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  Where Were You When The Next Gulf War Began?
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   Author  Topic: Where Were You When The Next Gulf War Began?  (Read 1060 times)
Hermit
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Where Were You When The Next Gulf War Began?
« on: 2005-09-11 17:00:51 »
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Some of you may remember Scott Ritter. He was the UN weapons inspector who said that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction in 1999, invalidating US grounds for their illegal assault on Iraq and drawing down a veritable barrage of blame, calumny, castigation, censure, criticism, curses, defamation, derision, insults, invective, libels, opprobrium, reproaches, revilement, scolding, slanders, swearing, tirades, vilification and vituperation upon his head. As it turns out, Scott Ritter was right, and those attacking him were wrong - on just about every score.

Scott Ritter seems to be blowing his whistle again (Refer the next two posts on this thread, replies 1 and 2). As I did last time, I agree with most of what he says. He claims - and supports his claims - that the US is entering the next phase of her Neocon lead march into disaster; even as the wheels fall off at home and in her previous illegal interventions. All appearances (and protestations) to the contrary we are already at war with Iran.

This process may have been accelerated by the disasters in Iraq, in Afghanistan and in the States affected by Katrina and the consequent collapsing support for the Bumbling BushTM in the polls. After all, we all need to be entertained in order to distract us from asking troubling questions about silly subjects - like: whatever happened to Osoma bin Laden; or why have we got 50% more troops in Afghanistan than when we "defeated" the Taliban (who are becoming increasingly active); or whatever happened to Iraqi oil; or why are we seeing more combat deaths and maimings in Iraq and Afghanistan now that they are "liberated" than we did during their occupation; or how has killing a million and more Iraqis helped them, or why did Katrina become the scale of disaster it has - or even why is nobody objecting that the Constitution has and is being trampled into the swamps of Louisiana - and what could be better than another war to achieve this goal... especially when it helps our "ally" Israel at the same time. Accelerated or not, the attack on Iran appears to be a key component in the paleoconservative agenda - if only because it is a critical component of the "end times" and thus - given the religious nature of "Our Dear Leader's" dementia, seemingly inescapable.

As some of you who discussed this with me earlier know, this is not a good thing. Indeed, speaking purely pragmatically*, it is even more stupid than the Iraq debacle. Iran is a much different proposition from Iraq. For one thing they are not weakened by 10 years of targeted sanctions. For another, they have zero incentive to play nice having watched the process of "demokritization" play out next door. And I suspect would inflict damage at a global level if pushed sufficiently hard. This is not just my opinion. Michael J Mazarr, Professor at the US National War College draws a number of nightmare scenarios in his scary analysis "Strike Out" which appeared first in the New Republic, and is available as reply 3 on this thread.

So with that as an introduction, two articles by Scott Ritter and that of Prof Mazarr follow below. All, while depressing, are worth reading. It is not often that we see the first steps of war so clearly, but the NeoCon's techniques are so stratified as to make the progression appear fairly transparent. No doubt, as terrorism and oil prices escalate, the apologists for the Neocons will disclaim any and all linkages between their actions at home and abroad, and the subsequent happenings. As has occurred previously and currently - perhaps wherever disasters are left in their wake. But by then, we already are, as I said back in 2000:



Hermit

liberal adj. favorable to progress or reform, maximum individual freedom esp. in matters of personal belief or expression, free from prejudice or bigotry, open-minded, tolerant, not bound by traditional ideas, values, etc., characterized by generosity and willingness to give in large amounts. [Webster]


*difficult to speak in any other terms with the remnants of our battered reputation hanging about us in tatters.
« Last Edit: 2005-09-12 05:04:37 by Hermit » Report to moderator   Logged

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Re:Where Were You When The Next Gulf War Began?
« Reply #1 on: 2005-09-11 17:05:56 »
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The Iran trap

Source: aljazeera
Authors: Scott Ritter
Dated: 2005-09-11

In the complicated world of international diplomacy surrounding the issue of Iran's nuclear program, there is but one thing that the United States, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the so-called EU-3 (Germany, France and Great Britain) and Iran can all agree upon:  Iran has resumed operations of facilities designed to convert uranium into a product usable in enrichment processes. From that point forward consensus on just about anything begins to fall apart.

Iran's resumption of its uranium conversion program seems to have brought to an end a negotiating process begun in November 2004 between the EU-3 and Iran, at which time Iran agreed to freeze its uranium enrichment-related activities in exchange for the EU-3's agreement to broker a deal that would provide inducements for Iran to give up its nuclear enrichment program.

