The air of the blogosphere is currently thick with rumours that the US government is preparing the ground for an attack on its most trenchant enemy in the Middle East: Iran. Iran has been a determined ideological foe of the United States of America since the time of the Iranian Revolution and the inception of Komeini’s regime. It was responsible for the kidnapping of American embassy personnel in 1979, the attack on the USMC barracks in Beruit in 1983 and the Khobar Towers bombing in 1996, as well as regularly excoriating America as, using the now notoriously familiar epithet, “the Great Satan”. In fact, according to noted “neo-con” and Iranian expert Michael Ledeen, “for nearly thirty years, the Iranians continuously attacked us, and, aside from some harsh rhetoric from time to time, we never responded.” In addition, Ledeen states in a recent NRO interview, that Iran and Al Qaeda have “been working together since 1994, and we are now up to our uvulas in evidence showing Iran’s support for al Qaeda in Iraq.”
Even if you believe, as many seem to, that Ledeen is unreliable and ideologically suspect, the broad consensus on Iranian involvement in Iraq is hard to ignore. The narrative is now well established: Iran is historically the regional powerhouse, and the liberation of Iraq removed its chief rival and peer, as well as empowering Iraqi Shia co-religionists. The US also removed the militant Wahabbi regime in Afghanistan, another country which, like Iraq, shares a border with Iran. Hence the Iraq war has provided an incredible boost to the aspirations of the Iranian leadership, who desire to become a regional hegemon in the style of their historical predecessors. Absent even the facts (such as they are), and common sense still tells you that Iran must try to aid its political or religious allies in Iraq (and even groups that one would consider its natural enemies), frustrate its foes (be they American, Sunni or otherwise), and protect its interests. Only a fool or someone who doesn’t care about holding power would do otherwise. More broadly, it is surely the case that no regime in the Middle East who fears reform and “Americanisation” (i.e. opening up the country to globalised trade and liberal democracy) could possibly welcome the establishment of a secure and successful secular state on its doorstep. Iran follows the same logic.
Obviously, the chief worry at the present time is the Iranian search for a nuclear bomb, which would make it a nuclear Islamic power, an elite group that currently consists of just one country: Pakistan. According to the American strategist Thomas Barnett,
Tehran’s reach for the bomb, quite frankly, makes a ton of strategic sense given: 1) our recent wars on its right and left and our avowed talk of regime change and 2) Schelling’s historical point that the bomb ends your vulnerability to U.S. invasion (in fact, invasion or attack from anyone–in short, deterrence works, whether you’re Tehran or Tel Aviv).
In short, Barnett’s view is that Iran’s desire for the bomb is merely common sense; unfortunate that it will further destabilise the region and increase the potential for nuclear war, yes, but common sense nonetheless. It is this struggle that is adding tension to a Middle East already brimming with nervous anxiety. There is a time limit now, for “dealing” with Iran. After they build a nuclear weapon, even the small amount of leverage we currently have from the threat of punitive military action will be removed. And of course, the prospect of adding nuclear weapons to the heady regional brew of radical Islam, failing states, simmering resentment, inter-faith rivalry and nascent anti-Americanism is not an altogether pleasant one.
Faced with this appalling scene, the Bush administration is thought to be marshalling its resources to prepare the ground with the American public for an invasion of Iran, or possibly just the bombing of its nuclear facilities. Daniel Drezner has a decent round-up of relevant articles in the US press. For instance, Drezner links to a Washington Times op-ed which states that, after meeting with the Bush family in Maine, “
Mohamed ElBaradei of the International Atomic Energy Agency recognises the danger that an Iranian bomb poses. In a recent interview with Der Spiegel, he stated that, “we stand at a crossroads, and we are moving rapidly toward an abyss.” It is obvious that the current state of affairs is neither desirable, nor sustainable. So what, if anything, should be done?
Even a hawk like Ledeen, who considers the Iranian threat to be greater than that posed by the Sunni extremists in the global Salafi Jihad, is against direct military intervention with Iran. In his new book The Iranian Time Bomb: The Mullah Zealots’ Quest for Destruction, Ledeen warns that “it’s time for us to fight back … using political and economic weapons,” but, “not military power.” Barnett believes that,
America has to grow up a bit and realize that the Big Bang [meaning the United States' activities in the Middle East post-9/11] leads to the Shia revival and that it’s only through that path that we’ll foster genuine pluralism and less religious extremism in politics.
