The Iran We Cannot Avoid
There is no escape from the war Iran is waging against us, the war that started in 1979 and is intensifying with every passing hour. We will shortly learn more about the documents we found accompanying the high-level Iranian terrorist leader we briefly arrested in Hakim’s compound in Baghdad some days ago, and what we will learn–what many key American officials have already learned–is stunning. At least to those who thought that Iran was “meddling” in Iraq, but refused to believe that it was total war, on a vast scale.
Several good journalists are working on this story (see, for example, today’s article by Eli Like in the NY Sun), and the outlines are pretty clear. First, we had good information that terrorists were in Baghdad, and had gone to the compound. We did not know exactly who they were. We entered the compound and arrested everybody who looked like a usual suspect. One of them told us he was the #3 official of the al Quds unit of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps, a particularly vicious group. He was carrying documents, one of which was in essence a wiring diagram of Iranian operations in Iraq. That wiring diagram included both Shi’ite and Sunni terrorist groups, and was of such magnitude that American officials were flabbergasted. It seems that our misnamed Intelligence Community had grossly underestimated the sophistication and the enormity of the Iranian war campaign.
I am told that this information has reached the president, and that it is part of the body of information he is digesting in order to formulate his strategy for Iraq. If he sees clearly what is going on, he must realize that there can be no winning strategy for Iraq alone, since a lot of ‘Iraqi’ activity–not just lethal materiel such as the latest generation of explosive devices, now powerful enough to penetrate the armor of most of our vehicles–is actually Iranian in origin. We cannot ‘solve’ the Iraqi problem without regime change in Iran.
Those of you who have borne with me for the last few years will not be surprised to hear this; what’s new is the apparently irrefutable evidence that has now providentially fallen into our hands. The policy makers will not like this evidence, because it drives them in a direction they do not wish to go. I am told that, at first, there was a concerted effort, primarily but by no means exclusively from the intel crowd, to sit on the evidence, to prevent it from reaching the highest levels. But the information was too explosive, and it is now circulating throughout the bureaucracy.
I have little sympathy for those who have avoided the obvious necessity of confronting Iran, however I do understand the concerns of military leaders, such as General Abizaid, who are doing everything in their considerable power to avoid a two-front war. But I do not think we need massive military power to bring down the mullahs, and in any event we now have a three-front war: within Iraq, and with both Iran and Syria. So General Abizaid’s objection is beside the point. We are in a big war, and we cannot fight it by playing defense in Iraq. That is a sucker’s game. And I hope the president realizes this at last, and that he finds himself some generals who also realize it, and finally demands a strategy for victory.
In passing, it follows from this that the entire debate over more or less troops in Iraq, surge or no surge, Baghdad or Anbar Province, all of it begs the central question. As long as Iran and their appendage in Damascus have a free shot at us, all these stratagems are doomed.
As it happens, this is a particularly good moment to go after the mullahs, because they are deeply engaged in a war of all against all within Iran. I wrote in NRO two weeks ago that the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, had been carted off to the hospital–a major event, of which the Intelligence Community was totally unaware–and his prognosis is very poor. That information has now trickled out, and I found it today in the Italian press and on an Iranian web site. The mullahs are maneuvering for position, and Ahmadi-Nezhad’s ever more frantic rhetoric bespeaks the intensity of the power struggle, which includes former president Rafsanjani, Khamenei’s son, and Ahmadi-Nezhad’s favorite nut ayatollah. We should propose another option to the Iranian people: freedom.
Freedom is what most Iranians want, and, unlike their neighbors in Iraq, they have considerable experience with self-government. The Iranian Constitution of 1906 is remarkably modern, and Iranian intellectuals have in fact been debating the best form of government for their country for many years. Iranian workers are in open revolt against the regime, along with such minority groups as the Kurds, the Balouchis, the Azeris, and the Ahwazi Arabs. In other words, most of the Iranian people. It is long past time for us to speak clearly to them and support their cause.
Just as the likes of General Abizaid need to be replaced with generals who are prepared to attack targets like the terrorist training camps (especially those used by Hizbollah) in Iran and Syria, so we need civilian leadership that will attack our enemies politically. We need new men and women at VOA, at the Board of Broadcasting Governors (Ken Tomlinson, in particular, should be given a medal and replaced), and at the State Department (we should know by now that the touchy-feely approach thus far championed by Karen Hughes is not effective).
This country is loaded with talent, and the mullahs do not have a big constituency here. It cannot be hard to find a critical mass of talented people who want to support democratic revolution in Iran. We lack only the will of the president.
Faster, please.
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Nick Guariglia:That bit on Iranian sponsorship of both Shi’a and Sunni jihadist groups needs to come out more. This shatters all preconceived notions. But why not? Shia Iran supports Sunni Hamas, the Sunni Islamic Courts, etc. This war in Iraq isn’t sectarian, it’s ideological. It’s not civil, it’s regional. You above all have thankfully pointed this out on a consistent basis.
But what is the U.S. to do with those in Iraqi politics — who we’ve already embraced politically — who are cooperating with Tehran? Do we take down a Sadr or a Hakim? That’s the real question. I’d like to believe their influence would be on the wane if their masters in Iran were to go.