With the EU-3 initiative now dead in the water, it appears that the next logical step in the diplomatic process is for the IAEA to refer the matter to the Security Council, where the United States, backed by the EU-3, have threatened to push for economic sanctions. The IAEA board meets in Vienna, Austria on 19 September to discuss this matter.

The EU-3 countries are uniform in their criticism of Iran's diplomatic slap in the face, but in fact neither the EU-3 nor the IAEA have a legal leg to stand on.

Iran, as a signatory to the non-proliferation treaty (NPT), asserts its 'inalienable right' under Article IV of the NPT to 'develop research, production and use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes.'

Such rights are conditional, however, but Iran strongly believes that it has complied with Articles I and II of the NPT, where it agrees not to manufacture or acquire nuclear weapons, and Article III, where it accepts full safeguards, including on-site inspections.

Iran has yet to be declared to be in formal breach of any of these obligations, which raises the basic question: what is it the EU-3 wish to accomplish vis-à-vis their diplomatic intervention?

The real purpose of the EU-3 intervention -- to prevent the United States from using Iran's nuclear ambition as an excuse for military intervention -- is never discussed in public.

The EU-3 would rather continue to participate in fraudulent diplomacy rather than confront the hard truth -- that it is the United States, and not Iran, that is operating outside international law when it comes to the issue of Iran's nuclear program.

In doing so, the EU-3, and to a lesser extent the IAEA, have fallen into a trap deliberately set by the Bush administration designed to use the EU-3 diplomatic initiative as a springboard for war with Iran.

The heart of the EU-3's position regarding Iran's nuclear program is the matter of nuclear enrichment, which the EU-3 outright oppose. This, of course, is an extension of the American position (as well as that of America's shadow ally, Israel).

Legally, this is an unsupportable position under the NPT, but one which has been pursued based upon two fundamental points.

The first is Iran's history of deception regarding its nuclear program, in which Iran hid critical aspects of this effort from the international community. Iran now claims to have come into compliance with its NPT obligations, by having declared the totality of its efforts, something neither the EU-3 and the IAEA, nor the United States and Israel can refute factually.

Indeed, the recent disclosure by the IAEA that the hard 'evidence' it possessed to sustain the charge that Iran was pursuing a covert nuclear weapons program (the existence of traces of highly enriched uranium on Iranian centrifuges) was flawed.

The fact that the uranium came from Pakistan, not Iran, has undercut any case the EU-3 might have had in pursuing its confrontational stance with Iran.

In the face of this development, the EU-3  --  Britain, Germany and France  --  need to ask themselves a very fundamental question:  what is their true policy objective being pursued vis-à-vis Iran?

The answer appears to be little more than serving as a front for American complaints against the Iranian nuclear program.  Given this, the EU-3 must next confront the real policy of the United States when it comes to Iran -- regime change.  As was the case with Iraq, Europe has failed to confront the Bush administration's policy of regime change. 

Instead, the EU-3 has allowed their seemingly unified European foreign policy position regarding Iran to be hijacked by a neoconservative cabal in Washington, DC as a stepping stone to war.

Europe would like to believe that the diplomatic initiative undertaken by the EU-3 last November represents a nominal 'Plan A', which avoids direct confrontation between the United States and Iran through use of the European intermediary. 

 
The EU-3 comfort themselves with the knowledge that any failure of their initiative pushes the world not to the brink of war, but rather toward a 'Plan B', intervention by the Security Council of the United Nations, which would seek to compel Iran back into line with the threat of economic sanctions.

A failure by the Security Council to achieve change on the part of Iran would then, and only then, pave the way for 'Plan C', American military intervention.

European diplomats concede that there is little likelihood that the Security Council will impose sanctions on Iran, given the intransigence on the part of Russia and China.

However, they have lulled themselves into a false sense of complacency by noting that given the situation in Iraq, and now in the United States in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, the US military is so overstretched that any talk of the Bush administration implementing a 'Plan C' is out of the question.

What the Europeans  -- and the member nations of the EU-3 in particular  --  fail to recognize is that the Bush administration's plan for Iran does not consist of three separate plans, but rather one plan composed of three phases leading to the inevitability of armed conflict with Iran and the termination of the theocratic regime of the Mullahs currently residing in Tehran.

These three phases --  the collapse of the EU-3 intervention leading to a referral of the Iran matter to the Security Council, the inability of the Security Council to agree upon the imposition of economic sanctions against Iran, and the US confronting the Security Council over its alleged inability to protect American national security interests - lead inevitably toward military confrontation.

As with Iraq earlier, the United States has embraced a position which requires Iran to prove the negative (i.e., demonstrate that it does not have a nuclear weapons program) as opposed to the US and the IAEA proving that one does in fact exist.

