Iran Attack Not a Problem, Say War Wonks
By Russ Wellen
Created Jun 23 2008 - 4:09pm
[1]
Earlier this month, more than a hundred Israeli fighter pilots strutted
their right stuff back and forth over the eastern Mediterranean. "There is
no way," Helena Cobban reminds us at Just World News [2], that this
exercise
wasn't either condoned by the US or a "US-sup****ted or US-funded exercise,
carried out by Israeli pilots in planes given to Israel by the US."
Meanwhile, an Israeli official had no qualms about designating it "a dress
rehearsal." For what? A theatrical production of "Apocalypse Now"?
But, said International Atomic Energy Agency chief Mohamad ElBaradei [3],
"If a military strike is carried out against Iran at this time. . . it
would
make me unable to continue my work." Talk about your hollow threats:
Should
he follow through, the Bush administration and Israel would jump for joy.
Like Aung San Suu Kyi of Myanmar, ElBaradei is a Nobel Laureate who gets
no
respect (though at least he's not under house arrest like she is). His
outburst, however, may just have been a spontaneous expression of
frustration. When it comes to Iran, the administration never seems to run
out of tricks.
Like this one -- even if it does read like something from the late Weekly
World News -- as posted by the esteemed Juan Cole at Informed Comment [4].
It seems that a conservative Iranian newspaper re****ted that, "Iranian
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is alleging that the US had planned to
abduct
him when he visited Baghdad in March, but that the plan was foiled."
In response, a commenter tagged BF noted: "The news in Persian further
states that according to Mr Ahmadinejad, the US had intended to blackmail
Iran for the release of him. [Thus illustrating] the illusion that Mr
Ahmadinejad must entertain" about Iranians' love for him. Still, as we all
know, there are few depths to which Bush & Co. won't stoop. Besides, the
task could have been delegated to Iraqi proxies.
Meanwhile, the US, Russia, Britain, France, and China (the P5 + 1 --
Germany) offered economic incentives to persuade Tehran to halt uranium
enrichment. In response, Reuters [5] re****ted Thursday, Ahmadinejad called
the six nations "the bullying powers."
Also Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki informed the US that since it's
"currently testing a fifth-generation nuclear bomb. . . . America is not
in
the position to be happy or unhappy with our peaceful nuclear activities."
Still, he notified the P5+1 countries of Iran's readiness to negotiate.
But what if the administration finally wears down the Pentagon and gets it
to agree to attack Iran? No big deal. Those who think it might kill untold
numbers of Iranians, expose us to large-scale blowback, and disrupt the
oil
markets are just Chicken Littles.
At least that's what a recent re****t from the Wa****ngton Institute for
Near
East Policy would have us believe. As David Isenberg [6] explains at Asia
Times Online, WINEP, founded by an AIPAC research director who later
became
ambassador to Israel, is regarded as integral to the pro-Israel lobby.
To be fair, Patrick Clawson and Michael Eisenstadt, the authors of the
re****t, entitled "The Last Resort: Consequences of Preventive Military
Action against Iran [7]," don't exactly advocate military action against
Iran. At least not yet: "The time is not right. . . diplomacy continues to
offer at least a modest prospect of success."
But, they maintain, "the time is right to *****s the possible
consequences"
of an attack. First, though, especially because the administration has a
credibility problem after invading Iraq under false pretenses, they insist
on consensus. Then, should push come to shove, Clawson and Eisenstadt have
a
novel idea. The most effective strikes, "may not necessarily be against
nuclear facilities. Iran is extraordinarily vulnerable to attacks on its
oil
ex****t infrastructure."
Iran can get by without oil ex****t revenues for a year, they explain. But
"the political shock of losing the oil income could cause Iran to rethink
its nuclear stance -- in ways that attacks on its nuclear infrastructure
might not."
But what about our economy? If "the choice is between higher oil prices"
and
a nuclear Iran, they lecture us, higher oil prices "are not clearly the
greater evil."
Clawson and Eisenstadt do warn that after a strike, Iran might conclude
that
its nuclear program "should be pursued with greater urgency." In the short
term, though, they seem to think that retaliation on the part of Iran
might
pose but a minor inconvenience.