Jan 3, 2007 - 2:38 am Dan:Powerful post!
I’ve said for years that Tehran was playing both sides of the Sunni/Shiite divide in Iraq. It made sense. Tehran understands the stakes and is pulling out all stops to ensure victory.
You’ve been proven right, {of course you KNEW you were right, and you KNEW your take wasn’t based on wishful thinking}.
If the President persists in his indirect approach, {id est, stabilize Iraq to destabilize Iran} then the information will prove of little worth.
BUT IF, but if he moves on your suggestion, {destabilize Iran to stabilize Lebanon, Iraq and the Palestinian areas} and starts SERIOUSLY aiding whatever Iranian resistance exists, then we’ll know he truly understands the scale and scope of this civilizational death struggle.
Correct me if I’m wrong here, but there seems to be a clear fear in Washington that if you conclude the war involves Tehran and Damascus, then YOU MUST conclude that the war IS a religious war, IS a modern crusade. You can’t help but sense that Washington intends to avoid running the risk of an islam/Western clash by avoiding the prospect of a US/Iran clash.
There are so many misjudgements informing our non-policy towards Tehran, it’s simply amazing.
As for President Bush, I don’t hold out much hope that he’ll prove equal to the duel between Washington and Tehran.
We’re in the OK Corral, and we better get damn serious.
And it isn’t just the policy makers being unhappy with the direction that they are being driven, it’s also a thing of ego. They can’t take being proven wrong all along, so the temptation to overlook this information will prove overpowering. Careers should ride on who got this thing right, and who got it wrong. But for some reason, people don’t get fired in Washington anymore.
Bush’s Axis of Evil will have been proven right. The minimalist take on this conflict will have been proven wrong. But Bush has gotten away from that Axis of Evil rhetoric, as well as the Axis of Evil policy ramifications. So we’ll see.
Egomaniacs can’t abide the exposure of their errors.
And you’re dead right that ALL present discussions on how to fix Iraq are DOOMED to failure, so long as we don’t destroy the regime in Iran, whether your way by INTENSELY aiding the Iranian resistance, or my suggestion, massive and sustained military onslaught. But either way you choose to take down the mullahs, it had better be done NOW. It’s not like we don’t have a window of opportunity that isn’t closing. Once they get nukes the prospect of revolution will have died, for the mullahs will be able to kill with impunity.
And Karen Hughes SHOULD NOT be given a medal, and should be replaced. What a sick joke that such a woman, clearly and demonstrably out of her depth, could have found a place at the Department of State of the United States of America.
This administration of the second raters, the junior varsity, and the not ready for prime time players has got to end.
We need the fricken first team to wage and win this war.
Doesn’t any Conservative confront ANYONE in this administration on the Washington cocktail circuit.
What we need is a repeat of the ole Team B experiment within the CIA during the ’70s. But this time, regarding Iran.
We get you, Adelman, Perle, some others, all knowledgeable, all connected. And RELYING upon the SAME information currently available, you draw up an estimate of Tehran’s capacities and intentions. We allow the present bureaucrats to do the same.
And then we have a little meeting, just like what happened with Team B.
That’s what we need.
God knows that would have been more worthy of our country than that pusillanimous ISG group.
Jan 3, 2007 - 3:34 am Drellberg:I truly enjoy Michael Ledeen, who brings so much to the table. I would say that I swallow whole nearly everything he writes, except that I find myself biting into every word by re-reading each of his articles several times. I parse everything. I remember and come back to articles weeks or months later and each article holds up over time. (OK, OBL does not appear to be dead, as ML has suggested. But other than that …) Ledeen is almost an obsession with me. With one very important exception – I almost never make the leap to his signature line, “faster, please.” If this is to be a decades long war of attrition, what evidence do I glean from this article that the US should speed up? What indicates that time is more on their side than ours? What in ML’s text should make me more impatient than I already was? In fact, what I conclude here is that it is the mullahs who are increasingly desperate, both individually and as a group. I sense that time is on our side rather than theirs. The President recently suggested that 3.5 years into the war we are still taking out 3,000 terrorists/month just in Iraq. (Call that “throughput.”) If there are an average of, say, 30,000 terrorists in Iraq at any one time (“inventory”), then by Little’s Law the average life expectancy (“flow time”) of a new terrorist can be measured in weeks or at most months. Simple arithmetic says that the US has killed hundreds of thousands of terrorists in Iraq (3K per month times many months), to which we can add Afghanistan, Lebanon, Somalia, etc., and terrorist-on-terrorist casualties, as well. Like shooting fish in a barrel. I suspect that we are positively routing these bastards. If the mullahs are gracious enough to pack their terrorists up and send them to Iraq for us to kill them, why make the trek to Iran? Why open another front? I know this is politically incorrect, but why not just sit back and wait for them to line up and be killed? Except for the whole nuclear bomb thing, why should we be in any hurry?
ML: Why don’t you think Osama is dead? Have you seen him recently? I think he’s probably dead…we’re now headed towards three years since the last video.