The criteria put forward by the Bush administration for Iran to comply -- no-notice inspections of any site at any time -- are an affront to a sovereign nation that has yet to be shown to be in violation of any of its legal obligations.

The fact that the United States used a similar program of no-notice weapons inspections as a front for espionage against Iraq in support of its regime-change policy against Saddam Hussein has not escaped the attention of the Iranians, who have flat-out rejected any such extra-legal requirements on its part.

The United States, and to a lesser extent the IAEA and the EU-3, have taken Iran's intransigence as a clear sign that Iran has something to hide.

Once again, as was the case with Iraq, the United States has put process over substance, and unless the EU-3 block, the American effort to have the Iranian case transferred to the Security Council, the end result will be war.

The Iran trap has been well baited by the Bush administration, so much so that a Europe already burned once by American duplicity regarding Iraq, and a war weary American public, fail to recognize what is actually transpiring. The bait for this trap is, of course, diplomacy, first in the form of the EU-3 intervention, and that having failed, in the form of Security Council actions.

Polls taken in April 2005 showed that most Americans (63% to 37%) believed the Bush administration should take military action to stop Iran from developing or trying to develop a nuclear weapons program.

It is completely irrelevant that Iran has yet to be shown to have a nuclear weapons program (in fact the overwhelming amount of data available points to the exact opposite conclusion).

Today, in September 2005, many Americans might be loath to immediately embrace a direct path towards war with Iran.  However, according to recent polls, most Americans support referring the matter of Iran to the Security Council for the purpose of imposing sanctions. 

If the Security Council, because of Russian and Chinese opposition, refuses to support sanctions, the American people will be confronted by the Bush administration with the choice to either appear weak before the United Nations, or to take matters into our own hands (i.e., unilateral military action) in the name of national defence.  The outcome in this case is certain  --  war.

Since the result of any referral of the Iran issue to the Security Council is all but guaranteed, the push by the EU-3 to have the IAEA refer Iran to the Security Council, while rooted in the language of diplomacy, is really nothing less than an act of war.

The only chance the world has of avoiding a second disastrous US military adventure in the Middle East is for the EU-3 to step back from its policy of doing the bidding of the US, and to confront not only Iran on the matter of its nuclear program, but also the larger issue of American policies of regional transformation that represent the greatest threat to Middle East security and stability today.
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Re:Where Were You When The Next Gulf War Began?
« Reply #2 on: 2005-09-11 17:51:05 »
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US war with Iran has already begun

Source: aljazeera
Authors: Scott Ritter
Dated: 2005-06-23

Americans, along with the rest of the world, are starting to wake up to the uncomfortable fact that President George Bush not only lied to them about the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq (the ostensible excuse for the March 2003 invasion and occupation of that country by US forces), but also about the very process that led to war.

On 16 October 2002, President Bush told the American people that "I have not ordered the use of force. I hope that the use of force will not become necessary."

We know now that this statement was itself a lie, that the president, by late August 2002, had, in fact, signed off on the 'execute' orders authorising the US military to begin active military operations inside Iraq, and that these orders were being implemented as early as September 2002, when the US Air Force, assisted by the British Royal Air Force, began expanding its bombardment of targets inside and outside the so-called no-fly zone in Iraq.

[Hermit notes that this is now under congressional investigation](Search on "Downing Street Minutes"]

These operations were designed to degrade Iraqi air defence and command and control capabilities. They also paved the way for the insertion of US Special Operations units, who were conducting strategic reconnaissance, and later direct action, operations against specific targets inside Iraq, prior to the 19 March 2003 commencement of hostilities.

President Bush had signed a covert finding in late spring 2002, which authorised the CIA and US Special Operations forces to dispatch clandestine units into Iraq for the purpose of removing Saddam Hussein from power.

The fact is that the Iraq war had begun by the beginning of summer 2002, if not earlier.

This timeline of events has ramifications that go beyond historical trivia or political investigation into the events of the past.

It represents a record of precedent on the part of the Bush administration which must be acknowledged when considering the ongoing events regarding US-Iran relations. As was the case with Iraq pre-March 2003, the Bush administration today speaks of "diplomacy" and a desire for a "peaceful" resolution to the Iranian question.

But the facts speak of another agenda, that of war and the forceful removal of the theocratic regime, currently wielding the reigns of power in Tehran.

As with Iraq, the president has paved the way for the conditioning of the American public and an all-too-compliant media to accept at face value the merits of a regime change policy regarding Iran, linking the regime of the Mullah's to an "axis of evil" (together with the newly "liberated" Iraq and North Korea), and speaking of the absolute requirement for the spread of "democracy" to the Iranian people.