For example, regarding fears that Iran's navy could stop the ****pment of
oil
through the Persian Gulf, they write: "Large tankers are very difficult to
sink. . . Mines can be swept. . . sea lanes cleared."
Even more comforting, the "Strait of Hormuz is sufficiently broad and deep
to enable tankers to bypass the hulks of wrecked or sunken ****ps." When it
comes to a good cause, what's a lost ****p or three and the bloated bodies
of
a few hundred US naval personnel bobbing on the surface of the Persian
Gulf?
Clawson and Eisenstadt also make a perfunctory nod to concerns about enemy
casualties. "Anecdotal re****ting from recent wars in the Balkans and Iraq
featuring precision strikes [sic] indicates that after a few days of
bombing, civilians realized that as long as they stayed away from military
facilities or potential strategic targets, they could go about their
business reasonably safely, even during air raids." We're sure that, in
the
same situation, the authors' families would have just as little trouble
adjusting.
Besides, Clawson and Eisenstadt write, a conflict would likely "settle
down
after several weeks. . . into a protracted, low-intensity conflict,
involving terrorist attacks by Iranian agents or surrogates against U.S.
interests around the world, and U.S. retaliatory actions." You can see why
Ms. Cobban called the re****t the "Cakewalk paper."
Soft-pedaling the horror of a massive air attack after what we've wrought
in
Iraq is bad enough. But think tanks like WINEP and the neocon American
Enterprise Institute leapfrog over exactly why they've got it in for Iran.
In other words, they make no mention of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation
Treaty's fourth amendment, which provides signees to the pact with the
right
to nuclear energy. As for nuclear weapons, think-tankers -- most of
Wa****ngton, in fact -- and the US public seem incapable of seeing the
issue
from the viewpoint of the Persian and Arab street.
How come their countries can't have nuclear weapons when their neighbor
Israel has not only developed them, but, like North Korea and Pakistan,
failed to even sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty? Not to mention
that the US flagrantly disregards its commitment to the NPT to disarm in a
timely fa****on.
"We're all grown-ups here," Wa****ngton tells itself. "Sure, we're making
ElBaradei's life miserable and giving little more than lip service to the
NPT. But, come on. Iran is mad. Its president is apoplectic, its religion
apocalyptic."
The irony, of course, is that this applies at least as much to the US as
Iran. But Iran has an own irony of its own to contend with. At Forbes.com,
David Andelman [8] reviewed a book published in France last year titled
Iran, Le Choix des Armes by Francois Heisbourg, a former French government
official.
Without a nuclear weapon, Andelman writes, Iran "is well placed to claim
leader****p" of the Middle East. Yet "if armed with a nuclear weapon, its
advantage eva****ates, as a nuclear arms race in the region would find a
host
of other neighboring states buying their way into the nuclear arms club."
Meanwhile, the American public isn't putting up much in the way of
obstacles
before the administration. We allowed it to attack Iraq because its
reasons,
however false, made sense to us. Now we're allowing it to attack Iran
because it makes no sense to us.
Perhaps because common sense enjoys the status of an eleventh commandment
in
America, we fail to appreciate the lack of it on the part of the
administration, even after Iraq and Katrina. Also, for better or worse,
we're constitutionally incapable of summoning up sufficient cynicism to
imagine the moral depravity required to start another war.
_______
Russ Wellen is a staff blogger at Scholars & Rogues and the editor of
Freezerbox. His core concerns are: 1. American foreign policy, 2. nuclear
deproliferation, and 3. the enduring enigma that is the American mind.
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"A little patience and we shall see the reign of witches pass over, their
spells dissolve, and the people recovering their true sight, restore their
government to its true principles. It is true that in the meantime we are
suffering deeply in spirit,
and incurring the horrors of a war and long oppressions of enormous public
debt. But if the game runs sometimes against us at home we must have
patience till luck turns, and then we shall have an op****tunity of winning
back the principles we have lost, for this is a game where principles are
at
stake."
-Thomas Jefferson
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