Jan 3, 2007 - 4:40 am Noggr the Bloggr:Dear Michael,
Thanks for the informative post.
Hopefully what has been obvious to a few – that Iran is a major force in the so-called insurgency taking place in Iraq – will now slowly begin to dawn in the public mindspace and also within the upper echelons of the Bush Administration.
There is indeed no time like the present to make a concerted effort to support the people of Iran in their aspirations for freedom and democracy. With three more hangings today in Evin Prison (which were, of course, unreported by the mainstream media), it is not only American and Iraqi lives that will be saved, but the future lives of thousands of Iranians as well.
- Noggr the Bloggr
Jan 3, 2007 - 7:46 am Tom Grey:While I totally agree with you, the guy you need to convince is Pres. Bush.
I think he should be confronting and challenging the Dems on this issue, and even on supporting Iraqi democracy, far more than he has. I’m not as disappointed as Peggy Noonan seems to be, but until the US President is calling for war against Iran, it ain’t gonna happen. Not even regime change.
More support for Iranian anti-gov’t folk would certainly be good in any case.
Please keep up your good work. The pro-democracy side in the Mid East might still win the race against the pro-nuke side (and then nuke Tel Aviv).
Jan 3, 2007 - 7:52 am Steve MacDonald:This essentially confirms what has been speculated and written about in the recent past. I remain unconvinced that it will make the difference required to enable the USA to act decisively. President Bush does not appear to have the political capital required to move a deeply divided and partisan (even among the Republicans) congress and senate into action. Intelligence estimates still put the Iran bomb close to a decade away - in spite of the fact that we developed the weapon from nothing but theory in 5 years and they have a decade of work behind them, with blueprints to get assist them. Thus those that oppose anything and everything the President says or does have liscence to continue their suicidal bent. I think it will take another horrendous attack, perhaps a hollocaust, to force us into the actions which appear to be obviously required to an unfortunate few.
Jan 3, 2007 - 9:19 am Baroness Wyszynski:Thank you everyone for the lessons I needed to learn.
The problem with W’s misplaced loyalty and refusing to relieve us of inneffective military leadership stems from his own NWO father’s dumping his son at a critical time in W’s life.
(Bush Sr. first mentioned his NWO on the Phil Donahue program years ago.)
I read that Papa Bush dumped W in the oil fields of TX for showing up hung over at a tennis match after H.S. graduation. That kind of trauma from one considered the protector of the child (no matter the age) has shown to be of measure since W just can’t seem to dump the losers in his own admin. (e.g. Tenet, Powell)until well after damage is done or credibility for them is established. When will the GOP learn that the media cannot be relied upon to disperse the truth? Looks like never, at the rate corrections are made. GOP, always on the defensive. Nuts.
After years of the lackluster GOP refusing to take the hard line and connect the myriad dots between Iraq and 9/11, what can one expect of an electorate but ignorance. Of course, on the brighter side, less and less are getting the propaganda from the NYTimes by reading the truth as ML lays it out here on line.
Jan 3, 2007 - 10:53 am Dan:But time may not be on our side unless and until W weeds the damn garden. Toute suite! (that’s faster please w/o the politesse).
Thx to this blog.
What gems you are!
PS Last I heard, OBL was quite jaundiced from his hepatic disease and since the colour of bile is used in terrorist art to signify disease, no wonder he’s become camera shy. That is, if he is still alive, which I find hard to believe.
I think that Osama is in Iran where they’re protecting him. He isn’t in a cave, he’s in some plush mansion in Iran. Although it might be a gilded cage.
Jan 3, 2007 - 3:14 pm Matthew:Only for the sake of playing devil’s advocate (or rather, Great Satan detractor) what are the chances that the Quds force commando we captured was given documents by the IR’s security services so as to entice America into attacking Iran? The mullahs and their cronies honestly believe that the US is the greatest source of evil in the world and must be defeated. If we open war with them, aren’t they allowed to open back? Are they preparing for something we’re not aware of?
ML:
I think there is zero chance of that. The Quds officers were official guests of the Iraqi Government, they could not imagine they would be arrested. In fact, we did not know who they were, and only found out when one of them identified himself, clearly expecting that would put an end to it.
The grave question is whether the wiring diagram was going to be presented to Hakim in order to coordinate actions.
Jan 3, 2007 - 5:50 pm Winston:Great Post as usual…
Any troop surge in Iraq will be useless unless the president of the United States finds the stomach to directly engage the American power to help iranians topple the mullahs for once and all.
Jan 3, 2007 - 9:27 pm Piscivorous:The link you supplied to Eli Like is bad. It is “http://pajamasmedia.com/xpress/michaelledeen/2007/01/02/www.nysun.com/article/46032″ it should be “http://www.nysun.com/article/46032″
Jan 3, 2007 - 11:12 pm Chris:Mr. Ledeen,
I received “Machiavelli on Modern Leadership” for Christmas, as well as another of your recommended readings “Counterinsurgency Warfare” by Galula. Great work on the Machiavelli book. I enjoyed your Toqueville on America and War Against the Terror Masters greatly. Thank you for your hard work.
