
5Steele's critics have three main lines of attack.  The first is that he was passing on third-hand rumors, not solid information, which is true.  Steele was a curator of rumors, and was passing on what he learned from sources that had previously been reliable, but he was, nonetheless, just passing on rumors, so his information should the devalued accordingly.  The second is that the Russians might have figured out what Steele was up to and deliberately spread false information.  That is also a very real risk.  But in both cases, it does not mean that Steele's third-hand rumors should not have been investigated at all, it simply means that corroboration was needed before they could be taken seriously.  The third complaint is that the Steele dossier was a complete fabrication, the result of deliberate conspiracy between Steele, the DNC, the Clinton campaign, and the Russians.  The only evidence for that theory is the supposition that Trump was innocent by definition and that therefore all evidence against him must be fabricated. 
6And somehow lost in Republican outrage over Steele talking to actual Russians while investigating Trump's Russia ties, is the fact that neither the DNC nor the Clinton campaign ever used and information from the dossier.  Yes, material from the Steele dossier did appear in the media twice before the election, but in both cases the source appears not to have been either the Clinton campaign or the intelligence community, but Steele himself.  The FBI fired Steele over the second leak.
7In criminal law there is a thing called the "fruits of a poisonous tree" doctrine.  That means that if certain evidence comes from a tainted source, it may not be admitted at trial, and that any further evidence derived from the original tainted source is also tainted and inadmissible.  Tainted sources mean improper investigation by law enforcement.  They also include improper investigation by a private citizen under the direction of law enforcement.  However, if a private citizen improperly obtains incriminating evidence without the direction of law enforcement (say, a petty thief steals something that points to a much more serious crime and then panics and turns it over to the police) fruits of a poisonous tree does not apply.  No one has ever suggested that fruits of a poisonous tree applies to opposition research.
8Reading the Page FISA warrant, it devotes several pages to Steele's report.  Then two pages are blacked out.  Then it gives various news accounts of Page denying meeting with Russian officials.  Whether the warrant was proper, IMO, depends on what is on those two pages.  Is it some stronger corroboration of the Steele rumor or -- what?
9This is one case where I admit the hypothetical looks a lot worse than what actually happened.  The hypothetical Islamic country would presumably be a mortal foe of Israel in a way that Russia is not, and Obama would certainly not have the sort of pro-Israeli cred that Trump does.
10I admit, this one also does not work because McCain's missing e-mails were not the number one campaign issue.  

Spying versus Counterintelligence, a Enlightened Layperson's Perspective

Mollie Hemingway put out a tweet (which I am not going to bother to chase down) asking Trump critics and defenders of the Trump/Russia investigation what is this distinction between counter-intelligence investigation and spying on the Trump campaign, because she sees it as a distinction without a difference.  And she has gotten answers from intelligence professionals, one saying that "spying" means intelligence collection in a foreign country in violation of its domestic law, while counter intelligence is internal investigation, under our domestic laws and regulations governing it.  Thus, for instance, the warrant requirement for a FISA wiretap at home, while no such requirement is made abroad.

But colloquially I don't think that is an acceptable distinction.  Or maybe I should say, that may be the legal line between spying and counter-intelligence, but I do not think it is the proper line between what is acceptable and what is unacceptable.  Treating the distinction here not as a legal term of art, but the distinction between what is and is not acceptable, here is what I would say.

It would be "spying" to have an informant in the Trump campaign wearing a wire and keeping the FBI in the loop on the internal workings of the Trump campaign.  It would also be "spying" if the informant does not wear a wire, but simply gives regular reports.  Or if there is a wiretap of the Trump campaign.  Or if the FBI has agents secretly sitting in the building across the street keeping tabs on who goes in and out of campaign headquarters.

In short, seeking more-or-less real time information on the internal workings of the Trump campaign would be "spying" and unacceptable.*  That would apply even if the FBI did not actually use this information to disrupt the campaign or attempt to sway the election although, of course, doing so would be even worse.

On the other hand, if the Russians are hacking the Democrats and releasing the information gained so as to give the Trump campaign the advantage, any investigation of the Russian hacks would be appropriate counter-intelligence.  And if the Trump Campaign keeps having suspicious looking contacts with the Russians, I would not see investigating those contacts to see whether they were innocent as "spying."  Investigating campaign contacts with Russians is not an intrusion into the inner workings of the campaign, or a real-time following of events, but an after-the-fact investigation of foreign contacts to see if there was illegal foreign meddling in the election.

