Neither the Bush administration nor the ISG are realistic about what the Iraq debacle means for U.S. dominance over the Persian Gulf. But plainly by destroying Saddam Hussein and fracturing Iraq we have unshackled Iran, and that nation of 70 million is becoming a great power in the Gulf region.
But the option of sharing power over the Gulf with Iran -- ceding some power to a Middle Eastern nation that won't be a U.S. proxy -- just can’t fit into the long-standing policy of unilateral U.S. dominance. To restore that dominance we 'have no choice' but to destroy Iran, apparently through a trade embargo, naval blockade, and "shock and awe" air war that will kill thousands and devastate much of Iran's military and civilian infrastructure.
But don’t take my word for this, read Michael Schwartz and Joseph Stroupe, both in this weekend's Asia Times, and try to catch the CSPAN video of last Friday's Center for American Progress panel discussion, 'The Coming Crisis with Iran'. (Flynt Leverett ...
was there, by the way, and during the discussion he revealed that he'd been barred from publishing an editorial critical of Bush/Cheney Iran policy. Check out Leverett again today on CSPAN.)
It reveals something about Washington's divorced-from-new-realities mindset to read Schwartz's take, reposted from tomdispatch, on the ISG report. He finds it soaked with imperialism, offering the current Iraq government "a series of what are essentially non-negotiable demands that would take an already weak and less-than-sovereign government and strip it of control over anything that makes governments into governments." And if the Iraqi government insists on sovereignty, the ISG recommends finding a new government that will do what we want. As for Middle East policy in general, Schwartz writes:
Here is the unfortunate thing. Evidently, the "grave and deteriorating" situation in Iraq has not yet deteriorated enough to convince even establishment American policymakers, who have been on the outside these past years, to follow the lead of the public (as reflected in the latest opinion polls) and abandon their soaring ambitions of Middle East domination. If they haven't done so, imagine where Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney are in policy terms. So far, it seems everyone of power or influence in Washington remains committed to "staying the course".
So, if the ISG’s establishment imperialists endorse a "stay the course" of preserving longstanding U.S. dominance over the Persian Gulf, and Bush and Cheney still plan on fighting for even greater dominance, yet the new reality contains a rising Iran, what choice do those two madmen have but to (attempt to) destroy the new reality? Stroupe, on December 15, comments on the preparations currently afoot:
Bush has stepped up the bellicose talk directed at Iran and is massively reinforcing US military power in and near the Persian Gulf... Furthermore, he has reassured top Israeli leaders that they need not fear that his resolve to deal forcibly with Iran has been weakened one iota. Israeli leaders exited jubilant from their recent meeting with Bush. ...
In fact, Seymour Hersh reports in the The New Yorker magazine that one month before the election, Cheney asserted in a national-security discussion at the Executive Office Building that the administration would be undeterred from pursuing the military option against Iran by any Democratic election victory. The report has credibility because after the election, Bush reassured Israeli leaders of his resolve to use military force to stop Iran, as noted above.
In sum, writes Stroupe,
The flood of military assets into and around the Persian Gulf signifies an impending naval embargo or blockade of Iran designed to attempt to weaken and collapse the regime over several months, with a crushing air campaign held at the immediate ready.
Simultaneously, according to recent reports by intelligence expert Bill Gertz, Arab intelligence sources say the US and Britain have given Western-supported Iranian opposition groups the go-ahead to sabotage energy and other assets and otherwise destabilize the Iranian regime from the inside.
Obviously as far as domestic politics in the U.S. are concerned, writes Stroupe, "rather than to bridle and make compliant this administration, the effect of the Democratic win has every appearance of emboldening and rushing Bush on a dash toward furthering his own foreign-policy goals while he is still in a position to do so."
In other words, there is no recognition by Bush/Cheney of the reality they have created: that Iran is now so strong that it must be allowed to share dominance over the Gulf. No, the goal continues to be a more dominant U.S. than ever. Of course, and oh so condescendingly, the U.S. will be happy to negotiate with Iran (and Syria) as long as advancing the Bush/Cheney dreamworld is non-negotiable. No matter that the new realities 'should' imply change in favor of the 'winners' of recent events in the Middle East, Iran and Syria. Stroupe, no friend of Iran by the way, writes:
In any negotiations for a grand (or any lesser) solution [to the Iraq crisis], the US and Britain would either be mostly forced to accept the favorite terms of Iran and Syria or be left largely unable to verify compliance with and enforce the better terms of an agreement, even if they could get a promise from the regional players to adhere to desirable terms. This is an eventuality the US and Britain simply cannot accept because it would further propel Iran toward its goal of regional ascendancy over the oil-rich Arab regimes - that is the nightmare scenario for the West.