Being a student of Farsi language and culture in Northern Virginia, any cursory internet search reveals a pluthora of anti-Ahmadinezhad/Anti-regime cartoons, animations, music, printed material and so forth. I see Iranians ressurrecting their Zartoshti heritage, including a large array of Faravahar symbols on clothing and other media, disdaining Islam, and women rebelling against the Hijab. Conversations with young Iranians reveal an atmosphere so stimulated for change that it is breathtaking. Indeed, faster, please.
From ML:
Thanks, especially for the input on the Iranians. An Iranian friend of mine believes that if his countrymen were free, we would see an enormous revival of Zoroastrianism, and I see many signs of that.
Jan 4, 2007 - 11:51 am JJA:This is a great line:
Those of you who have borne with me for the last few years will not be surprised to hear this; what’s new is the apparently irrefutable evidence that has now providentially fallen into our hands.
Part of what I don’t get is why the Iranians were in the compound of the Shiites that have recently been designated - by the WSJ editorial page, by the Office of the Vice President - as the good, moderate Shiites. I thought Hakim was supposed to be our guy.
Or maybe he is.
Because this is reading exactly like a re-run of the Iraq war prewar intel bamboozle, complete with talk of a “smoking gun.”
Was the wiring diagram made out of aluminum tubes, or uranium? Was it in English, or French? Was it adapted from the document in the Niger portfolio in which Iraq and Iran planned their world domination together?
ML:
Feel better now? Take a deep breath, lie down, take a nap…
Jan 4, 2007 - 12:59 pm crosspatch:“I am told that this information has reached the president, and that it is part of the body of information he is digesting in order to formulate his strategy for Iraq.”
I am wondering if it also helped formulate the strategy of Negroponte being moved to State.
From ML:
Me too, crosspatch. Maybe this humiliating demotion is the result of the president asking him “well, john, shouldn’t we have know this?”
Jan 4, 2007 - 3:44 pm Dan:CIA needs to be entirely cashiered. And we need to start afresh and build ourselves a war-waging, war-winning, deadly serious intelligence agency.
We should call it the OSS, so as to demonstrate the enormity of its task and the gravity we attach to our war effort.
The gloves have to come off.
We need to establish a new Operation Phoenix program, whose parameters should extend throughout the entire middle east.
The Syrians have no problems whacking pro-Western Lebanese, we should have no problem repaying the compliment, by targeting hyperbolic mullahs. We need to send a message that you may crawl out from under a rock, and through the funding of various petro-sheiks may climb up into a pulpit, but we’re watching, we’re listening, and at an hour of our choosing, we’re going to plaster you and send your sorry ass to judgement.
The gloves have to come off. We are simply not capable of waging a true ideological war against the message of the mullahs. EVEN IF WE WERE SO INCLINED, which our State Department and CIA are not, even if we wanted to do so, those societies are closed, and we’re so lost in a fog of moral, religious and cultural relativism that we wouldn’t even know how to formulate such a message.
In the ’50s, our forefathers KNEW how to challenge the Soviets and their message. They killed commies in the third world, and founded think tanks, funded trade unions, started periodicals and newspapers to challenge the socialist zeitgeist. Today, other than people like Gingrich and Kristol, do we have anyone equal to the challenge.
I don’t think so.
Better to start whacking them, we’ll worry about civilizing them later. Destroy the jihadists, engage them on grounds of our choosing if we can, engage them on grounds of theirs if we must, but carry the war to them. And impose our will upon them. Deliver the tutorial we delivered to the Japanese and the German. The Japanese and the German had supremacist delusions, but not after we got done with them. That’s the attitude we should have towards our new enemies, which are really our destined enemy, our old enemy, the enemy we were fated to confront.
As the United States could not continue to exist “half slave, half free,” so now it’s becoming clear that the world cannot continue “half shariaa, half free.” The Stars and Stripes was always going to be challenged by totalitarian islam. There was no getting away from that.
So be it.
Not a very pleasant situation is it? But if you think about it, would any of you prefer being the friends of the house of al saud, friends of the mullahs in Tehran, friends of the Assads, friends of the Arafats of this existence. Isn’t it far better to be their enemies, before history, before God and before conscience, isn’t it far better that the whole world should know that we are mortal enemies with such creatures. Isn’t that the truth?
My friends are the British, the Australians, the Israelis. And those are precisely the friends that I would like to have.
Jan 4, 2007 - 8:41 pm TonyGuitar:Excellent outline of things as they are.
The complexity of deflating the Mullah hatemongers of Iran while not causing damage to oil production and infrastructure
belonging to the good citizens of Iran is touchy.
Consider also the power balance between Persian Shiia and Sunni.
The Sunni may be a minority in Iraq, but not at all a minority with the Sunni help leaking into Iraq from predominately Sunni, Saudi Arabia.
Muqtada al Sadr inspires an army of loyal and ruthless *Blackshirts* with Ahmadinejad Mullah support, yet ruthless Sunni death squads are able to inflict blood thirsty attacks on the *Blackshirts*.
The Bush team has to consider carefully the results of tipping that balance one way or the other.
