Pigeons and Paranoia
According to news reports, Iran has captured “spy pigeons” that were nosing around its nuclear facilities. Apparently the pigeons were outfitted with metal rings and invisible strings. This comes just over a year after the Iranians detained 14 squirrels at the border on charges of spying. Based on these incidents, it appears that Iran is under a full-scale zoological assault.
These stories can be easily dismissed as nothing more than another entry for the News of the Weird. But there are a couple of things that are bothering me.
First of all, despite all my better instincts, a little part of my brain wonders if the Iranians are right. Could our intelligence capabilities and resources on Iran be so pathetic that we are strapping GPS devices onto birds and rodents and hoping that they find us nukes in Natanz rather than nuts? Of course not. But the fact that the thought even crosses my mind worries me.
However, more important than whether I believe the story is whether the Iranians do. The Bush Administration and both campaigns have kept up a pretty steady drumbeat about the Iranian threat. Despite differences on dialogue with Iran, there is clear bilateral agreement on the need to talk tough for the cameras. Have the Iranians internalized this message so completely that they are seeing spies around every corner? Can accusing a pigeon of espionage be considered anything less than delusional paranoia?
For me, this is just another reminder that our rhetoric has a real-world effect on the psyche of other countries. We shouldn’t be surprised that when the world’s only superpower describes a country as a threat that country feels threatened. Don’t get me wrong – I’m not overly concerned about the emotional well-being of the Iranian government. But we do need to remember that our actions can lead to irrational reactions from other countries. Such as arresting squirrels for spying. Or believing that the only road to security is through a rogue nuclear weapons program.
But, at the end of the day, the real question is: Do any of these squirrels or pigeons speak Farsi? We could really use the help with doing some translation.
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