Monday, March 5, 2012

Iran in the Crosshairs Again

Iran in the Crosshairs Again

 

Sabre rattling against Iran is nothing new, but that doesn't mean the threat of war isn't real.

 

Phyllis Bennis analyses the situation in the wider Middle East

 

http://www.redpepper.org.uk/iran-in-the-crosshairs-again/

 

Here we go again with the Iran hysteria. It is tempting

to think this time will be just like previous periods

of sabre rattling against Iran. But there are

significant new dangers. The Arab Spring, Israel's

position, changes in the regional and global balance of

forces, and national election campaigns, all point to

this round of anti-Iranian hysteria posing potentially

graver risks than five or six years ago.

 

We have seen all this before. The US ratchets up its

rhetoric, Israel threatens a military attack,

escalating sanctions bite harder on the Iranian people,

Iran refuses to back down on uranium enrichment. But at

the same time, top US military and intelligence

officials actually admit Iran does not have a nuclear

weapon, is not building a nuclear weapon, and has not

decided whether to even begin a building process.

 

In 2004 Israel's prime minister denounced the

international community for not doing enough to stop

Iran from building a nuclear weapon. In 2005 the

Israeli military was reported to 'be ready by the end

of March for possible strikes on secret uranium

enrichment sites in Iran'. In 2006 the US House Armed

Services Committee issued a report drafted by one

congressional staffer (an aide to hard-line pro-war

John Bolton, then US ambassador to the UN), claiming

that Iran was enriching uranium to weapons-grade 90 per

cent. That same year a different Israeli prime minister

publicly threatened a military strike against Iran. In

2008, George W Bush visited Israel to reassure them

that 'all options' remained on the table.

 

The earlier crisis saw a very similar gap between the

demonisation, sanctions, threats of military strikes

against Iran, and the seemingly contradictory

recognition by US, Israeli, United Nations and other

military and intelligence officials that Iran actually

did not possess nuclear weapons, a nuclear weapons

programme, or even a decision to try to develop nuclear weapons.

 

The 2005 US National Intelligence Estimate (NIE)

determined that even if Iran decided it wanted to make

a nuclear weapon, it was unlikely before five to ten

years, and that producing enough fissile material would

be impossible even in five years unless Iran achieved

'more rapid and successful progress' than it had so

far. By 2007, a new NIE had pulled back even further,

asserting 'with high confidence that in fall 2003

Tehran halted its nuclear weapons programme ... Tehran

had not started its nuclear weapons programme as of

mid-2007'. The NIE even admitted 'we do not know

whether it currently intends to develop nuclear

weapons'. That made the dire threats against Iran sound

pretty lame. So maybe it wasn't surprising that

Newsweek magazine described how, 'in private

conversations with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert

last week, the president all but disowned the document'.

 

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA - the UN's

nuclear watchdog) issued report after report indicating

it could find no evidence that Iran had diverted

enriched uranium to a weapons programme. The UN

inspection agency harshly rejected the House committee

report, calling some of its claims about Iran's alleged

nuclear weapons activities incorrect, and others

'outrageous and dishonest'. And outside of the Bush

White House, which was spearheading much of the

hysteria, members of Congress, the neo-con think tanks,

hysterical talk show hosts, and much of the mainstream

media went ballistic.

 

Then and now

 

All of that sounds very familiar right now. Military

and intelligence leaders in Israel and the US once

again admit that Iran does not have nukes. (Israel of

course does, but no one talks about that.) Secretary of

Defense Leon Panetta asked and answered his own Iran

question: 'Are they trying to develop a nuclear weapon?

No.' Director of National Intelligence James R.

Clapper, Jr. admitted the US does not even know 'if

Iran will eventually decide to build nuclear weapons'.

The latest 2011 NIE makes clear there is no new

evidence to challenge the 2007 conclusions; Iran still

does not have a nuclear weapons programme in operation.

 

According to the Independent, 'almost the entire senior

hierarchy of Israel's military and security

establishment is worried about a premature attack on

Iran and apprehensive about the possible

repercussions.' Former head of the Israel Defense

Forces (IDF) said 'it is quite clear that much if not

all of the IDF leadership do not support military

action at this point.'

 

But despite all the military and intelligence experts,

the threat of war still looms. Republican candidates

pound the lecterns promising that 'when I'm

president...' Iran will accept international inspectors

- as if the IAEA had not maintained an inspection team

inside Iran for many years now. We hear overheated

rumours of Iranian clerics promising nuclear weapons to

their people - as if Iran's leaders had not actually

issued fatwas against nuclear weapons, something that

would be very difficult to reverse.