Then there are the hoards of Taliban training and expanding in their Pakistan *safe zone*.
I wish Wineberger had not stopped Reagan*s order to swat Hezbullah for the 1983 killing of 241 Marines in Lebanon.
Pulling punches through Carter and Clinton terms has made the US a *paper tiger* and inspired Jihadists greatly. = TG
Jan 5, 2007 - 3:51 am Paul13:Let’s hope the president listens to the right people. If the West doesn’t finally make the Mullahs pay a price for their “war of terror” we might pay an far higher one once we lost the “war on terror”.
Jan 5, 2007 - 8:01 am Chris:Mr. Ledeen,
I had never thought about a possible resurgence of Zoroastrianism if the Mullahs fell; I must say it is an interesting premise though. It would seem to make sense as well, considering how secular most Iranians are, and how connected to their long and established cultural heritage they are.
Perhaps a rebirth of modern Zoroastrianism is concomitant to nationalism and hopefully, counter-mullah revolution. Perhaps our Intelligence community should start putting Zoroastrian religious literature in public places like we did in the Soviet Union and Eastern Germany. Those KGB/Stasi guys could never find out where all these pocket-sized bibles were coming from! Just as Soviet Communism made the state into a religion, in Iran the state is a religion- erode people’s faith in the state, erode the state. The only option then for the Mullahs is enforcement by terror (which is already nothing new), and since the Persians are a proud and steadfast lot, they will only take it for so long.
I have just read that KHAMENEI just DIED? Is it so?!
Jan 5, 2007 - 8:47 am kourosh:Mr. Leeden Thank You very much for your continued work in promoting democracy in Iran. I think most Iranians realize how important your contribution has been.
Jan 5, 2007 - 9:36 am Ted Goldman:My question issue is how US allows certain individuals enter America. Case in point is Fatemeh Haghighatjoo a dedicated Khomeinists and Islamofascist who few years back has switched to camp IslamoReformists. She is invited to speak at UM (Michigan-AnnArbor)on Monday 1/8/07. How did she obtained a visa to come to this country?
—Here is the URL:
http://www.umich.edu/~igsa/events/2007/haghighatjoo/haghighatjoo.htm.
Great article by ML. The Bush administration did not need documentary proof of Iranian complicity in Iraq.
However, if it results in the elimination of the current leadership at this opportunistic moment of Iranian political turmoil,
perhaps “victory” may ultimately be achieved.
Ted G.
Jan 5, 2007 - 11:20 am Jamil Hussein:Dearest Michael,
My information was in error.
Regrets,
Jamil Hussein
Jan 5, 2007 - 6:56 pm Dominique R. Poirier:Sir,
I never heard of your blog until today, when I learned of its existence thanks to one of my favorite blogs I feel compelled to name, neveryetmelted.com. Until I discovered this happy news I used to read each and all articles you publish in The National Review. So, let me say two things first.
I’ll be one amongst your most loyal readers from now on, and,
Happy New Year!
Now I pursue on the matter at hand, Iran and the article you publish about it, and I apologize to Michael Ledeen and to the readers, for the exceptional length of this comment.
That Iran is a growing threat in the Greater Middle East and beyond is become a truism.
In May 2006 Edward Luttwak wrote an interesting article on Commentary whose title is Three Reasons not to Bomb Iran Yet. This article focuses mainly on the Iranian capacity to enrich uranium and to build a home made atomic bomb. At that time Edward Luttwak said “The regime certainly cannot produce nuclear weapons in less than three years, and may not be able to do so even then because of the many technical difficulties not yet overcome.”
But, from May to November, 2006, the matter at hand as shifted from nuclear concerns only to nuclear concerns plus Iran fuelled insurgency spotted here and there in the Middle East. However, a good reason not to act precipitously is that the worst of its leaders positively want to be bombed, and are seemingly doing their level best to bring that about.
Why?
The reason may be partly about religion, and partly about more down-to-earth considerations such as domestic policy.
On the one hand, we have religious rulers who believe in the return of the twelfth imam and the end of life on earth, and who additionally believe that this redeemer may be forced to reveal himself by provoking a nuclear catastrophe. But religious rulers in Iran are loosing their prestige. They are corrupted and their abuse of power is well known by the Iranian population.
On the other hand, we have an Iranian population which, except for a narrow segment of extremists, do not view themselves as enemies of the United States, but rather as the exact opposite. At a time when Americans are unpopular in all other Muslim countries, most Iranians become distinctly friendlier when they learn that a visitor is American.
So, on the basis of such facts, one could hazard the hypothesis that the Iranian governing elite would make great profit of U.S. bombings on their soil. It would reverse a trend to make the Iranian population feeling they are attacked by the foreign country they most admire, and with which they wish to restore the best of relations. Beside, it will fuel further anti-Americanism in other parts of the world.
So, such long-term consequences of a military action cannot be disregarded, and a careful review of this important factor deserves to be compared with how Iraqi civilians perceived U.S. bombings in 2002, and to which extent those bombings changed their attitude toward their liberators.
