The balance in the internal White House debate over Iran has shifted back in favour of military action before President George Bush leaves office in 18 months, the Guardian has learned.
The shift follows an internal review involving the White House, the Pentagon and the state department over the last month. Although the Bush administration is in deep trouble over Iraq, it remains focused on Iran. A well-placed source in Washington said: "Bush is not going to leave office with Iran still in limbo."
To put it succinctly, the consequences for the US of a war with Iran right now would be bad. Very bad.
DB at Hullaballo (Closer 07/15/07) gives us a run-down on some of the previous reasons we've had to be concerned that Bush is going into Iraq, including this quotation from Zbigniew Brzezinski in his testimony to Congress of 02/01/07:
If the United States continues to be bogged down in a protracted bloody involvement in Iraq, the final destination on this downhill track is likely to be a head-on conflict with Iran and with much of the world of Islam at large. A plausible scenario for a military collision with Iran involves Iraqi failure to meet the benchmarks; followed by accusations of Iranian responsibility for the failure; then by some provocation in Iraq or a terrorist act in the U.S. blamed on Iran; culminating in a “defensive” U.S. military action against Iran that plunges a lonely America into a spreading and deepening quagmire eventually ranging across Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. (emphasis in original)
In that same testimony,...
Brzezinski continued directly:
A mythical historical narrative to justify the case for such a protracted and potentially expanding war is already being articulated. Initially justified by false claims about WMD’s in Iraq, the war is now being redefined as the "decisive ideological struggle" of our time, reminiscent of the earlier collisions with Nazism and Stalinism. In that context, Islamist extremism and al Qaeda are presented as the equivalents of the threat posed by Nazi Germany and then Soviet Russia, and 9/11 as the equivalent of the Pearl Harbor attack which precipitated America’s involvement in World War II. (my emphasis)
Colin Dueck and Ray Takeyh make the case for containment rather than military attack in dealing with Iran's apparent nuclear-weapons program in Iran’s Nuclear ChallengePolitical Science Quarterly Summer 2007. If Cheney and Bush are going to be turning up their war advocacy over Iran, reality-based articles like Dueck's and Takeyh's are even more valuable.
In this one, one of the aspects they mention that's not likely to be stressed by Dick Cheney in his public appearances is that Iran's presumed nuclear-weapons ambitions are driven in significant part by a legitimate concern about instability in nuclear-armed Sunni Pakistan.
They also discuss what a popular issue the nuclear power program is inside Iran across the political spectrum. Even if Iran were suddenly to adopt a far more democratic form of government, that in itself would be unlikely to reduce the desire for pursuing that program.
It's also important to keep in mind that what is going on is the development of Iran's nuclear power program that includes uranium enrichment, an activity that is permitted under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). What the Cheney-Bush administration has been trying to address through the threat of "regime change" is, at least in theory, to deal with a hole in the NPT itself, which is that unranium-enrichment activities that are legal under the NPT can place a country on the verge of its own uranium-based nuclear weapons capability. The uranium part is important, because the acquisition of plutonium for nuclear weapons is a different issue. And our "press corps" has done a lousy job of distinguishing those two issues, for instance in the case of North Korea.
One problem with articles like the Dueck-Takeyh piece is that the conventional for such proposals is to describe the diplomatic and military possibilities in a neutral way, i.e., without special consideration to the particular regime that would have to implement them.
The Cheney-Bush administration has caused a lot of trouble in the world and in the US. But it's not just that their policies are bad. They implementation of the policies has also been incompetent. An overt military attack on Iran will not make that characteristic go away. Nor will the technical abilities or stratgic and tactical talents of the US military be enough to compensate for them. Attacking Iran would be a bad idea right now if we had even the most competent administration imaginable. For the Cheney-Bush administration to attack Iran would be even more certainly a disaster.
Also, an issue that comes up in the Guardian articles as well as in the Dueck-Takeyh piece is the possibility that Israel will attack Iran on its own. The Guardian quotes one of those ubiquitous creatures, an anonymous "Washington source" as saying:
"The red line is not in Iran. The red line is in Israel. If Israel is adamant it will attack, the US will have to take decisive action," Mr Cronin said. "The choices are: tell Israel no, let Israel do the job, or do the job yourself."
Dueck and Takeyh also write that one of the complications of the US selecting a policy of containment if Iran were to acquire nuclear weapons would be:
Israel, however, would probably act militarily prior to this eventuality; we can hardly expect the Israelis to accept with equanimity the prospect of a nuclear-armed regime that hosts international conferences in order to deny that the Holocaust occurred.
Israel has hundreds of nuclear weapons. And, as Dueck and Takeyh observe, "Tehran - like previous authoritarian but survival-oriented government - is extremely unlikely to use such awesome [i.e., nuclear] weapons in a suicidal manner." No, not even giving them to some terrorist. And so containment is an option that is open to Israel, as well. Dueck and Takeyh write at more length:
The Islamic Republic [of Iran] is not an irrational rogue state seeking such weaponry as an instrument of an aggressive, revolutionary foreign policy. This is not an "Islamic bomb" to be handed over to terrorist organizations or exploded in the streets of New York or Washington. The fact is that Iran has long possessed chemical weapons, and has yet to transfer such arms to its terrorist allies. Iran’s cautious leaders are most interested in remaining in power, and fully appreciate that transferring nuclear weapons to terrorists could lead to the type of retaliation from the United States or Israel that would eliminate their regime altogether. For Iran this is a weapon of deterrence and power projection. (my empahasis)
The United States and Europe are committed to the continued existence of Israel in its internationally-recognized 1967 borders. And they would support Israel against a military force that threatened to overrun those borders.
But the United States does not have a mutual defense treaty with Israel. Israel turned down the possibility of such a treaty because they would have to define the borders to be defended. The United States is not and should not be committed to defending Israel's possession of the occupied Palestinian territories.
And if Israel launches a preventive war against Iran, the United States is not committed to helping them carry out such a strike nor defending their military personnel who are pursuing it. The United States should not let our own national interests, including the situation of our military in Iraq, be endangered by a bad Israeli decision.
One of the arugments for war that have been floated is that if we don't do it, Israel will and that would be worse than the US doing it. As an argument for the US going to war, that's crazy. Israel has the ability with their large supply of nuclear weapons to deter even a nuclear-armed Iran. If they chose a different and reckless policy, there's no need for the United States to have our interests damaged even more by supporting it.
