Are we going to war with Iran?

[Guest guest]

http://prisonplanet.com/articles/october2005/191005warwithiran.htm

 

 

 

Are we going to war with Iran?

Dan Plesch evaluates the evidence pointing towards a new conflict in

the Middle East

 

London Guardian/Dan Plesch | October 19 2005

 

The Sunday Telegraph warned last weekend that the UN had a last chance

to avert war with Iran and, at a meeting in London last week, the US

ambassador to the UN, John Bolton, expressed his regret that any

failure by the UN security council to deal with Iran would damage the

security council's relevance, implying that the US would solve the

problem on its own.

 

Only days before, the foreign secretary, Jack Straw, had dismissed

military action as " inconceivable " while both the American president

and his secretary of state had insisted war talk was not on the

agenda. The UN's International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors have

found that Iran has not, so far, broken its commitments under the

nuclear non-proliferation treaty, although it has concealed activities

before.

 

It appears that the UK and US have decided to raise the stakes in the

confrontation with Iran. The two countries persuaded the IAEA board -

including India - to overrule its inspectors, declare Iran in breach

of the non-proliferation treaty (NPT) and say that Iran's activities

could be examined by the UN security council. Critics of this

political process point to the fact that India itself has developed

nuclear weapons and refused to join the NPT, but has still voted that

Iran is acting illegitimately. On the Iranian side there is also much

belligerent talk and pop music now proudly speaks of the nuclear

contribution to Iranian security.

The timing of the recent allegations about Iranian intervention in

Iraq also appears to be significant. Ever since the US refused to

control Iraq's borders in April 2003, Iranian backed militia have

dominated the south and, with under 10,000 soldiers amongst a

population of millions, the British army had little option but to go

along. No fuss was made until now. As for the bombings of British

soldiers, some sources familiar with the US army engineers report that

these supposedly sophisticated devices have been manufactured inside

Iraq for many months and do not need to be imported.

 

But is the war talk for real or is it just sabre rattling? The

conventional wisdom is that for both military and political reasons it

would be impossible for Israel and the UK/US to attack and that, in

any event, after the politically damaging Iraq war, neither Tony Blair

nor George Bush would be able to gather political support for another

attack.

 

But in Washington, Tel Aviv and Downing Street, if not the Foreign

Office, Iran is regarded as a critical threat. The regime in Tehran

continues to demand the destruction of the state of Israel and to

support anti-Israeli forces. In what appeared to be coordinated

releases of intelligence assessments, Israeli and US intelligence

briefed earlier this year that, while Iran was years from a nuclear

weapons capability, the technological point of no return was now imminent.

 

Shortly after the US elections, the vice-president, Dick Cheney,

warned that Israel might attack Iran. Israel has the capability to

attack Iranian targets with aircraft and long-range cruise missiles

launched from submarines, while Iranian air defences are still mostly

based on 25-year-old equipment purchased in the time of the Shah. A US

attack might be portrayed as a more reasonable option than a renewed

Israeli-Islamic confrontation.

 

The US army and marines are heavily committed in Iraq, but soldiers

could be found if the Bush administration were intent on invasion.

Donald Rumsfeld has been reorganising the army to increase front-line

forces by a third. More importantly, naval and air force firepower has

barely been used in Iraq. Just 120 B52 and stealth bombers could

target 5,000 points in Iran with satellite-guided bombs in just one

mission. It is for this reason that John Pike of globalsecurity.org

thinks that a US attack could come with no warning at all. US action

is often portrayed as impossible, not only because of the alleged lack

of firepower, but because Iranian facilities are too hard to target.

In a strategic logic not lost on Washington, the conclusion then is

that if you cannot guarantee to destroy all the alleged weapons, then

it must be necessary to remove the regime that wants them, and regime

change has been the official policy in Washington for many years.

 

For political-military planners, precision strikes on a few facilities

have drawbacks beyond leaving the regime intact. They allow the regime

too many retaliatory options. Certainly, Iran's neighbours in Saudi

Arabia and the Gulf who are worried about the growth of Iranian Shia

influence in Iraq would want any attack to be decisive. From this

logic grows the idea of destroying the political-military

infrastructure of the clerical regime and perhaps encouraging

separatist Kurdish and Azeri risings in the north-west. Some

Washington planners have hopes of the Sunnis of oil-rich Khuzestan

breaking away too.

 

A new war may not be as politically disastrous in Washington as many

believe. Scott Ritter, the whistleblowing former UN weapons inspector,

points out that few in the Democratic party will stand in the way of

the destruction of those who conducted the infamous Tehran embassy

siege that ended Jimmy Carter's presidency. Mr Ritter is one of the US

analysts, along with Seymour Hersh, who have led the allegations that

Washington is going to war with Iran.

 

For an embattled President Bush, combating the mullahs of Tehran may

be a useful means of diverting attention from Iraq and reestablishing

control of the Republican party prior to next year's congressional

elections. From this perspective, even an escalating conflict would

rally the nation behind a war president. As for the succession to

President Bush, Bob Woodward has named Mr Cheney as a likely

candidate, a step that would be easier in a wartime atmosphere. Mr

Cheney would doubtless point out that US military spending, while huge

compared to other nations, is at a far lower percentage of gross

domestic product than during the Reagan years. With regard to Mr

Blair's position, it would be helpful to know whether he has committed

Britain to preventing an Iranian bomb " come what may " as he did with Iraq.