Guns of August

26Jun08

 Israel has succeeded in elevating the tension over Iran’s nuclear program with its air maneuvers last week.  An increasing number of Western news outlets are taking the repeated threats by various Israeli leaders seriously.  They now openly worry that with a lame-duck pseudo-president Bush unwilling to do the bloody work himself, and lacking any power of persuasion over Israel, Olmert’s administration may be tempted to repeat its 1981 Osirak adventure.

Newton’s law of proliferation

Iranian columnist Kaveh Afrasiabi, who up to now has been downplaying the risk of war, is now worried that Israel may bring about the conflict the rest of the world hopes to avoid.  The most immediate effect of Israeli posturing may be to throw a spanner into the ongoing, if fitful, talks between Iran and the EU.   Iran is also considering varyng sub-proposals from the US and Russia.

The European Union’s foreign policy chief, Javier Solana, received a positive initial response from Iran’s politicians during a recent visit, emphasizing Tehran’s preparedness to engage in serious negotiations.

But by escalating threats against Iran precisely at a time the EU is pushing the arch of diplomacy toward Iran, Israel has made it nearly impossible for Tehran to show a great deal of flexibility, since that would be widely interpreted as letting Israel bully Tehran. In terms of regional calculus and Iran’s national prestige, this would compromise Iran’s position in the Middle East and undermines its national security.

British Foreign Secretary David Miliband has penned an article in the International Herald Tribune, titled “Diplomacy must work”, which paints a reasonable picture of “Iran Six” diplomacy but which alludes to the self-defeating and unreasonable Iranian approach.

Conspicuously missing in Miliband’s piece, alluding to Iranian nationalism, is any understanding of the Iranian collective psychology and the operative logic of Iranian nationalism that, historically, does not respond well to external pressures or threats.

Afrasiabi warns that as the threats continue, the public and elite support that Tehran needs to support negotiation and compromise may erode.  In which case, Iran may retrench by withdrawing from the IAEA process altogether.  At worse, Iran may initiate steps to “break out” and become a full-fledged nuclear weapons state.  This would be a disastrous blow to the nonproliferation regime already eroded by the US’ efforts to render more permanent its nuclear weapons infrastructure.

Israeli leaders are meeting with Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs Micahel Mull this week.  It is widely suspected the lead topic of discussion is Iran. 

The pertinent question is what can be achieved by this military option?

A short answer, reflected in Larijani’s warning that threats against Iran will result in a “done deal”, is that the exercise of the military option will have the opposite effect of putting Iran on the path of nuclear proliferation.This is because Iran would likely end its cooperation with the United Nations’ International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and embark on clandestine nuclear proliferation in response to the military aggression.

Unless Israel is prepared to undertake a “permanent war” with Iran, implying constant attacks on Iran, its leaders must realize that their military option may damage some Iranian installations, but most likely Iran’s nuclear program would survive and in all likelihood would restart without the benefit of outside supervision and scrutiny, fully geared to the goal of nuclear deterrence.

This is completely overlooked by pro-Israel US politicians, such as former US envoy to the United Nations, John Bolton, who is nowadays prodding the Israelis to launch their attack before the end of President George W Bush’s presidency in a matter of months. Bolton seems not to address the “day after”, that is, how Iranians will shed their stated aversion toward nuclear weapons and go full nuclear if they are subjected to an unprovoked warfare.

But Bolton and other US neo-conservatives have shown no qualms about “obliterating Iran” if need be to secure the state of Israel, irrespective of certain voices in Israel, such as a former head of the spy agency Mossad, who dare to tell the Israeli public that the Iran threat has been “exaggerated” or that there is a “mirage of a Shi’ite threat”, to echo the heading of an article in the daily Ha’aretz by Zvi Bar’el.

Although the costs of a war on Iran would be prohibitively high, and Larijani has rightly asked the “Iran Six” to heed the warning of the IAEA’s Mohammad ElBaradei that the region will be engulfed in a “ball of fire”, Israel has nonetheless boxed itself in in its verbal commitment to prevent Iran from going nuclear, even though the evidence on that matter is seriously lacking.

Israel, which has 150 nuclear bombs, according to a recent statement by former US president Jimmy Carter, constantly projects onto Iran its own hegemonist predilections and, in the words of Shmvel Bar, who sits on Israel’s National Security Council, exaggerates the consequences of a nuclear Iran by predicting: “It would become the hegemon of the region. It would dictate oil prices. It would lead the Muslim world.” This is nuclear reductionism pure and simple.