Still in Commentary, Arthur Herman, a Conservative American historian, wrote an article on this question, and he seems to be well aware of this difficulty, though he didn’t elaborate, since he wrote in his article that “(….) many will worry that decisive U.S. action will boomerang politically, by alienating Iran’s democrats and dissidents and thus jeopardizing the hoped-for eventuality of a pro-Western government emerging in Tehran.”
Overall, the matter is quite tricky since, on the one hand, it is irresponsible to argue for coexistence with a future nuclear-armed Iran on the basis of a shared faith in mutual deterrence; and, on the other hand, a military intervention is likely to trigger a reversal of a situation that is now favorable to the U.S. interest.
Technically, U.S. air intervention and naval blockade in Iran is possible, while full terrestrial deployment on the Iranian territory is not a sustainable option. Iran is a much bigger country than Iraq. It is mountainous, and it has more than 60 millions inhabitants. Beside, the mere idea of launching a military intervention of such scale, as suggests Arthur Herman, is incompatible, today, with a general mood of the U.S. public opinion that is growing dissatisfied with the Iraqi issue. So, what next, once all targets would have been successfully hit?
There are also external problems questioning such military option, which are the Chinese and the Russian expected attitudes. Iran ranks as second oil provider of China, with up to 13 percent of the Chinese oil consumption, and the demand is going to go up. The Chinese have a growing relationship with Iran; all this in the frame of a will of China to increase its influence in the Middle East and to have good relations with all potential oil suppliers.
In an interview released by the CFR, in January 2006, Adam Segal, a CFR expert on Chinese technological and military policies, expressed his opinion about a possible Chinese attitude in the case of U.S. sanctions on Iran. The sanctions envisaged by the interviewee were not of the same kind of these Arthur Herman, but Adam Segal’s answer gives us a hint, at least. He said at that time that “the U.S. and European effort to bring Iran to the Security Council for its decision to continue research and work on its nuclear program puts China in an uncomfortable spot. While there is no question, Segal says, that China’s much more interested in good relations with the United States than it is with Iran (….)
While asked about if the Iran issue gets to the United Nations, he answered:
“it’s an extremely difficult tightrope for the Chinese to walk down, (…..) But I think…they would very much like the Russians to take the lead. They’re unlikely to support sanctions, but they’re likely to let the Russians take the heat for that. (…..) they will expect Russia to take the lead in blocking aggressive sanctions from the U.S. or EU (…..)
China has enormous trade with the United States, too, and it must be a tough decision for them to decide which side to stand on this. (….) I think it is clear which side they are tilted to; in their overall relationships, the United States is so much more important.
Russia has interests similar to those of China, but it has also some strategic others of its own. Whether Russia’s second choice is to prevent Iran itself from becoming the dominant player in the region, as Arthur Herman thinks, is an option with which one would be wary not to reckon with. Some facts suggest that Russia has long term goals and aims somewhat different of China’s; some long term concerning goals and aims which could get ominous to many in the future, in my own opinion.
In his article, Arthur Herman suggests that “By ensuring a continuous flow of oil from the Gulf, and leaving untouched Russian and Chinese investments in the development of Iran’s Caspian Sea fields, an aggressive military strategy could actually work to those countries’ advantage.”
To my benighted point of view, I think that this suggestion may keeps the road, until one focus one’s attention on conflicts of interests already existing, and not yet resolved, relating to the Caspian Basin and the Caucasus region in particular, and to central Asia in general.
There is no doubt Iran does little to appease tensions in several parts of the Middle East, and in Iraq and in South Lebanon in particular, thus pressing the United States to envisage prophylactic measures well before Iran will get the nuclear capabilities it is looking for; that is to say, according to Edward Luttwak estimates, within the next three years.
From this on few options other than this Arthur Herman is suggesting are possible, but there may be some in the frame of which U.S. allies may find a vested interest in offering their suggestion, participation or assistance at some point. It is regrettable indeed that there is seemingly no way toward a taw in the U.S.-Iran relations, because the “Arthur Herman alternative” would constitute the worst case scenario and is likely to lead us toward further uncertainties.
I think, as Arthur Herman did, that we can easily compare the situation with the rise of the German Third Reich and the event, then the worldwide spread, of the WWII.
How would we see and analyze modern history and what would be our perception of the world and of this of some countries in particular, if France, England, or the United States, had invaded Germany as soon as Hitler decided to take, militarily, control of the Rhineland in 1936. France, alone, had the power to overwhelm the german army at that time, but no one wanted war.
Hitler happened to be the one who attained power at a more opportune time for successful action against the Versailles treaty (which we may somehow compare to the “no flight zones” in Iraq). His continuous use of deception and bluff, in addition to his willingness to resort to blackmail and crude threats, brought about the desired result. Only a man such as Hitler, a parvenu with no respect for bourgeois values or education (is this attitude doesn’t ring any bell to you?), could have pursued the course of action. Other German politician, such as Stresemann, had too much in common with their British and French counterparts; all of them were Europeans as much as they were French, British, or German. This difference in background in background prevented most European leaders, at least initially, from correctly evaluating Hitler’s intentions. By the time their eyes had been opened to his radically different methods, Hitler had already achieved his basic policy goals. He had renounced the Treaty of Versailles and the Locarno Pact without incurring retaliation, legitimized his revisionist policies, and increased Germany military power. Any attempt top thwart his demands would have meant a general European war, and the West European states wanted to avoid war at any reasonable (or unreasonable) cost.
