Strategically Speaking
Likely attack on Iran?
Although plans had been on the anvil for a strike against Iran at least since 2004, President Bush is still in a quandary over it.
Reportedly, the Bush administration had seriously considered this option but shelved it, only for the time being as experts aver. That the USAF set up a highly confidential strategic planning group by the name of "Project Checkmate" in June indicates that the option of air strikes on Iranian targets has not been forgotten.
While, so far, the likely targets in Iran were the 3 major nuclear sites, reportedly there has been a shift in US strategy, where Iran's Revolutionary Guards are now being listed as likely targets, their training, logistic depots, and command and control centers being the main focus. The change in tack is necessitated by the fact that the Bush administration hopes that the counter terrorism and "Iran in war against US" approach, rather than the nuclear threat from Iran, would at this moment appear more convincing and saleable to the American people
The Iran attack option, in whatever form, may seem obvious, but it is neither easy nor simple. It is not easy because evidently a ground offensive is out of the question, with nearly a quarter million of US forces engaged in Afghanistan and Iraq. And simple it isn't because Mr. Bush must find a "coalition of the willing" against Iran like he did with Iraq, to lend a moral shed to his actions. And an air strike has multiple ramifications, the least uncomfortable of which is that it may strengthen Iran's rationale for going nuclear even more.
And that is why he Mr. Bush looking for allies to come on board.
It is, therefore, hard to believe that there is no connection between the currently exaggerated anti-Iran hype that was generated by the Bush administration in 2004 and the recent comments emanating from the French president as well its foreign minister that they are no longer willing to put up with a nuclear capable Iran.
The West, including the French, does not accept Iran's argument that its enrichment program is for peaceful purposes, and that the worst option -- war -- may have to be adopted to see that Iran does not pose a threat to the region (read Israel). To many, the Bush administration is "recycling its hype over Hussein's supposed WMD threat into rhetoric about Iran, well aware of where the charade had got the US last time: tens of thousands of dead Iraqi civilians, a country teetering on civil war and increased global terrorism."
One cannot say with certainty whether the French position indicates a marked change in the French foreign policy, as articulated by the newly elected French president vis-à-vis the Middle East, but that he is not willing to carry the baggage of his predecessor's Middle East policy, certainly Iran policy, is clear. (Reportedly, France is contemplating rejoining the Nato Military Committee, which it left in 1966). The changed policy certainly shows in the French foreign minister's comments that there are but two alternatives -- allow Iran the bomb or bomb Iran. It also shows the stunning hypocrisy of the West, on two counts -- allowing Israel not only to possess the bomb, having helped it to produce about two hundred of them, but also, as recent report reveals, quite willing to allow Iran a 10% stake in the world's largest uranium enrichment plant in France (Iran has shares in Eurodif, an international enrichment plant at Pierrelatte in southern France).
And for France to posture as a protagonist of nuclear non-proliferation seems rather abject, given the French connection in developing Israel's nuclear bomb
But coming as these statements do, at a time when reports and speculations abound regarding US preparation of taking on Iran physically if it did not rescind its uranium enrichment plans, one wonders whether the war drums are being beaten, only the world fails to take notice. Joining the US bandwagon may embolden the Bush administration in taking precipitate action against Iran, although some of its other European allies are more cautious in their willingness to consider war against Iran a viable option, not to speak of the two other big powers Russia and China who do not only think that attacking Iran is a bad idea, they are also unwilling to endorse new sanctions on it, which the US and France are trying to slap on Iran.
Iran has been on the US radar screen since the threat of "Soviet expansionism" vanished with the demise of the Soviet Union, and as history records, US aversion to indigenous nationalism had made many countries who attempted to assert it, including Iran, US's targets. Thus, doctrinal adjustments were made in US policy, which reckoned increasingly non-soviet threats to US interest in the Middle East as its prime concern. And it is not too difficult to surmise who posed the major threat to its interest in the Middle East. That is why many observers, as far back as in the early nineties, had made a worst-case forecast of a war between Iran and US as being not impossible. That the Bush administration now considers the war in Iraq as increasingly a strategic battle between the US and Iran, according to Seymour Hersh, makes the forecast more likely than not to eventuate.
However, if the US had kept the Iran attack option on the back burner, it was purely out of strategic interests.
It is perhaps for good reasons that the likely targets have been changed. Given the lack of evidence of an Iranian nuclear program, an attack on Iran will likely to be seen as an act of aggression. However, replicating an Osirisk in Iran will be counterproductive. Indeed, it will further reinforce Iran's argument of not only going nuclear but also seeking more conventional weapons.
As for addressing what the US administration has claimed to be the root of all its troubles, "Iran's war" against the US in Iraq, very little conclusive evidence has been provided by the Bush administration of Iranian involvement against US troops. And as for Iranian support to various factions in Iraq a very weird situation exists. Those factions that Iran is involved with are those that support the Maliki government, which the US wants to not only survive but be strong enough to take on the security and administrative responsibilities of Iraq. It is convoluted logic to blame Iran for being not supportive enough on one hand and blame it for supporting those factions that are helping prop up the current Iraqi regime.
As for finding Iranian weapons in the hands of Iraqi factions, experts argue that there are variety of ways that such weapons could find their way into Iraq; these do not indicate a deliberate act on the part of the Iranians any more than the 190,000 American small arms gone missing indicate direction from the US administration.
Keeping the option on the back burner permanently is the best choice for Mr. Bush. Attacking Iran will be catastrophic. But the US cares very little for international opinion and is hardly worried about the possible diplomatic isolation it might face.
The author is Editor, Defence & Strategic Affairs, The Daily Star.
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