 

Some strategic issues are indeed at stake, but the

current anti-Iran mobilisation is primarily political.

It doesn't reflect actual US or Israeli military or

intelligence threat assessments, but rather political

conditions pushing politicians, here and in Israel, to

escalate the fear factor about Iranian weapons (however

non-existent) and the urgency for attacking Iran

(however illegal). And the danger, of course, is that

this kind of rhetoric can box leaders in, making them

believe they cannot back down from their belligerent words.

 

Israel at the centre

 

One of the main differences from the propaganda run-up

to the Iraq war is the consistent centrality of Israel

and its supporters, particularly AIPAC in the US, in

this push for war against Iran. Israel certainly jumped

aboard the attack-Iraq bandwagon when it was clear that

war was indeed inevitable, but US strategic concerns

regarding oil and the expansion of US military power

were first and primary. Even back then, Israel

recognised Iran as a far greater threat than Iraq. And

now, Israelis using that alleged threat to pressure US

policymakers and shape US policy - in dangerous ways.

During this campaign cycle, Obama is under the greatest

pressure he has ever faced, and likely ever will face,

to defend the Israeli position unequivocally, and to

pledge US military support for any Israeli action,

however illegal, dangerous, and threatening to US interests.

 

Iran simply is not, as former CIA analyst and

presidential adviser Bruce Reidel makes clear, 'an

existential threat' to Israel. Even a theoretical

future nuclear-armed Iran, if it ever chose that

trajectory, would not be a threat to the existence of

Israel, but would be a threat to Israel's longstanding

nuclear monopoly in the Middle East. That is the real

threat motivating Israel's attack-Iran-now campaign.

Further, as long as top US political officials, from

the White House to Congress, are competing to see who

can be more supportive of Israel in its stand-off with

Iran, no one in Washington will even consider pressure

on Israel to end its violations of international law

and human rights regarding its occupation and apartheid

policies towards Palestinians. Israel gets a pass.

 

Israel is more isolated in the region than ever before.

The US-backed neighbouring dictatorships Israel once

counted on as allies are being challenged by the

uprisings of the Arab Spring. Egypt's Mubarak was

overthrown, the king of Jordan faces growing pressure

at home, and the threats to Syria's regime mean that

Israel could face massive instability on its northern

border - something Bashar al-Assad and his father

largely staved off since Israel occupied the Syrian

Golan Heights in 1967.

 

Syria's two struggles in one

 

The calamity underway in Syria is also directly linked

to the Iran crisis. There are two struggles going on in

Syria, and unfortunately one may destroy the potential

of the other. First was Syria's home-grown popular

uprising against a brutal government, inspired by and

organically tied to the other risings of the Arab

Spring, and like them calling first for massive reform

and soon for the overthrow of the regime. Syria is a

relatively wealthy and diverse country, in which a

large middle class, especially in Damascus and Aleppo,

had prospered under the regime, despite its political

repression. As a result, unlike some other regional

uprisings, Syria's opposition was challenging a regime

which still held some public support and legitimacy.

 

The regime's drastic military assault on largely

non-violent protests led some sectors of the opposition

to take up arms, in tandem with growing numbers of

military defectors, which of course meant waging their

democratic struggle in the terrain in which the regime

remains strongest: military force. The government's

security forces killed thousands, injuring and

arresting thousands more, and in recent weeks even the

longstanding support for Assad in Damascus and Aleppo

began to waver. Simultaneously, attacks against

government forces increased, and the internal struggle

has taken on more and more the character of a civil war.

 

The further complication in Syria, and its link to

Iran, is that it has simultaneously become a regional

and global struggle. Syria is Iran's most significant

partner in the Middle East, so key countries that

support Israel's anti-Iran mobilisation have turned

against Syria, looking to weaken Iran by undermining

its closest ally. Perhaps because the Assad regimes

have kept the occupied Golan Heights and the

Israeli-Syrian border relatively quiet, Israel itself

has not been the major public face in the

regionalisation of the Syrian crisis. But clearly Saudi

Arabia is fighting with Iran in Syria for influence in

the region. The Arab League, whose Syria

decision-making remains dominated by the Saudis and

their allied Gulf petro-states (such as Qatar and the

UAE), is using the Syria crisis to challenge Iran's

rising influence in Arab countries from Iraq to

Lebanon. And of course the US, France and other Western

powers have jumped on the very real human rights crisis

in Syria to try to further weaken the regime there - in

the interest again of undermining Iran's key ally far

more than out of concern for the Syrian people.