"Liberation" and the spread of "democracy" have become none-too-subtle code words within the neo-conservative cabal that formulates and executes American foreign policy today for militarism and war.

By the intensity of the "liberation/democracy" rhetoric alone, Americans should be put on notice that Iran is well-fixed in the cross-hairs as the next target for the illegal policy of regime change being implemented by the Bush administration.

But Americans, and indeed much of the rest of the world, continue to be lulled into a false sense of complacency by the fact that overt conventional military operations have not yet commenced between the United States and Iran.

As such, many hold out the false hope that an extension of the current insanity in Iraq can be postponed or prevented in the case of Iran. But this is a fool's dream.

The reality is that the US war with Iran has already begun. As we speak, American over flights of Iranian soil are taking place, using pilotless drones and other, more sophisticated, capabilities.

The violation of a sovereign nation's airspace is an act of war in and of itself. But the war with Iran has gone far beyond the intelligence-gathering phase.

President Bush has taken advantage of the sweeping powers granted to him in the aftermath of 11 September 2001, to wage a global war against terror and to initiate several covert offensive operations inside Iran.

The most visible of these is the CIA-backed actions recently undertaken by the Mujahadeen el-Khalq, or MEK, an Iranian opposition group, once run by Saddam Hussein's dreaded intelligence services, but now working exclusively for the CIA's Directorate of Operations.

It is bitter irony that the CIA is using a group still labelled as a terrorist organisation, a group trained in the art of explosive assassination by the same intelligence units of the former regime of Saddam Hussein, who are slaughtering American soldiers in Iraq today, to carry out remote bombings in Iran of the sort that the Bush administration condemns on a daily basis inside Iraq.

Perhaps the adage of "one man's freedom fighter is another man's terrorist" has finally been embraced by the White House, exposing as utter hypocrisy the entire underlying notions governing the ongoing global war on terror.

But the CIA-backed campaign of MEK terror bombings in Iran are not the only action ongoing against Iran.

To the north, in neighbouring Azerbaijan, the US military is preparing a base of operations for a massive military presence that will foretell a major land-based campaign designed to capture Tehran.

Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld's interest in Azerbaijan may have escaped the blinkered Western media, but Russia and the Caucasus nations understand only too well that the die has been cast regarding Azerbaijan's role in the upcoming war with Iran.

The ethnic links between the Azeri of northern Iran and Azerbaijan were long exploited by the Soviet Union during the Cold War, and this vehicle for internal manipulation has been seized upon by CIA paramilitary operatives and US Special Operations units who are training with Azerbaijan forces to form special units capable of operating inside Iran for the purpose of intelligence gathering, direct action, and mobilising indigenous opposition to the Mullahs in Tehran.

But this is only one use the US has planned for Azerbaijan.  American military aircraft, operating from forward bases in Azerbaijan, will have a much shorter distance to fly when striking targets in and around Tehran.

In fact, US air power should be able to maintain a nearly 24-hour a day presence over Tehran airspace once military hostilities commence.

No longer will the United States need to consider employment of Cold War-dated plans which called for moving on Tehran from the Arab Gulf cities of Chah Bahar and Bandar Abbas.  US Marine Corps units will be able to secure these towns in order to protect the vital Straits of Hormuz, but the need to advance inland has been eliminated.

A much shorter route to Tehran now exists - the coastal highway running along the Caspian Sea from Azerbaijan to Tehran.

US military planners have already begun war games calling for the deployment of multi-divisional forces into Azerbaijan.

Logistical planning is well advanced concerning the basing of US air and ground power in Azerbaijan.

Given the fact that the bulk of the logistical support and command and control capability required to wage a war with Iran is already forward deployed in the region thanks to the massive US presence in Iraq, the build-up time for a war with Iran will be significantly reduced compared to even the accelerated time tables witnessed with Iraq in 2002-2003.

America and the Western nations continue to be fixated on the ongoing tragedy and debacle that is Iraq. Much needed debate on the reasoning behind the war with Iraq and the failed post-war occupation of Iraq is finally starting to spring up in the United States and elsewhere.

Normally, this would represent a good turn of events. But with everyone's heads rooted in the events of the past, many are missing out on the crime that is about to be repeated by the Bush administration in Iran - an illegal war of aggression, based on false premise, carried out with little regard to either the people of Iran or the United States.

Most Americans, together with the mainstream American media, are blind to the tell-tale signs of war, waiting, instead, for some formal declaration of hostility, a made-for-TV moment such as was witnessed on 19 March 2003.