Thus, for instance, sending an academic who is also an informant to make discrete inquiries about George Papadopoulos' contacts with Joseph Mifsud is not "spying."  It does not seek to know the inner workings of the Trump campaign, but merely whether a Russian agent gave the campaign advance warning of the hacking.  That is a reasonable thing to want to know.  In fact, even Trumpsters sort of seem to acknowledge as much, because they say that, OK, maybe it was reasonable to ask about that particular exchange, but why the secrecy?  Why not send official agents to introduce themselves and flash a badge.  The obvious answer was the FBI did not trust Papadopoulos to tell the truth and, indeed, when formally interviewed by the FBI he lied.  Keep in mind that this is the only instance Trumpsters have offered of the FBI placing and informant in the campaign and since the agent (Stefan Halper) was not, in fact, part of the campaign, and did not seek information beyond this particular contact, he was not "spying."

I agree with Trumpsters that asking an allied intelligence service to do the surveillance on the Trump campaign that our domestic laws do not allow would be inappropriate spying.  I do not agree that having allied intelligence services look into the Trump campaign's external contact with Russian to see what they could learn would be "spying."

Ah, but what about the Carter Page wiretap, Trumpsters may ask.  Wasn't that inappropriate spying?  And the only reasonable answer can be a definite maybe.  Page had left the campaign at the time the FBI got their warrant, but he remained in contact with it.  So the possibility was that that the FBI might inappropriately listen in on the internal workings of the campaign and not just Page's foreign contacts.  It would all depend on FISA "minimization procedures."  These procedures are required because all wiretaps, however legitimate, will sweep in some innocent communications.  Minimization procedures are measures for screening out innocent communications.

As I understand minimization procedures, if the FBI knows that a communication is innocent, it may not listen in.  If it does not know, it may listen in to determine whether the communication is innocent.  Upon determining that a communication is innocent, the FBI must cease surveillance and destroy the recording.  Not all Page's Russian communications would necessarily be proper targets for surveillance; some might conceivably be innocent.  And likewise, not all Page's communications with the Trump campaign would necessarily be off limits.  If Page was communicating what the Russians were up to and how to work with them, that would get a legitimate target.

In short, whether the Page wiretap inappropriately spied on the Trump campaign would depend on the minimization procedures employed.  That information has not been released.

So, sure, I have no real objection to investigating to see whether the investigation ever crossed the line.  But let's set some clear parameters on what that "line" is.

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*Thus far I have seen no evidence of such "spying," the I am not ready to rule it out yet.  And the reason is John Schindler's article suggesting that the FBI really did have a "mole" in the Trump campaign, either an individual or some extremely top secret form of signals intelligence.  Schindler seems to believe such a source exists, and to defend it.  Schindler crosses over into paranoia sometimes, so I by no means accept his word as final.  But I cannot rule out the possibility for that reason.

Daniel Drezner on Impeachment

Daniel Drezner has another interesting article on the politics of impeachment.  Trump appears to have calculated that in impeachment, Democrats are in a dilemma they cannot win.  If they do not impeach, they will look weak.  If they do impeach, they will look vindictive and partisan.  So he sets out the provoke the Democrats to impeach him on the theory that the more he provokes, the weaker Democrats will look if they don't impeach, and if they do impeach, Republicans and independents will rally to him.

Drezner points out that there is a potential flaw in this assumption.  The flaw might be called the Fifth Avenue factor.  In other words, suppose that all else fails to provoke the Democrats to impeach.  So Trump shoots someone in the middle of Fifth Avenue.  Now granted, that will certainly make Democrats look weak if they don't impeach.  But will it make Democrats look vindictive and partisan if they do impeach?

The underlying assumption is that no matter how hard Trump tries to provoke Democrats to impeach him, the Democrats will always be blamed if they proceed.  Or, put differently, that there is nothing Trump can do that will swing public opinion against him -- not even (hypothetically) shooting someone in the middle of Fifth Avenue.

If the assumption that Trump is trying to provoke impeachment is correct, we just might find just what the absolute floor is to his support.

