WWIII or Bust: Implications of a US Attack on Iran

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Sun, 19 Feb 2006 14:18:17 -0800

 

 

 

Heather Wokusch | WWIII or Bust: Implications of a US Attack on Iran

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/021906D.shtml

 

Witnessing the Bush administration's drive for an attack on Iran is

like being a passenger in a car with a raving drunk at the wheel,

according to Heather Wokusch.

 

 

 

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/021906D.shtml

 

WWIII or Bust: Implications of a US Attack on Iran

By Heather Wokusch

Common Dreams

 

Saturday 18 February 2006

 

This notion that the United States is getting ready to attack Iran

is simply ridiculous... Having said that, all options are on the table.

- George W. Bush, February 2005

 

Witnessing the Bush administration's drive for an attack on Iran

is like being a passenger in a car with a raving drunk at the wheel.

Reports of impending doom surfaced a year ago, but now it's official:

under orders from Vice President Cheney's office, the Pentagon has

developed " last resort " aerial-assault plans using long-distance B2

bombers and submarine-launched ballistic missiles with both

conventional and nuclear weapons.

 

How ironic that the Pentagon proposes using nuclear weapons on the

pretext of protecting the world from nuclear weapons. Ironic also that

Iran has complied with its obligations under the Non-Proliferation

Treaty, allowing inspectors to " go anywhere and see anything, " yet

those pushing for an attack, the USA and Israel, have not.

 

The nuclear threat from Iran is hardly urgent. As the Washington

Post reported in August 2005, the latest consensus among U.S.

intelligence agencies is that " Iran is about a decade away from

manufacturing the key ingredient for a nuclear weapon, roughly

doubling the previous estimate of five years. " The Institute for

Science and International Security estimated that while Iran could

have a bomb by 2009 at the earliest, the US intelligence community

assumed technical difficulties would cause " significantly delay. " The

director of Middle East Studies at Brown University and a specialist

in Middle Eastern energy economics both called the State Department's

claims of a proliferation threat from Iran's Bushehr reactor

" demonstrably false, " concluding that " the physical evidence for a

nuclear weapons program in Iran simply does not exist. "

 

So there's no urgency - just a bad case of deju vu all over again.

The Bush administration is recycling its hype over Hussein's supposed

WMD threat into rhetoric about Iran, but look where the charade got us

last time: tens of thousands of dead Iraqi civilians, a country

teetering on civil war and increased global terrorism.

 

Yet the stakes in Iran are arguably much higher.

 

Consider that many in the US and Iran seek religious salvation

through a Middle Eastern blowout. " End times " Christian

fundamentalists believe a cataclysmic Armageddon will enable the

Messiah to reappear and transport them to heaven, leaving behind

Muslims and other non-believers to face plagues and violent death.

Iran's new Shia Islam president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, s to a

competing version of the messianic comeback, whereby the skies turn to

flames and blood flows in a final showdown of good and evil. The

Hidden Imam returns, bringing world peace by establishing Islam as the

global religion.

 

Both the US and Iran have presidents who arguably see themselves

as divinely chosen and who covet their own country's

apocalypse-seeking fundamentalist voters. And into this tinderbox Bush

proposes bringing nuclear weapons.

 

As expected, the usual suspects press for a US attack on Iran.

Neo-cons who brought us the " cakewalk " of Iraq want to bomb the

country. There's also Defense Secretary Rumsfeld, busy coordinating

the action plan against Iran, who just released the Pentagon's

Quadrennial Defense Review calling for US forces to " operate around

the globe " in an infinite " long war. " One can assume Rumsfeld wants to

bomb a lot of countries.

 

There's also Israel, keen that no other country in the region

gains access to nuclear weapons. In late 2002, former Prime Minister

Ariel Sharon said Iran should be targeted " the day after " Iraq was

subdued, and Benjamin Netanyahu, leader of the Likud Party, recently

warned that if he wins the presidential race in March 2006, Israel

will " do what we did in the past against Saddam's reactor, " an obvious

reference to the 1981 bombing of the Osirak nuclear facility in Iraq.