We now know that the war had started much earlier. Likewise, history will show that the US-led war with Iran will not have begun once a similar formal statement is offered by the Bush administration, but, rather, had already been under way since June 2005, when the CIA began its programme of MEK-executed terror bombings in Iran. 
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Re:Where Were You When The Next Gulf War Began?
« Reply #3 on: 2005-09-11 18:01:37 »
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Strike Out

Source: The New Republic
Obtained: Veterans For Common Sense
Disclaimer: Michael J. Mazarr  is a professor at the U.S. National War College. The views expressed here are his own and do not reflect the position of the Defense Department.
Authors: Michael J. Mazarr
Dated: 2005-08-08

With the recent election of arch-conservative Tehran Mayor Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as president of Iran, many observers expected a renewed crisis over Iran's nuclear program. And, sure enough, one has arrived with Iran's announcement that it intends to restart its uranium-conversion facility at Isfahan, despite an earlier agreement with European negotiators to keep its nuclear program frozen. The three EU countries negotiating with Iran have accelerated plans to deliver a new grand bargain on nuclear issues, offering trade, aid, and a nonaggression pact in exchange for denuclearization. But Iran has hinted that it knows the substance of the offer and isn't impressed. "It is we who should impose conditions on them, and not they on us," Ahmadinejad has said.

At any moment, Iran could withdraw from the talks, move beyond the Isfahan declaration to restart its enrichment program, or take some other action that would generate a global crisis. The European Union and the United States would take the matter to the Security Council and impose sanctions; Iran would dig in and fulminate about Yankee imperialism. And the Bush administration would then confront the most profound national security decision of its tenure--whether to launch limited air strikes on Iran's nuclear facilities. On this question, the conventional wisdom is clear: If need be, the United States could strike Iran's nuclear infrastructure without ruinous consequences. The Iranians are pragmatists and realists, the argument goes; they know when to take their medicine. Air strikes would represent a low-risk, intermediate response--after economic sanctions and before regime change--to continued Iranian nuclear ambitions.

Many observers of the Iranian nuclear issue seem to hold these views. As Franklin Foer catalogued in these pages ("Identity Crisis," December 20, 2004), conservative writers like Charles Krauthammer, Gary Schmitt, and Reuel Marc Gerecht have referred to a preemptive strike as, in Gerecht's phrasing, the "only option that offers a good chance of delaying Iran's production of nuclear weapons." In a recent Atlantic magazine-hosted war game on Iran, the consensus was that the United States could get away with limited attacks. For their part, President Bush and Vice President Cheney have separately insisted that diplomacy is the right way to handle the nuclear issue--but warned that, if diplomacy does not work, "all options are on the table."

When skeptics of strikes do talk about Iranian retaliation, it's of a limited sort: moves to deepen the instability in Iraq, further repression of reformists at home. The idea that Tehran would inaugurate a final showdown with the Great Satan seems too remote to contemplate. But contemplate it we must, because the conventional wisdom is wrong. Iranian leaders would have very real reasons to respond to "surgical" strikes with an all-out assault on U.S. interests designed to provoke the sort of decisive clash that everyone assumes Iran wants to avoid. And the resulting conflict would have far worse consequences for the United States than Iran's ability to create weapons-grade nuclear material.

One reason to believe that Tehran might respond violently, it turns out, is that they have said as much--again and again, in fairly unambiguous terms. Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei recently promised to "wear battle fatigues and be ready to sacrifice myself at the head of the nation." Revolutionary Guards Commander Mohammad Zolqadr has threatened destruction of Gulf oil production in response to U.S. strikes; Defense Minister Ali Shamkhani said, in August of 2004, that Iran would "consider any strike against our nuclear installations as an attack on Iran as a whole, and we will retaliate with all our strength." Ahmadinejad has fumed about Iranian nuclear concessions and boasted that "a popular and fundamentalist government will quickly change that," confident that "no country, no matter how powerful they are, can attack Iran."

Such bluster is usually dismissed as saber rattling. But this assumes that the only sensible Iranian response to U.S. attacks is restraint--when, in fact, a strong argument can be made that its best strategy would be to lash out. To understand why, we need to see the strategic situation as it might look from Tehran, and especially to the hard-liners who now dominate its government.

Begin with two assumptions that an Iranian strategist might well make. First, Iran's nuclear program must continue--slowly, perhaps covertly, but continue nonetheless. Second, the United States (in league with Israel) is determined both to end that nuclear program and to dominate the greater Middle East. Typical were the comments of Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi, who, in 2002, said that the United States was planning to invade Iraq to impose its "hegemony on the whole region and its resources." The Stanley Foundation recently concluded that, after five years of interviews with Iranian officials and scholars, many in Iran today fear that the United States "has never accepted the idea of an Islamic Republic and never will."