Thoughts on Impeachment from David Frum

David Frum has two interesting articles on Donald Trump, one on impeachment and one on foreign policy.  The foreign policy article is not formally linked to impeachment, but may be relevant nonetheless.

As for impeachment, Frum recommends against it.  I agree.  He offers several reasons to recommend against impeachment, so of which I agree with and some I don't.

First, Frum says that impeachment focuses everything on one offense, while the current investigation focuses on many, and Trump will be less able to defend against multiple offenses than one.  I disagree on that.  While there are doubtless many offenses Trump has committed that deserve to be investigated, actually doing so has never been advantageous politically.  During the 2016, a new accusation against Trump occurred every week.  None of them stuck, however, because before any one accusation was seriously investigated, media attention moved on to the next.  This gave the impression that Trump's opponents were simply throwing everything at the wall and seeing what would stick.  Trump, on the other hand, kept saying, "But her e-mails" in response to every accusation against him, with the result that the e-mails stuck.  Similarly, I read someone on twitter commented on what happened when Trump supporters asked him what grounds there were to impeach.  If he offered one accusation, Trump supporters took it seriously enough to argue.  If he offered many, Trump supporters dismissed the whole thing as sour grapes.  Opposition to Trump, whether through impeachment or election, should focus on the one thing (poll-tested and focus group refined) that hurts him the most, regardless of what that is.

Second, impeachment will be a futile gesture.  The Republican Senate wouldn't convict if Trump shot someone in the middle of Fifth Avenue.  The result will be to rally Republicans behind Trump and convince independents that the whole thing was simply partisan politics.

Third, we have a method of removing Trump now, i.e., by election.  If he wins, impeachment will be the only method of getting rid of Trump.*  Freed from electoral accountability, vindicated by reelection, what will Trump do with his second term?  And what if he does something impeachable?  There is no formal rule that says a President can only be impeached once, but as a practical matter, two impeachments are simply not going to be feasible.  Better to work to defeat Trump the normal way -- through election, and reserve the extreme measure of impeachment until that option is no longer viable.  And certainly investigating and revealing scandals can be part of a strategy of electoral defeat.

The other article is addressed to foreign policy, but has its domestic relevance.  Frum comments:

Trump has only one negotiating move: Take an aggressive position, try to deceive others and maybe yourself about your own strength, issue threats you cannot fulfill, and then retreat amid losses if the bluff is called.

Frum addressed that in the context of Trump's business career, and of his foreign policy.  Does it apply to his domestic policy as well?  Certainly it applied during the shutdown.  The Democrats refused to fund Trump's wall.  Trump took an aggressive position -- he would shut down the government if Democrats did not comply.  He tried to deceive others and maybe himself about his strength -- he believed that any hardship during the Obama shutdown was deliberate and unnecessary, so he left parks, museums and the like open but unstaffed, only to discover that they deteriorated rapidly when not maintained.  Air traffic, too, degenerated when staffed by unpaid personnel who could not afford to work without pay indefinitely.  He issued threats he could not fulfill -- to keep the government closed until he got his way.  And then he retreated amid losses (diminished popularity) when his bluff was called.

The big question is, will he follow the same pattern if Congress moves to enforce its subpoenas?  The ball is in your court, Congress.

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*Aside from assassination, of course, or declaring him unfit under the 25th Amendment.  But these are best not thought of.

Further Thoughts on Regime Change

I found this article highly revealing on the Trump Administration's Iran policy.  It says that the Administration's policy is based on a book that encapsulates to conservative view of Ronald Reagan and our victory in the Cold War.  In this view, which is conventional conservative wisdom, all Presidents from Truman to Carter accepted the Soviet Union and in inevitable fact of life and merely wished to contain it.  This led to a nuclear standoff, with the Soviet Union gradually growing in power and ultimately poised to win over the very long run.  Ronald Reagan made a dramatic change in strategy, launched a massive military buildup, supported anti-Soviet insurgencies, and relentlessly confronted the Soviet Union, thereby bringing it down.  It particularly focuses on Reagan saying, "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall" as the magic words that toppled, not only the Berlin Wall, but Communism world wide.