Opportunistic and clever Iran now has the US and Britain pinned into a position of strategic disadvantage, and it fully knows it. So do the much larger sponsoring powers Russia and China. These two have with adroit strategies employed Iran, Syria and other Middle East entities as their proxies and willing adherents in an insidious game to erode further, and even collapse, the Middle East and global leverage and influence of the US.
Syria is offering to "help" the US in Iraq - but it has said the US must first set a definite date for withdrawal of its forces from Iraq. Additionally, ascendant Iran and Syria have massively upstaged a weakened US and Britain by inviting the Iraqi leadership to a closed three-way summit to discuss and plot Iraq's direction. The Iraqi president has accepted the invitation. These are examples of the kind of "help" the US can expect from its regional rivals now that it owns the severely weakened position described above.
In the view of the Bush administration, Iran and Syria have already acquired too much regional influence and leverage and they are misusing those assets to cut directly across US interests and goals. To sit down at this point with them to negotiate an Iraq or wider Middle East solution would only further elevate their respectability, position, influence and leverage and make the US appear as a weak supplicant by comparison. This would boost Iran and Syria along the path of achieving regional control and even dominance.
From the Bush administration's perspective, the only conditions under which the two can be brought into negotiations are that they must first agree unconditionally to bow to the will of the US on a number of key issues. These include Iran's nuclear program and on Syria's exercising of undue influence within Lebanon.
In other words, the administration expects the two virtually to cave in first before it will engage them in an Iraq or wider regional solution. ...
As the U.S. flails about in the region, it has few realistic ‘soft power’ options for putting Iran 'back in its place'. In fact, the soft politics are all moving in Iran’s favor, Stroupe writes:
Even if the US engages in real negotiations with Iran and Syria over the Iraq crisis, the Sunni regimes are extremely unlikely to cast their lot with a severely weakened United States in any negotiations over a regional solution that would end up codifying de facto Persian dominance of the Gulf.
Yet those very regimes have no viable solution among themselves - they cannot stem Iran's regional rise. With the US increasingly in impending forfeiture in Iraq, they may wish to play Israel secretly as counterweight to Iran, but even the hint of such a policy shift risks the total alienation of their vehemently anti-Israel populace and the prospect of sharply increased domestic unrest and an overthrow of the current Sunni regimes. That would play directly into Iran's hands: the oil-rich Arab regimes are strategically stuck, and they know it. ...
Iran is rapidly progressing and is now dangerously close to achieving its regional aim of dominating the oil-rich Persian Gulf, all without the possession of any nuclear weapons. Employing its multiple and potent regional tentacle-like proxies and its mounting energy-based leverage, Iran is advancing on the position that will enable it to herd the oil-rich Arab regimes largely along the lines it wishes. It has far more influence in Iraq and across the region than does the US, whose leverage has collapsed. It is almost single-handedly guiding Iraq's direction and is fully able to hand a complete forfeiture to the US in Iraq, and in the wider Middle East region as a direct result.
So what is the U.S. in fact going to do about the rise of Iran? Anti-Iran efforts by the U.S. will attempt to (better) use the UN as cover for a tight embargo/blockade against Iran. But Russia and China have learned from similar Western efforts against North Korea, so such a UN-sanctioned effort likely will be foiled. Stroupe comments:
What if Russia and China see to it that no Security Council measure against Iran is adopted or, if one is adopted, that it specifically rules out the kind of hyper-extension the US seeks to employ? The US can be expected to move forward with its plans to implement stalwart sanctions and an embargo or blockade anyway, and it will likely get key European support in tangible ways, but with the usual public condemnations. If anyone thinks the US is going to be thwarted in its plans to attempt to cut Iran down to size sooner rather than later, then they haven't been paying sufficient attention.
Air War On Iraq
What would cutting Iran down to size look like? In short, the air war "would ... resemble the opening days of the 2003 air campaign against Iraq," according to globalsecurity.org. If the neocons have their way, summarizes the same website, the U.S. would likely make a "comprehensive set of strikes against a comprehensive range of WMD related targets, as well as conventional and unconventional forces that might be used to counterattack against US forces in Iraq."
More detail is in a May, 2006 report based on Pentagon sources:
The main plan calls for a rolling, five-day bombing campaign against 400 key targets in Iran, including 24 nuclear-related sites, 14 military airfields and radar installations, and Revolutionary Guard headquarters.
At least 75 targets in underground complexes would be attacked with waves of bunker-buster bombs.
Iranian radar networks and air defence bases would be struck by submarine-launched Tomahawk cruise missiles and then kept out of action by carrier aircraft flying from warships in the Indian Ocean and Persian Gulf.