Given such views--and also given the intense pride, regional ambitions, and sense of cultural superiority characteristic of the Iranian mindset--hard-liners in Tehran continue to see their two leading responsibilities as defending the Islamic Republic and thwarting U.S. ambitions. A sense of fatalism broods deep within both Iranian culture and radical Islam--the fear that world forces, led by evil cabals, are conspiring to destroy Iranians and Muslims. For hard-line Iranian strategists, then, the question is not whether to choose a war with the United States. A conflict is all but inevitable. The question, instead, is whether Iran picks the battles or allows the Americans to do so. And choosing the battle on Iran's terms could mean choosing it now: It makes far more sense to fight an overextended, exhausted, nearly bankrupt, internationally unpopular United States today than a possibly rested, rejuvenated, more militarily flexible enemy in the future. If Iranian leaders are indeed thinking along these lines, a limited U.S. air strike would simply invite them to manufacture a decisive engagement. The longer Iran waits, on the other hand, the worse its position might become.

We need to keep in mind, too, what we mean when we talk about "Iranian reactions." Iran's government has been a crazy quilt of competing factions and power centers, with hard-line groups like the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps and conservatives in the parliament owning most elements of state power. To imagine an intemperate response to U.S. strikes, we don't need to presume that all Iranian leaders would endorse it--only that the most radical ones would. On their own, they have the ability to stage a sweeping retaliation, regardless of what pragmatic conservatives or reformers might want.

The election of Ahmadinejad has now delivered the last major state organ to the conservatives--and, even among hard-liners, Ahmadinejad stands out. One of the original student revolutionaries in 1979 and later a senior Revolutionary Guards officer, he has promised to oppose Western "decadence." His supporters have a specific agenda. As one of them told The Washington Post, "I picked Ahmadinejad to slap America in the face."

Informed by such thinking, Iran's leaders could decide to respond to U.S. air strikes with an elaborate, ferocious, global provocation designed to draw the United States into a protracted conflict. Iran could expand financial and other support to Hezbollah and other terrorist groups and encourage new attacks on Israel designed to wreck the fragile momentum toward peace with the Palestinians. It could activate agents and cells it has been developing inside Iraq to destabilize the country, tie down U.S. forces, and disrupt the supply lines necessary to enter Iran from the west in the event of a ground war. "If Iran wanted," Iraq's Deputy Foreign Minister Hamid Al Bayati said in February, "it could make Iraq a hell for the United States."

Meanwhile, with its limited air and naval assets, Iran could strike at U.S. military forces throughout the region. Tehran's regular military has aging equipment--but, as the Center for Strategic and International Studies' military expert Anthony Cordesman pointed out in a December 2004 analysis, the Revolutionary Guards represent a more skilled military-within-a-military, with ground forces, naval units, missiles, and other forces under its command; a leadership composed of die-hard conservatives; and a mission to protect the Islamic Revolution at all costs. The Guards could flood thousands of troops in small units across the porous border with Iraq with orders to link up with Iranian cells or insurgent groups and assault U.S. bases and forces. Meanwhile, Iran could launch as many of its missiles as possible at Iraqi cities, U.S. air bases, and U.S. allies on the Arabian peninsula.

Iran could also strike boldly at world oil supplies, disrupting traffic in the Strait of Hormuz--through which 15 million barrels of oil flow daily--with air and naval attacks. According to Cordesman, for example, Iran is believed to have more than 2,000 naval mines, some of them very modern, and the potential to deploy them from either large mine-laying ships or hundreds of smaller craft. Iran could hit Saudi Arabia, and its oil production, directly--including the huge export terminals at Ras Tanura and Ras Juaymah. Combined with an end to Iran's own oil exports (of three to four million barrels a day), these attacks would send the world economy into a tailspin.

Iran could then trigger the special international units of the Revolutionary Guards--the so-called "Quds" forces. They reportedly have a large secret budget, officers working out of many Iranian embassies, and strong links with organizations in areas ranging from Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan to Turkey, Europe, and North America. This organization could generate a wave of terrorist attacks against U.S. embassies, military bases, companies, and allies all over the globe.

Faced with the indefinite disruption of the international system and widespread attacks on its forces and interests--and perhaps its homeland as well--the United States might be forced to intervene with ground forces, with the goal of regime change. Gathering the concentrated forces necessary for a large-scale move into Iran would take months--time during which oil prices would continue to surge, world economic growth would continue to stall, and Iranian-sponsored terrorists would continue to hit U.S. targets. Washington would have to draw every available Army and Marine unit not already in Iraq, as well as many naval and air assets, into the region for an Iranian campaign; the global U.S. military presence would be essentially on hold until the conflict ended.