It doesn't help that Iran's Ahmadinejad has called the Holocaust a

myth and said that Israel should be " wiped off the map. "

 

In the eyes of the Bush administration, however, Iran's worst

transgression has less to do with nuclear ambitions or anti-Semitism

than with the petro-euro oil bourse Tehran is slated to open in March

2006. Iran's plan to allow oil trading in euros threatens to break the

dollar's monopoly as the global reserve currency, and since the

greenback is severely overvalued due to huge trade deficits, the move

could be devastating for the US economy.

 

So we remain pedal to the metal with Bush for an attack on Iran.

 

But what if the US does go ahead and launch an assault in the

coming months? The Pentagon has already identified 450 strategic

targets, some of which are underground and would require the use of

nuclear weapons to destroy. What happens then?

 

You can bet that Iran would retaliate. Tehran promised a " crushing

response " to any US or Israeli attack, and while the country -

ironically - doesn't possess nuclear weapons to scare off attackers,

it does have other options. Iran boasts ground forces estimated at

800,000 personnel, as well as long-range missiles that could hit

Israel and possibly even Europe. In addition, much of the world's oil

supply is transported through the Strait of Hormuz, a narrow stretch

of ocean which Iran borders to the north. In 1997, Iran's deputy

foreign minister warned that the country might close off that shipping

route if ever threatened, and it wouldn't be difficult. Just a few

missiles or gunboats could bring down vessels and block the Strait,

thereby threatening the global oil supply and shooting energy prices

into the stratosphere.

 

An attack on Iran would also inflame tensions in the Middle East,

especially provoking the Shiite Muslim populations. Considering that

Shiites largely run the governments of Iran and Iraq and are a potent

force in Saudi Arabia, that doesn't bode well for calm in the region.

It would incite the Lebanese Hezbollah, an ally of Iran's, potentially

sparking increased global terrorism. A Shiite rebellion in Iraq would

further endanger US troops and push the country deeper into civil war.

 

Attacking Iran could also tip the scales towards a new

geopolitical balance, one in which the US finds itself shut out by

Russia, China, Iran, Muslim countries and the many others Bush has

managed to piss off during his period in office. Just last month,

Russia snubbed Washington by announcing it would go ahead and honor a

$700 million contract to arm Iran with surface-to-air missiles, slated

to guard Iran's nuclear facilities. And after being burned when the

US-led Coalition Provisional Authority invalidated Hussein-era oil

deals, China has snapped up strategic energy contracts across the

world, including in Latin America, Canada and Iran. It can be assumed

that China will not sit idly by and watch Tehran fall to the Americans.

 

Russia and China have developed strong ties recently, both with

each other and with Iran. Each possesses nuclear weapons, and arguably

more threatening to the US, each holds large reserves of US dollars

which can be dumped in favor of euros. Bush crosses them at his

nation's peril.

 

Yet another danger is that an attack on Iran could set off a

global arms race - if the US flaunts the non-proliferation treaty and

goes nuclear, there would be little incentive for other countries to

abide by global disarmament agreements either. Besides, the Bush

administration's message to its enemies has been very clear: if you

possess WMD you're safe, and if you don't, you're fair game. Iraq had

no nuclear weapons and was invaded, Iran doesn't as well and risks

attack, yet that other " Axis of Evil " country, North Korea, reportedly

does have nuclear weapons and is left alone. It's also hard to justify

striking Iran over its allegedly developing a secret nuclear weapons

program, when India and Pakistan (and presumably Israel) did the same

thing and remain on good terms with Washington.

 

The most horrific impact of a US assault on Iran, of course, would

be the potentially catastrophic number of casualties. The Oxford

Research Group predicted that up to 10,000 people would die if the US

bombed Iran's nuclear sites, and that an attack on the Bushehr nuclear

reactor could send a radioactive cloud over the Gulf. If the US uses

nuclear weapons, such as earth-penetrating " bunker buster " bombs,

radioactive fallout would become even more disastrous.

 

Given what's at stake, few allies, apart from Israel, can be

expected to support a US attack on Iran. While Jacques Chirac has

blustered about using his nukes defensively, it's doubtful that France

would join an unprovoked assault, and even loyal allies, such as the

UK, prefer going through the UN Security Council.