So we need to foster the rising Shia revival, because the alternative is merely the same old brutal Sunni extremism that led to the terrible events of 9/11. However, an angry and powerful Iran, with its proxies frustrating our efforts at Middle Eastern reform in Lebanon, Syria and Iraq, is obviously to no one’s benefit. Can we craft a set of policies that empower the Shia, without merely appeasing and encouraging a new set of extremists to counter-balance the old set of extremists that we helped to create in Saudi Arabia? What chance of peace and development is there in the Middle East while theocrats and dictators have power?
Obviously, these are difficult questions, and I certainly can’t provide the answers that are needed. However, we can try to predict what will happen. I would not necessarily be against pinprick military strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities. I do expect that the US military will be wargaming this scenario and drawing up plans for such an eventuality. However, according to a recent piece in the Sunday Times, at a meeting organised by The National Interest, a prominent conservative journal,
Alexis Debat, director of terrorism and national security at the Nixon Center, said last week that US military planners were not preparing for “pinprick strikes” against Iran’s nuclear facilities. “They’re about taking out the entire Iranian military,” he said.
However, as Drezner points out, “This time around, Bush and Cheney will face a sizeable domestic opposition, a hostile foreign policy community, and opposition from within the executive branch.” And not only that, but there is also the small matter of the strength of the American military and its ability to open a third front in the Middle East. And as Pat Lang and others have pointed out, should Iran choose to, they could play havoc with the logistical supply lines that the Americans use to move supplies from Kuwait straight up the motorway to Baghdad and other areas in the north of the country. The issue will be further complicated by the withdrawal of British forces from the region, and the need for Petraeus to further stretch his forces to fill the power vacuum there. So for those reasons, it seems very unlikely to me that America will be going to war with Iran any time soon. Barnett, in a short review of Ledeen’s new book, states that
Where Ledeen intrigues more is with a connectivity-style counter-the-revolution strategy of seeding the mullahs’ downfall from within using dollars and PCs. In principle, this is how we took down the Sovs (infecting them with the hard-currency dollar that revealed the falsehood of their economy and the information revolution, the economic advance the Sovs couldn’t command their way through), starting this process with Nixon’s brilliant detente.
Surely, that would be the best method of defeating Khamenei’s regime, and the one that would come with the least monetary and human cost, to say nothing of regional stability and strengthening the hand of the Mullahs by appearing once again to be the “imperialists” of common Arab parlance. It is also the case that fear of foreign-sponsored regime change is encouraging the regime to clamp down hard on any perceived dissent.
In any case, and irrespective of the media hype, as Yorkshire Ranter demonstrates, there is a distinct lack of indicators pointing to military action against Iran. For instance, “currently, there is one US Navy carrier group in the Middle East (Enterprise and Co). This is down from two for most of this year, and is the lowest for some time”. And,
As before, Vinson, Roosevelt, and Washington are all in dockyard hands. Lincoln is in the early stages of workup, having done flight deck and carrier qualifications in July. Eisenhower took part in a JTFEX during July, but please note that as she only returned from deployment in May, she probably has significant yard time in her future. The next ship in the cycle is therefore Harry S. Truman, whose JTFEX it was, and who has also recently done her COMPTUEX.
Yorkshire Ranter also discusses the lack of financial indicators here.
Although I would love for America to be the ass-kicking, liberal hawk of my fantasies, I don’t believe that it is, or probably ever will be. I agree with Ledeen that our best option for regime change is not military, but political and economic. The idea of another Islamic bomb is not a pleasant one, but we’ve dealt with nuclear dictatorships enough to be able to make sensible decisions and not get panicked into doing something that will be not only costly, but also unsustainable given the current state of international relations and the general consensus in the minds of the public in free countries around the world. In addition, America has none of the “sympathetic capital” it acquired (and spent) in the wake of 9/11. These are all unfortunate facts, but facts nonetheless. Here’s hoping for the positive, non-military action described by both Ledeen and Barnett. Or perhaps, all we need to do is listen to Zenpundit:
If the Bush administration really wants to cripple Iran, instead of planning an EBO attack or using IO scare stories about nuclear weapons, we should simply encourage Iran to adopt Ahmadinejad’s economic program.
Well, perhaps not. I don’t want Iran to continue down the path of economic disaster and become another Zimbabwe or Venezuela. But why play the Mullah’s game by being the enemy that they desire to shore up their failing state and useless ideology? Instead, we should adopt the tried and tested method that worked with the USSR: kill them with connectivity.