Once the invasion did begin, the Iranians could rely on their rugged terrain to hold up U.S. forces in the mountain ranges that run along the western corridor of the country. Tehran could also disperse its military into small units, marshal the efforts of millions of members of its civilian militias, and undertake an arduous guerrilla campaign. A military analyst based in Tehran told a Western reporter in early 2005 that Iran had spent the past year developing "their tactics of 'asymmetrical' war, which would aim not at resisting a penetration of foreign forces," but instead at waging a guerrilla campaign once the Americans had arrived. Tehran could generate a rebellion many times more destructive, and more legitimate in the eyes of its people, than the one in Iraq.

To be sure, lashing out carries major risks for Iran: It would place the physical security of the country and regime in danger. But many Iranian leaders may believe that their power is already at risk and might see U.S. air strikes as confirmation that a final reckoning is at hand.

If, on the other hand, Iran sits back and absorbs an attack, tough-minded thinkers in Tehran are likely to argue, Washington will believe that it can assault Iran at will. Many Iranians (not just hard-liners) would see a passive response as weak, cowardly, and unbefitting a proud people. Persian culture has a strong tradition of glorious defeat in service of a sacred cause. If we offer the hard-liners a chance to martyr themselves in the name of cultural heroism, they might just take us up on it.

Comparing the Iranian and North Korean cases is instructive. The reason the military option seems nonsensical in Korea is not because it wouldn't work (though that might be true). It's because of the North's presumed reaction, which would be to destroy Seoul. In the Iranian case, the opposite assumption seems to be in play--that Iran has no similarly catastrophic responses available to it. But that assumption is based as much on hope and wishful thinking as on any form of analysis.

A war against Tehran and its allies in the Islamic world would pose an even greater threat to U.S. national interests than a continued Iranian nuclear program--at least one under International Atomic Energy Agency (iaea) inspections, and one in which the Iranians publicly reject the idea of building bombs. The proposed EU deal aims to halt Iran's uranium-enrichment program but not all of its civilian nuclear activities--Iran would be allowed to operate its reactors and conduct other research under international supervision. Even if a small part of Iran's enrichment program continued, it could be limited to civilian purposes by inspections, including short-notice challenge visits under the iaea's so-called "additional protocol." There is some evidence that Iran is amenable to such terms--that the sticking point is not inspections as much as preserving the sovereign right to a civilian nuclear fuel cycle.

Such a fuel cycle need not present a military threat, assuming strict inspections. To get from there to a bomb, Tehran would either have to build a parallel, secret enrichment program or rashly toss out the iaea regime. The first route would be slow and risky; the second would clearly demonstrate that Iran sought nuclear weapons and trigger an international crisis that would leave Tehran confronting not just the United States, but also the combined weight of world opinion. Either way, the risk isn't immediate: According to a report this week in The Washington Post, the latest U.S. National Intelligence Estimate puts an Iranian bomb at least a decade away.

An Iran under iaea watch would possess a nuclear program but no significant bomb-making capability. Tehran's hard-liners could claim a victory and begin hinting about a "virtual" nuclear deterrent but would know that, if they deployed an open arsenal--or, worse, gave fissile material to terrorists--they would likely face every ounce of "shock and awe" that Washington could muster.

Reducing Tehran's nuclear program to a latent, ambiguous capability would achieve basic U.S. interests: no public, tested, clearly weaponized Iranian arsenal; too little fissile material in Iranian hands to allow Tehran to give much away (and enormous dangers to its regime if it did so); and a reaffirmation of the basic iaea system of inspections. Meanwhile, this process could lay the groundwork for the only long-term solution to the problem of Iranian nuclear aspirations: integration into the world economy and a gradual return to reform.

Ahmadinejad is hardly a reformer and reportedly favors socialist-style government planning to deal with his country's manifold economic problems. But most Iranians still want reform. Ahmadinejad's support seems to have come from conservative voter turnout drives and his populist appeal to widespread anger at economic stagnation, lack of opportunity, and corruption in Tehran. When his state-run, autarkic economic program fails, the same demands that ushered him into power will prove his undoing--if the West doesn't gift-wrap a nationalist rallying cry for him in the meantime.

Engaging an autocratic regime in order to buy a tentative cap on its nuclear ambitions and hoping that political reforms will outpace bomb-making are hardly neat and tidy solutions or ones likely to warm the hearts of those who crave bold statements of U.S. global supremacy. But we Americans are always seeing the world as a series of problems to be solved rather than challenges to be managed. Impatience with Iran is likely to become self-defeating; patience, meanwhile, offers no guarantee of success. It remains, however, the best option we have.
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Re:Where Were You When The Next Gulf War Began?
« Reply #4 on: 2005-09-12 03:49:43 »
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[Blunderov] A most cogent, if disturbing analysis. I confess that like many others I had assumed that war against Iran was now out of the question; that Bush is too stretched to undertake it.