 

Which means the wildcard is Turkey. The nation shares a border

with Iran, and according to Noam Chomsky, is heavily supported by the

domestic Israeli lobby in Washington, permitting 12% of the Israeli

air and tank force to be stationed in its territory. Turkey's crucial

role in an attack on Iran explains why there's been a spurt of

high-level US visitors to Ankara lately, including Secretary of State

Condoleeza Rice, FBI Director Robert Mueller and CIA Director Porter

Goss. In fact, the German newspaper Der Spiegel reported in December

2005 that Goss had told the Turkish government it would be " informed

of any possible air strikes against Iran a few hours before they

happened " and that Turkey had been given a " green light " to attack

camps of the separatist Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) in Iran " on the

day in question. "

 

It's intriguing that both Valerie Plame (the CIA agent whose

identity was leaked to the media after her husband criticized the Bush

administration's pre-invasion intelligence on Iraq) and Sibel Edmonds

(the former FBI translator who turned whistleblower) have been linked

to exposing intelligence breaches relating to Turkey, including

potential nuclear trafficking. And now both women are effectively

silenced.

 

While the US public sees the issue of Iran as backburner, it has

little eagerness for an attack on Iran at this time. A USA Today/CNN

Gallup Poll from early February 2006 found that a full 86% of

respondents favored either taking no action or using

economic/diplomatic efforts towards Iran for now. Significantly, 69%

said they were concerned " that the U.S. will be too quick to use

military force in an attempt to prevent Iran from developing nuclear

weapons. " And that begs the question: how can the US public be

convinced to enter a potentially ugly and protracted war in Iran?

 

A domestic terrorist attack would do the trick. Just consider how

long Congress went back and forth over reauthorizing Bush's Patriot

Act, but how quickly opposing senators capitulated following last

week's nerve-agent scare in a Senate building. The scare turned out to

be a false alarm, but the Patriot Act got the support it needed.

 

Now consider the fact that former CIA Officer Philip Giraldi has

said the Pentagon's plans to attack Iran were drawn up " to be employed

in response to another 9/11-type terrorist attack on the United

States. " Writing in The American Conservative in August 2005, Giraldi

added, " As in the case of Iraq, the response is not conditional on

Iran actually being involved in the act of terrorism directed against

the United States. "

 

Chew on that one a minute. The Pentagon's plan should be used in

response to a terrorist attack on the US, yet is not contingent upon

Iran actually having been responsible. How outlandish is this

scenario: another 9/11 hits the US, the administration says it has

secret information implicating Iran, the US population demands

retribution and bombs start dropping on Tehran.

 

That's the worst-case scenario, but even the best case doesn't

look good. Let's say the Bush administration chooses the UN Security

Council over military power in dealing with Iran. That still leaves

the proposed oil bourse, along with the economic fallout that will

occur if OPEC countries snub the greenback in favor of petro-euros. At

the very least, the dollar will drop and inflation could soar, so

you'd think the administration would be busy tightening the nation's

collective belt. But no. The US trade deficit reached a record high of

$725.8 billion in 2005, and Bush & Co.'s FY 2007 budget proposes

increasing deficits by $192 billion over the next five years. The

nation is hemorhaging roughly $7 billion a month on military

operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, and is expected to hit its debt

ceiling of $8.184 trillion next month.

 

So the white-knuckle ride to war continues, with the

administration's goals in Iran very clear. Recklessly naive and

impetuous perhaps, but clear: stop the petro-euro oil bourse, take

over Khuzestan Province (which borders Iraq and has 90% of Iran's oil)

and secure the Straits of Hormuz in the process. As US politician Newt

Gingrich recently put it, Iranians cannot be trusted with nuclear

technology, and they also " cannot be trusted with their oil. "

 

But the Bush administration cannot be trusted with foreign policy.

Its military adventurism has already proven disastrous across the

globe. It's incumbent upon each of us to do whatever we can to stop

this race towards war.

 

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Heather Wokusch is a free-lance writer working on a book for

progressives. She can be contacted via her web site at:

www.heatherwokusch.com.

 

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