At the United States Congress, during the 30’s, many congressmen (especially Democrats. Sorry for them) expressed a passive feeling of sympathy toward Germany. Joseph Kennedy, John Fitzgerald Kennedy’s father, then U.S. Ambassador in England, had openly expressed his for Adolph Hitler and his policy, before being hurriedly recalled by Franklin D. Roosevelt. United States wanted to avoid war at any reasonable (or unreasonable) cost too. But, if we may forget chaos; chaos does not forget us, never.
Is all this, once more, not ringing any bell to all those who know (or prefer not to know), by heart, the succession of events in greater Middle East? Well, it all sounds déja vu, to me.
While attempting to see the problem under another angle, and under a wider scope, we can see that the main producers of oil of a region whose perimeter surrounds both the inner Middle East and the Caspian basin represent about 68 percent of the world’s proved oil reserves, and 41 percent of the world’s proven gas reserves. It account for more than 30 percent of world oil production.
Since modern economy on earth relies largely on oil, one does not need to be a bright mind to understand that any trouble in this region, or attempt to exert control on it by a way or another, as Iran is unmistakably expected to envisage, would put at stake the stability of the whole world.
The coming of the booming Chinese economy on the stage is doing little to dispel one’s concerns about this point, even though China is still not known as a country looking for worldwide influence, or “grandeur”. Zbigniew Brzezinski pointed out in 2004 in his book, The Choice, that “China’s economic success falls less under the banner of globalization than of enlightened dictatorship.”
Troubles on the oil market engender economic troubles and, in turn, social troubles at a worldwide scale. The matter is not about whether the United States will have its share of oil or not, as some of its detractors argue. The stake reaches a much bigger scale; and, at such scale, none country can, alone, expect counterbalancing negative effects when their size and multiplicity cross certain threshold, as the domino theory predict us. In the case of troubles capable to reach such scale as this occurring in the Greater Middle East, the more we wait and the longer we stay passive, the harder and the trickier it will be to fix the problem. But my point is not to pledge in favor of a grand scale military engagement with Iran, as you will read bellow.
George Bush has certainly been at some point as embarrassed with the reasons justifying intervention in Iraq as Franklin D. Roosevelt had been soon after he promised American mothers he would never send their sons to wage war in Europe if he were reelected. How appallingly uncomfortable may the harsh realities of politics make a president feel sometimes. Whatever one may think of George Bush the fact remains, I think, that he had to face difficult choices and that he didn’t have so wide a margin of maneuver and much time to take a decision. Beside, as President, he knew he would be inescapably held for responsible of the ensuing outcome, whichever it might be.
In my opinion, I think he was right not to adopt the same passive and cautious options the world leaders chosen during the 30’s. Now, anyone may easily understand the concerns of the intelligence community, and those of the President, if the stakes are going thus higher with the growing and ominous involvement of Iran.
That Iran is already capable of building and dropping an atomic bomb on a given target with accuracy is perhaps a questionable assumption. That Iran is likely to fuel further trouble in the Greater Middle East in relying on means such as terrorism and insurgency is become more than a certainty, as testifies for Iranian activities in South Lebanon. But U.S. military experience in Iraq is demonstrating that a “conventional response” (i.e. counterinsurgency on the basis of classic methods Colonel David Galula and others experts taught us) on all fronts on which Iran is aggressively present is unlikely to bring quick success.
That’s why, having finished this long introduction and appraisal of the situation, I seize the opportunity of this informal virtual meeting place to deliver my thoughts about this need to find a solution, thus possibly running the risk to be mocked.
I cannot but acknowledge that the last of my points presented in this comment is likely to be considered as a somewhat unconventional means to counter Iranian fuelled insurgency since it would consist of borrowing from arms of massive destruction the concept of deterrence and mutual deterrence each time counterinsurgency is clearly identified as a form of warfare by proxy.
Actually, after I mulled over this tricky problem, I reached to the conclusion that, as seen under this angle, recourse to deterrence and mutual deterrence would be justified by the notion that insurgency can be qualified as weapon of “massive social disruption” (and of massive destruction as well) much likely to create mayhem in any given country, exactly as a nuclear bomb or missile is a weapon of “massive destruction” (and of “massive social disruption” as well) much likely to create mayhem in a given country, even though by other means.
From this postulate on there is reasonable ground for to argue that insurgency, when deliberately used as a means of warfare, and an atomic bomb are both capable of making similar numbers of casualties and material destruction; the only perceptible difference between these two means of warfare being the laps of time required to reach the same outcome. An atomic bomb can kill thousands of people within a few seconds; while insurgency can kill the same number of people within a handful of years.
The bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki set a precedent which, in the aftermath and all along the Cold War, gave further credibility to the concept of nuclear mutual deterrence, thus preventing the recourse to nuclear aggression until today. In this last case equilibrium was reached because the United States and the Soviet Union both had the capacity to play attack or defense indifferently, even though the first of these two countries always made a point at opting for a defensive and non-aggressive strategy.
