Forcing "Fallacy of the Future" Thinking on Iran Is Dangerous

What should really concern the world is not the nations that might someday develop nuclear weapons but the nations which already have nuclear weapons, including the only country that has ever used such instruments of terror and mass destruction. Instead, the P5+1 (United States, Britain, Germany, France, Russia. and China) is alleging that Iran’s nuclear enrichment program will lead to the development of nuclear warheads. But to assert something without proof, or accuse a nation of future wrongdoing without evidence, is a fallacy. Since the future has not yet occurred, it is also morally wrong and deceptive to socially engineer people to fear the future at the expense of more current and dangerous realities. Indeed, and unlike present certainties, the laws of probability will always contain an infinite number of unknown possibilities and unpredictable outcomes.

The Fallacy of the Future, or assuming foreknowledge of a specific set of events before they occur, also distorts the observers’ perceptions. By assuming to know the foreseeable future, participants become dispassionately detached from real-time happenings. Choices which might seem insignificant at the present time may easily be dismissed, yet eventually evolve into great importance. In addition, an all-knowing and hypothetical mentality is arrogant. It is mental impunity, allowing for inconsequential actions and the implementation of any-means-necessary policies. The P5+1 treaty with Iran is a complex event. Unlike a simple one, it consists of millions of historical variables, arising out of many interdependent components interacting in nonlinear ways.(1) Reducing it to simplistic types of thinking, like the Fallacy of the Future, is wrong and dangerous.

What is known and what are certain realities, however, is that following the attacks against the United States on 9/11 Iran collectively mourned the loss of life and joined the United States in its War On Terror. In contrast, when the U.S. destroyed IR Flight 655 over the Persian Gulf, killing 295 innocent people, many Americans rejoiced while government leaders refused to issue an apology. And even though the U.S. has for decades treated Iran as an enemy, Iran still proposes the recognition of Israel as part of a two-state solution in exchange for mutual respect, enhanced security, and access to full transparency in developing its peaceful nuclear technologies. What is also clearly evident is that Iran has been a stabilizing force in Southwest Asia, including Iraq. Its republic is continually evolving into a democratic and pluralistic Islamic society.

Another reality is the ongoing correspondences between Iran’s Supreme Religious Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and President Barack Obama. Despite sixty-years of U.S. abuses against the Iranian people-militarily occupying Iran and then later encouraging Iraq to invade Iran-Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has not only issued a fatwa against nuclear weapons but suggested potential cooperation in fighting the Islamic State. President Hassan Rouhani has reiterated that Iran is not wanting to pursue nuclear enrichment in developing a bomb, and that nuclear weapons have never kept a nation safe but instead made the world a more dangerous place. Again, the U.S. is the only nation that has used nuclear weapons. Could it be projecting its own pathological past guilt and futuristic aims onto Iran? The inability to admit wrongs while fearing the future is the greatest danger.

In a New Year’s message to the people of Iran, President Obama declared that “this year represented the best opportunity in decades to pursue a different relationship.” But will the best opportunity in pursuing a different relationship continue to be imaginary and speculative scenarios? U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry claimed that it was his desire to move toward a political framework as soon as possible. But will the move toward a more correct political framework consist of the Logic of the Present versus the Fallacy of Future? It is difficult enough to try and know the infinitude of things that have happened in the past, let alone an infinitude of predictions that can never be known about the future. Why, then, make insulting and dystopian predictions about Iran unless there are ulterior motives or clandestine states involved which want to sabotage the treaty?(2)

Sadly, with another implausible deadline only days away, the most real-time and dangerous one has repeatedly gone unnoticed: the P5+1’s (including Israel’s) continual maintenance of massive nuclear weaponry.

Dallas Darling is the author of Politics 501: An A-Z Reading on Conscientious Political Thought and Action, Some Nations Above God: 52 Weekly Reflections On Modern-Day Imperialism, Militarism, And Consumerism in the Context of John‘s Apocalyptic Vision, and The Other Side Of Christianity: Reflections on Faith, Politics, Spirituality, History, and Peace. He is a correspondent for www.worldnews.com.

(1) Watts, Duncan J. Everything Is Obvious: How Common Sense Fails Us. New York, New York: Random House Publishers, 2011., p. 149.
(2) www.antiwar.com. “Netanyahu Vows to Sabotage Iran Nuclear Deal,” by Jason Ditz. February 8, 2015.