 

Diminishing US power

 

Facing economic crisis, military failures in Iraq and

Afghanistan, and the loss or weakening of key client

states in the Arab world, the US is weaker and less

influential in the Middle East. But maintaining control

of oil markets and US strategic capacity are still key

regional goals for the US, which means that military

power remains central. The nature of that military

engagement is changing - away from large-scale

deployments of ground troops in favour of rapidly

expanding fleets of armed drones, special forces, and

growing reliance on naval forces, navy bases and

sea-based weapons.

 

Thus the US backs Saudi intervention in Bahrain to

insure the US Fifth Fleet maintains its Bahraini base;

Washington's escalating sanctions give the West greater

leverage in control of oil markets; the Iranian

rhetorical threat to close the Strait of Hormuz (only

in desperation since it would prevent Iran from

exporting its own oil) is used to justify expansion of

the US naval presence in the region. Along with the

possibility of losing Syria as a major military

purchaser and regional ally, concerns about those US

strategic moves played a large part of Russia's veto of

the UN resolution on Syria.

 

In Iran, the pressure is high and the sanctions are

really starting to bite, with much greater impact felt

by the Iranian population, rather than the regime in

Tehran. The assassination of Iranian nuclear experts,

particularly the most recent murder of a young

scientist which was greeted by Israeli officials with

undisguised glee and barely-disguised triumph, are more

likely aimed at provoking an Iranian response than

actually undermining Iran's nuclear capacity. So far,

Iran has resisted the bait. But if Israel makes good on

its threat of a military strike - despite the virtually

unanimous opposition of its own military and

intelligence leadership - there is little reason to

imagine that Iran would respond only with words. The US

and Israel are not the only countries whose national

leaders face looming contests; Iran's supreme leader,

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and its president face huge

political challenges as well.

 

The consequences of a strike against Iran would be

grave - from attacks on Israeli and/or US military

targets, to going after US forces in Iran's neighbours

Afghanistan, Iraq, and Kuwait, to attacks on the

Pentagon's Fifth Fleet in Bahrain, to mining the Strait

of Hormuz ... and beyond. An attack by the US, a

nuclear weapons state, on a non-nuclear weapons state

such as Iran, would be a direct violation of the

Non-Proliferation Treaty. Iran might kick out the UN

nuclear inspectors. The hardest of Iran's hard-line

leaders would almost certainly consolidate ever greater

power - both at home and in the Arab countries, and the

calls to move towards greater nuclearisation, perhaps

even to build a nuclear weapon, would rise inside Iran.

Indeed, the Arab Spring's secular, citizenship-based

mobilisations would likely lose further influence to

Iran - threatening to turn that movement into something

closer to an 'Islamic Spring'.

 

Nuclear weapons-free zone

 

At the end of the day the crisis can only be solved

through negotiations, not threats and force.

Immediately, that means demanding that the White House

engage in serious, not deliberately time-constrained

negotiations to end the current crisis - perhaps based

on the successful Turkish-Brazilian initiative that the

US scuttled last year. That means that Congress must

reverse its current position to allow the White House

to use diplomacy - rather than continuing to pass laws

that strip the executive branch of its ability to put

the carrot of ending sanctions on the table in any

negotiations. And it means an Iran policy based on the

real conclusions of US intelligence and military

officials, that Iran does not have and is not building

a nuclear weapon, rather than relying on lies about

non-existent nuclear weapons, like the WMD lies that

drove the US to war in Iraq.

 

In the medium and longer term, we must put the urgent

need for a nuclear weapons-free zone in the Middle East

back on the table and on top of our agenda. Such a

multi-country move would insure Iran would never build

a nuclear weapon, that Israel would give up its

existing 200 to 300 high-density nuclear bombs and the

submarine-based nuclear weapons in its arsenal, and

that the US would keep its nuclear weapons out of its

Middle East bases and off its ships in the region's

seas. Otherwise, we face the possibility of the current

predicament repeating itself in an endless loop of

Groundhog Day-style nuclear crises, each one more

threatening than the last. Phyllis Bennis is a fellow

of the Institute for Policy Studies and of the

Transnational Institute in Amsterdam. Her books include

Before & After: US Foreign Policy and the War on Terrorism

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