This theory is subject to question.  It ignores how uniquely weak and illegitimate the Communist governments in Eastern Europe were, little better than foreign occupation, primed to fall the minute Soviet intervention ceased to be a threat.  It underestimates internal Soviet weaknesses and the long grinding-down of policies of containment and military buildup since Truman's day.  It glosses over the Soviet Union spending a third of its GDP on the military well before Reagan and how unsustainable that was.  It also glosses over previous anti-Soviet insurgencies backed by previous Presidents.  Finally, it seriously underestimates how corrupt and sclerotic the Soviet system was, how much it was rotting from within, and the old adage that the worst time for a bad government is when it begins to mend its ways -- as it attempted under Gorbachev.  And by the time Reagan uttered is alleged magic words, the Cold War was in deep thaw, making such a thing seem possible for the first time since the Wall was built.

Still, let us grant these premises.  Let us assume that if Reagan had not done so, we would still be in the Cold War with the Soviet Union, much as we were in 1980, but probably in a weaker position.  Let us assume that Reagan's resolve alone was responsible for regime change in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, and that we can do the same to any country the world over.

The fact remains that even if we can topple hostile governments at will by our opposition, we cannot topple foreign governments on a time table of our choosing.

Ronald Reagan began his military buildup as soon as he was inaugurated in 1981. Our support for anti-Soviet insurgencies had already begun in many cases; he added a few and expanded others.  He gave the "Tear down this wall" speech on June 12, 1987.  Yet the Berlin Wall did not fall and Communism did not end in Eastern Europe until after Reagan was out of power in November, 1989.  The Soviet Union itself did not fall until 1991.  So if your goal is to squeeze a regime to death, the lessons of Reagan and the Cold War seem to be that you should give it a decade to work -- longer than two presidential terms.

Contrast this with Bolton/Pompeo/Trump, who believed that they could topple the Maduro regime in Venezuela in a matter of weeks, or at most months, or that they could topple the government of Iran within a year.  They are learning the hard way that regime change cannot be done at the snap of a finger.

Nor is this unique to this current Administration.  Bush I believed that Saddam Hussein's defeat in Kuwait would topple his regime.  This was not unreasonable; many dictators have been overthrown after losing a war.  And, in fact, many uprisings did occur, although all were defeated.  The big mistake was in assuming that Saddam was equally dangerous whether he had an army or not and maintaining sanctions in a vain attempt to topple the regime, rather than learning to deal with it in its weakened form.

And then there is the matter of Bush II and North Korea.  At the time Bush II came to power, he was confronted with a North Korea bent on building a nuclear bomb, but he rejected either war or diplomacy as a way to deal with the situation.  When North Korea unsealed its plutonium rods, expelled the weapons inspectors, and withdrew from the Non-Proliferation Treaty, Bush II was unwilling either to go to war or to negotiate.  Instead, he resolutely did nothing, and North Korea developed nuclear weapons.  What was he thinking.  The best guess was that he believed that refusal to talk to the North Korean government would bring it down.  Give a moment's thought to that believe.  One of the reasons Bush II was unwilling to go to war with North Korea was not just the fear of casualties, but that he thought such a war would interfere with his planned war in Iraq.  Keep in mind that Iraq had lost the war in Kuwait twelve years earlier and had been under severe sanctions ever since.  Yet it was apparent by then that nothing short of invasion was going to topple the Saddam Hussein regime.  And consider that North Korea had been a pariah state since the end of the Korean War in 1953, that it had been severely isolated and sanctioned ever since, that that in the 1990's the North Korean regime had survived a famine with mass starvation (much worse that Iraq had endured under the sanctions).  Keeping all that in mind, it was absurd to believe that mere refusal to negotiate could topple the North Korean government on any short-term time table.

And so here we are again.  The hardliners in the Trump Administration assumed that regime change in the case of Venezuela and Iran was something that could be done at a snap of the fingers and are now learning the hard way that it is not.

And one further thought.  If there is one other lesson we should have learned by now, it is that toppling a bad government does not prove that its successor will be any better.  Certainly the fall of the Soviet Union has not meant the end of our super power rivalry with Russia. The article says that the Trump Administration has taken that into account and decided that regime change is still worth pursuing.  After all, they say, even if the new government in Iran is as bad or worse than the old one, they expect Iran to be sufficiently weakened by the process to be less of a threat, just as Russia is now weakened from Soviet times.  To which I can only say there is a sort of ruthlessly amoral logic to that.  But if that is really your policy, have the decency to drop all hypocritical cant that we care about the people of Iran and wish them a better future.