But this equilibrium proved harder to reach and conflicts became increasingly asymmetric as the U.S. conventional means of warfare improved qualitatively and quantitatively while those of its opponent diminished, thus compelling the loser to resort to other strategies such as information warfare and active measures, insurgency and guerrilla, and terrorism.
The United States is reticent at resorting to such unconventional means, at least for two reasons. In the case of insurgency, as Steven Metz, Chairman of the Regional Strategy and Planning Department, and Research Professor of National Security Affairs at the U.S. Army War College Strategic Studies Institute, wrote recently, “neither the military nor the government as a whole is optimized for the type of integrated, holistic, psychologically astute, intelligence-intensive, and politically focused effort counterinsurgency demands.”
In the cases of information warfare and active measures, and terrorism, resorting to such means of warfare places the United States into embarrassment for ethical and political reasons.
Intermediary and “relatively acceptable” means of retaliation (or/and technologically more advanced) likely to lead to insurgency could be found and refined on the basis of such unconventional means, however; especially when used in the frame of a “tit-for-tat” optic, which could eventually give birth to mere deterrence, exactly as it happened with nuclear bombs and missiles from the first experiments on Hiroshima and Nagasaki on.
In other words, the concept of mutual deterrence applied to insurgency, or weapon of “massive social disruption,” could be experimented on a country whose active support to insurgency would be known and unmistakable, so as to make it politically and ethically justified. If further examination demonstrated the theoretical viability of this concept, symmetric warfare could be restored through “mutual insurgency deterrence,” thus making insurgency the best solution against insurgency everywhere it is used a means of warfare by proxy, that is to say in numerous cases. For the United States, reluctance to rely on terrorism could be compensated by non-lethal, but aggressive psychological warfare actions which can be as disruptive for a given society as terrorism is. In the case of Iran, coincidentally and interestingly, I think, leaders fail to collect the unanimous support of the population.
To be objective, however, I cannot pass over some specifics in silence, which are: would the concept of deterrence, or even mutual deterrence, successfully apply to Arabic fundamentalists as it does with countries of the Northern hemisphere? Steven Metz underlines this question when he suggests that “Sometimes honor, justice, and revenge matter more than schools, roads, and jobs.” It just happens that the pertinence of this last question finds its example in the dispute between United States and Iran (and now between the U.N.O. and Iran) over uranium enrichment. Iran attitude over this issue is indicative, indeed, that the concept or strategy of deterrence might not work with fanatics which, as we know, are harder opponents at chicken game. That’s why I cannot but honestly acknowledge that the idea of deterrence or mutual deterrence applied to insurgency might be as worthless (if not too risky) as this of nuclear deterrence when attempted with countries ruled by fanatics largely supported by their population.
Thank you for reading me and for your patience. I’ll manage to make my next comments much shorter.
Jan 6, 2007 - 10:41 am Jerry Turner:“We cannot ‘solve’ the Iraqi problem without regime change in Iran”
Oh, my god.
When does the cycle of lies and deceit (and death and destruction) end with these insane ideologues?!?!
Jan 6, 2007 - 10:43 pm tballou:You and all your warmongering readers are completely out of your finds if you think attacking Iran is a reasonable solution to any threat, real or imaginary, posed by their nuclear program. The only reason Iran is involved in Iraq is because Bush decided to invade and destroy the status quo balance of power, which in case any forgets, benefited us. With this mess next door, how can anyone expect Iran to not be actively involved in working things to their advantage? They put up with a beligerent Iraq for decades, and now is their big chance to keep that from happening again (thanks to Bush, of course).
In any event, what gives the US the right to atack Iran over their nuclear program? We have tolerated plenty of nuclear regimes (most recently North Korea). What makes Iran and different? Recent analyses show they will need the power in the near future. Mutually assured destruction worked just fine with the USSR and China, and neither of them were exactly models of rational thinking.
ML:
I am against invading Iran, stop putting words in my mouth. And as for Iran being as rational as Russia/China, I must say I do not remember Stalin praying for the return of the “vanished” Karl Marx in order to bring about the end of the world…
Jan 6, 2007 - 11:13 pm David P:It will be Israel that ends up attacking the Iranian Nuke sites, and they’ll get permission after the task is complete. Israel has an open account to settle with the Iranians for the war with Lebanon this summer and their continued support of Hamas. If Iran dares to retaliate with Shihab 3 missles, Israel will unleash its full force on Tehran, unlike Beruit, the surgical gloves will be off, the Persian nation can expect to be set back 50 yrs minimum. If Syria tries to intervene Israel will destroy its Dam and flood half of the country. Peace may come soon after as the destroyed weak enemies will be begging for it.
Jan 7, 2007 - 11:42 am Dan:Mr. Ledeen,
Are you willing to suit up and get your gun and fight Iran? If not, why are you asking others to fight this war for you?
ML:
I’m against invading Iran, always have been. what have you been reading, anyway?
Jan 8, 2007 - 8:55 pm