According to the Oxford Research Group, just the initial air attacks would kill many thousands of people:
Military deaths in this first wave of attacks against Iran would be expected to be in the thousands, especially with attacks on air bases and Revolutionary Guard facilities. Civilian deaths would be in the many hundreds at least, particularly with the requirement to target technical support for the Iranian nuclear and missile infrastructure, with many of the factories being located in urban areas. If the war evolved into a wider conflict, primarily to pre-empt or counter Iranian responses, then casualties would eventually be much higher.
The deaths of civilians would be exacerbated by the likelihood that the air war would be launched by surprise:
... any surprise attack will catch many people, be they civilian or military, unawares and unprotected. There will be no opportunity for people to move away from likely target areas as was possible in the days and weeks leading up to the invasion of Iraq.
As one of the participants in 'The Coming Crisis with Iran' panel discussion stated, perhaps it was Barry Rosen (please help me if you know which person I'm trying to remember), the fact that 400 sites would likely be targeted demonstrates the disconnect from any honest attempt to degrade Iran's nuclear program. "400, 500, what difference does it make?" he said, "This is not about really taking out Iran's nuclear program." The panelist went on to say that the point of the attack will be simply to 'teach Iran a lesson' about the consequences of opposing U.S. power.
But I think the U.S. may have a real goal, to bomb Iran some distance back toward the Stone Age, as the U.S. has done to both Iraq and Serbia in recent years. A graphic description of what that kind of 'cutting Iran down to size' would look like in every brutal detail is the plan enthusiastically advanced by Arthur Herman in November's neoconservative Commentary:
The first step would be to make it clear that the United States will tolerate no action by any state that endangers the international flow of commerce in the Straits of Hormuz. Signaling our determination to back up this statement with force would be a deployment in the Gulf of Oman of minesweepers, a carrier strike group’s guided-missile destroyers, an Aegis-class cruiser, and anti-submarine assets, with the rest of the carrier group remaining in the Indian Ocean. The U.S. Navy could also deploy UAV’s (unmanned air vehicles) and submarines to keep watch above and below against any Iranian missile threat to our flotilla.
Our next step would be to declare a halt to all shipments of Iranian oil while guaranteeing the safety of tankers carrying non-Iranian oil and the platforms of other Gulf states. We would then guarantee this guarantee by launching a comprehensive air campaign aimed at destroying Iran’s air-defense system, its air-force bases and communications systems, and finally its missile sites along the Gulf coast. At that point the attack could move to include Iran’s nuclear facilities—not only the "hard" sites but also infrastructure like bridges and tunnels in order to prevent the shifting of critical materials from one to site to another.
Above all, the air attack would concentrate on Iran’s gasoline refineries. It is still insufficiently appreciated that Iran, a huge oil exporter, imports nearly 40 percent of its gasoline from foreign sources, including the Gulf states. With its refineries gone and its storage facilities destroyed, Iran’s cars, trucks, buses, planes, tanks, and other military hardware would run dry in a matter of weeks or even days. This alone would render impossible any major countermoves by the Iranian army. (For its part, the Iranian navy is aging and decrepit, and its biggest asset, three Russian-made Kilo-class submarines, should and could be destroyed before leaving port.)
The scenario would not end here. With the systematic reduction of Iran’s capacity to respond, an amphibious force of Marines and special-operations forces could seize key Iranian oil assets in the Gulf, the most important of which is a series of 100 offshore wells and platforms built on Iran’s continental shelf. North and South Pars offshore fields, which represent the future of Iran’s oil and natural-gas industry, could also be seized, while Kargh Island at the far western edge of the Persian Gulf, whose terminus pumps the oil from Iran’s most mature and copiously producing fields (Ahwaz, Marun, and Gachsaran, among others), could be rendered virtually useless. By the time the campaign was over, the United States military would be in a position to control the flow of Iranian oil at the flick of a switch.
The website Campaign Against Sanctions and Military Intervention in Iran (CASMII) responded to Arthur Herman simply by asking him to "go spend a week in Iran, and see firsthand who the Iranians are, and get to know them better." That seems to me about right: Mr. Herman needs to look into the faces of the victims of his policy proposal.
A CASMII spokesperson, with two scholars, added recently:
Despite ... the current situation in Iraq, U.S. foreign policy is repeating itself in Iran. The Bush administration is isolating and antagonizing Iran instead of negotiating and seeking resolution. As with Iraq, it is lobbing the same threats of sanctions and regime change. The administration specifically refuses to take the "military option" off the table, despite frequent requests to do so from our European allies. ...
According to the Bush administration's own intelligence reports, the war in Iraq is making the United States and its allies significantly less safe. A war with Iran, whatever its composition, will undoubtedly do the same. At the same time, it will all but guarantee Iranians the same cruel fate that befell their brothers and sisters in Iraq.