First, a nuclear Iran would have no bearing whatsoever on the price of oil. Second, just as nuclear Pakistan has not been able to lead the Muslim world, so similarly a nuclear Iran would not be able to play such a role, in light of the Muslim world’s Sunni majority and the Arab-dominated Middle East. Third, Iran has repeatedly offered the olive branch of collective security to its neighbors in the Persian Gulf and it is unclear how a nuclear Iran, that would spur Saudi Arabia’s reacting by going nuclear too, would help Iran’s regional policies or “ambitions”?

As for Iran’s need to counter the US in the region, Iraq in particular will for the foreseeable future be a key theater in which US forces will be pinned down, not warranting any Iranian nuclear shield (dispensing here with the issue of a lack of second-strike capability and the US’s dominant force). In sum, the Israeli discourse leaves a lot to be desired and is bottom-line defective.

I cannot recall Afrasiabi contemplating in print that Iran might actually undertake nuclear weapons.  So even he is worried. 

…And from the Economist

The London Economist is England’s U.S. News and World Report, which usually follows a Conservative Party line but not as crazy as say, the US’ Fox network or the UK Indepdendent.   On Iran they have erroneously agreed with Bush that Iran is a threat, a nuclear weapons state in development, but they have stopped short of the Dick Cheney bomb-’em- into-the-stone-age sensibility. 

Now the editors of the Economistare worried as well, and have nooked up from their Pimms-and-sodas long enough to warn of the conseqeunces of an Israeli strike.   A June 26 article, “It’s later than you think”  says:

Until recently, fears of an Israeli or American attack on Iran had been receding. The prospect of an American strike diminished after America’s intelligence services published their inconvenient finding last December that Iran had stopped trying to design a nuclear weapon in 2003. At the same time, diplomats have been able to point to the sort of progress diplomats point to: a series of Security Council resolutions, supported by Russia and China as well as the West, telling Iran to stop its uranium-enriching centrifuges. Sanctions have been applied as well: in the latest, the European Union decided this week to freeze the assets of Iran’s biggest bank, Bank Melli. Slowly but surely, you might conclude, the normal tools of diplomacy are being brought to bear, removing the need for anything worse. Besides, in November Americans may elect Barack Obama as president. Doesn’t he promise to sort out Iran by means of direct talks at the highest level, a necessary step that George Bush could never quite bring himself to take?

If those were your reasons for ceasing to worry, think again. Despite that American intelligence finding, neither Israel nor many other governments believe that Iran has given up its interest in nuclear weapons.Yes, the UN has passed resolutions and imposed some mild sanctions, but Iran has spent two years disregarding them, continuing to spin its centrifuges and to call for the destruction of Israel. It may well be true that Mr Bush is disinclined to bomb Iran now that he is a lame duck, but the possible advent of a President Obama might just make Israel more inclined to do so itself. As the hawkish John Bolton, a former Bush administration official, said this week, Israel may think the best time to attack would be during America’s presidential transition—too late to be accused of influencing the election and before needing a new president’s green light.

Of course, John Bolton is not merely a neo-con, he is a certifiable lunatic, and the world would be a better place if people just stopped quoting his insane ruminations.   The Economist muddles on:

Don’t do it

Such an attack would be a mistake. Even if it did not turn the region into a “fireball”, as Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, the world’s nuclear watchdog, has predicted, it would certainly provoke retaliation. Given Iran’s size and sophistication, it would at best delay rather than end whatever plans the Iranians have to become a nuclear military power. Even if Iran did get the bomb, it would probably not use it for fear of Israel’s bigger, existing stockpile. And in the (admittedly improbable) event that Iran is telling the truth when it denies having any such ambition, nothing would change its mind faster than an Israeli strike.

The trouble is, this logic looks different from Tel Aviv. Given their history, a lot of Israelis will run almost any risk to prevent a state that calls repeatedly for their own state’s destruction from acquiring the wherewithal to bring that end about. Till now, the world has talked a lot and applied some modest sanctions to stop Iran’s dash to enrich uranium. It is time to apply much tougher ones, in the hope that it is not already too late.

This, of course, is the wrong conclusion.  Sanctions are war by other means, and may also provoke reaction.  But the US is no longer in control, if it ever was.  Bush is counting his golf strokes until retirement.  The fate of the region may be decided by the old men in Jerusalem and their bunker mindset.

 

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