Q & A

This week, Time magazine ran a cover story called "What war with Iran would look like (and how to avoid it)."

Noel Pugach, a professor at UNM who teaches a course about the United States' foreign relations, said Iran poses a threat to the rest of the world, but war is unlikely.

Daily Lobo: How are the United States' relations with Iran?

NP: They're very bad - extremely bad. They've been bad ever since the takeover of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, when they held our hostages. Ever since the coming to power of the fundamentalists led by Ayatollah Khomeini, things have been very bad.

We do not have diplomatic relations. That makes it very hard to talk and to negotiate, so we have to do it through third parties. There are many domestic reasons why we have not established diplomatic relations. Of course, they've been hostile, too. It's not just the United States. But, I think they are more interested in having face-to-face talks with the United States than we are with them.

DL: Why do you think that is?

NP: Because they want to be recognized as a major force. I think this is a very important element in the whole struggle over nuclear weapons. We have a lot of baggage since '79 and the takeover of the American embassy. Then on top of that, we have two major issues with Iran.

No. 1 is nuclear weapons. The Iranians seem to be intent on acquiring nuclear weapons. They claim it's for peaceful uses. That is nonsense. Why would they go through the expense now of building a nuclear power plant when they have one of the biggest supplies of oil in world? That's a phony argument, although some people pay lip service to it.

The other thing is sponsoring of terrorism. We just saw it in Lebanon. Hezbollah would not have acted without clearance from Iran. It's supported by Iran. It's armed and supplied by Iran, and it started this recent war.

The third immediate problem is Iraq. Iran, of course, has an interest in what emerges in Iraq. It would like to see a Shiite-dominated state. It would like to see a religious, not secular state, which was true under Saddam Hussein. There is a lot of antagonism between Iran and Iraq since the war of the 1980s. There has been conflict and competition for years, but some of the Shiites in Iraq are looking to Iran for help, and they're getting it.

DL: How likely do you think it is that we'll go to war with Iran?

NP: Unlikely in the near future, particularly over the nuclear issue. First of all, we don't know where all the nuclear facilities are. We don't even know what's going on in some of these facilities, so an airstrike by conventional means would not accomplish very much. A nuclear strike would cause so much denunciation of the United States and fire up the Islamic world - it's inconceivable. The military option doesn't exist.

I don't think the rhetoric of the administration is really helpful. The rest of the world doesn't like it, just like it didn't like the axis-of-evil rhetoric. It may sound nice at home, and Americans may go for it, but is it useful? I don't think so. We should employ as much diplomacy as we can. Economic sanctions may have some limited effect. There are things that can be used, since the Iranians want to be recognized as a power.

DL: How effective could the U.N. be in addressing the threats that Iran poses?

NP: Not very. We've tried it, and they've thumbed their noses at the U.N. They're very clever, the way they've been delaying and postponing. They'll say, "Oh, maybe we'll talk about stopping the enrichment of uranium." Then when the U.N. or the E.U. tries to pin them down, they've got some excuse.

-Caleb Fort