Where, I wondered, would he find the boots to put on the ground? He can hardly abandon Iraq I thought, but on consideration, he could conceivably withdraw to the several large bases situated conveniently near Iran and leave the Iraqis to self-immolate. Air power is total and the bases could easily be defended should the Iraqis the find any time to spare from their own civil war.  Even so, the new availability of 130,000 troops would probably be insufficient for the purpose. The Iranians would cause massive complications to say the least, something for which they have had ample time to prepare.

Or he could go nuclear.

I see no political reason why the Hiroshima argument should not prevail now as then.  And the way has been paved.

http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/library/policy/dod/npr.htm

<snip> the strike element of the New Triad can provide greater flexibility in the design and conduct of military campaigns to defeat opponents decisively. Non-nuclear strike capabilities may be particularly useful to limit collateral damage and conflict escalation.</snip>

[Blunderov] The situation would require a very fast and decisive outcome were the US to undertake this war. Anything else would be a disaster.

George Bush is a dangerous maniac and a politically wounded one to boot. I now fear the worst. <sound of bubble popping> Thanks Hermit.

(If I had a magic wand, the USA would be summarily expelled from the UN for the policies expressed in that nuclear posture alone. And with full sanctions. But we are, as you say, fucked.)

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Re:Where Were You When The Next Gulf War Began?
« Reply #5 on: 2005-09-12 04:36:08 »
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[Blunderov] PS to my previous.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/11/politics/11nukes.html?ex=1284091200&en=e2e0062d9c87b726&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss

Pentagon Studies Pre-Emptive Nuclear Strikes
By DAVID S. CLOUD
Published: September 11, 2005
WASHINGTON, Sept. 10 - The Pentagon is preparing new guidelines governing the use of nuclear weapons that foresee possible pre-emptive strikes against terrorist groups or nations planning to use unconventional weapons against the United States.

The draft document, the Doctrine for Joint Nuclear Operations, updates procedures for using nuclear weapons that were last changed in 1995. The plan is undergoing final review by the Pentagon's joint staff and by Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld, and it could be finished in the next several weeks, according to a Pentagon official. The document was first reported by The Washington Post.

Much of the document restates longstanding procedures for launching a nuclear strike, including declarations that such a decision requires explicit presidential approval.

A Pentagon official confirmed that a copy of the document posted on the national security Web site GlobalSecurity.org was authentic.

The Bush administration said in 2002 that a pre-emption strategy was necessary to deal with emerging threats from terrorist groups seeking unconventional weapons and from the proliferation of nuclear capability to numerous countries.

Although the unclassified document reasserts the longstanding American position that it will not make definitive statements about when nuclear weapons will be used, it describes several scenarios for using them, including circumstances under which pre-emptive use might be necessary.

The scenarios for a possible attack described in the draft include one in which an enemy is using "or intending to use" unconventional weapons against the United States, its allies or civilian populations. Another scenario for a possible pre-emptive strike is in the event of an "imminent attack from adversary biological weapons that only effects from nuclear weapons can safely destroy."

The draft document also envisions the use of atomic weapons for "attacks on adversary installations," including "deep, hardened bunkers containing chemical or biological weapons."

A copy of the draft document dated March 15 was posted on a Pentagon Web site for several months but was removed over the summer, according to the Pentagon official, who said he could not explain why it was taken down.

The draft says that to deter a potential adversary from using unconventional weapons, the United States must make it "believe the United States has both the ability and will to pre-empt or retaliate promptly with responses that are credible and effective." The draft also says American policymakers have "repeatedly rejected calls for adoption of 'no first use' policy of nuclear weapons since this policy could undermine deterrence."

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Re:Where Were You When The Next Gulf War Began?
« Reply #6 on: 2005-09-12 12:12:23 »
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[[ author reputation (1.66) beneath threshold (3)... display message ]]

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Re:Where Were You When The Next Gulf War Began?
« Reply #7 on: 2005-09-12 16:14:59 »
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[Blunderov] I share your despondency. Unfortunately I spotted another Stormy Petrel.

http://malakandsky.blogspot.com/2005/08/coming-911-for-dummies.html

<snip>
According to Philip Giraldi, “the United States is developing a plan for the bombing of supposed military targets in Iran, which would include the use of NUCLEAR WEAPONS. The US strike would take place after a 9/11-type terrorist attack on the US. However, the US attack would not depend on Iran actually being involved in the terrorism. In short, the planned attack on Iran would be analogous to the unprovoked attack on Iraq.”</snip>

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