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Psywar keeps Tehran on
tenterhooks
By B Raman
To any intelligence analyst, it should be
obvious that the United States has already
embarked on a psychological warfare (psywar)
campaign to keep Iran on tenterhooks in the hope
of thereby breaking its will to resist US pressure
to agree to the dismantling of its uranium
enrichment capability.
It is in
this context that one has to view the rhetoric of
"no option excluded" coming at regular intervals
from President George W Bush, Secretary of
State Condoleezza Rice and other US
leaders, orchestrated leaks to the media of
Pakistan's cooperation with the US in a possible
covert action against Iran's military nuclear
capability, of increasing Israeli contacts with Pakistan,
of US drones (unmanned surveillance planes)
flying unhindered over Iran's nuclear establishments
from bases in Iraq, and the latest reports of
a mysterious blast near the southern port city
of Dailam in Iran on Wednesday.
Iranian
leaders would be making a serious miscalculation -
as Saddam Hussein of Iraq did - if they
underestimated the determination of not only the
US, but also of Israel, to see that Iran does not
acquire a capability for the production of nuclear
weapons.
It
would be a serious mistake on the
part of Iranian leaders and policymakers to think
that the disastrous consequences of the US-led
military intervention in Iraq and pressure from
the rest of the world - with even the United Kingdom
reportedly hesitant to go whole hog with the
United States in the case of Iran, as it did in the case
of Iraq - would deter any US military or
paramilitary action against Iran, despite
undoubted difficulties.
In its efforts
to prevent Iran from acquiring any capability that
might bring a nuclear weapon within its reach, the
US has three options. The first is military - an
open military intervention, as in Iraq, to bring
about regime change and the dismantling of Iran's
nuclear capability. The Iraqi experience and the
continuing instability there, two years after the
US occupation, ought to discourage such an
adventurist course of action.
The US
underestimation of the sense of patriotism and
national pride of the Iraqis is largely
responsible for the mess it has created for itself
in Iraq. The Iranians have even a much stronger
sense of patriotism and national pride than the
Iraqis, and the US would be landing in another
mess if it invaded Iran.
The second option
is to do an Osirak in Iran - destroy its nuclear
establishments through clandestine action, either
from the air or the ground or both, as Israel did
to Iraq's French-aided Osirak reactor in the early
1980s.
Both the US and Israel have the
capability to do so, acting in tandem or
independently of each other, but a repeat of
Osirak in Iran would be beset with serious
difficulties, the likes of which Israel did not
face in Iraq. Osirak was still under construction
when Israel attacked it and it had not yet been
commissioned. Hence Israel did not have to worry
about collateral damage to civilians and the
environment in the area due to possible
radioactive leakages or other hazards. Moreover,
the French engineers working on the construction
quietly collaborated with the Israelis by
remaining absent from the construction site at the
time of the bombing. This helped minimize, if not
avoid, French casualties.
In Iran, the US
and Israel face two types of nuclear
establishments - those already constructed and
possibly already secretly working - and those
still under construction and yet to be
commissioned. In the first category would come the
nuclear enrichment facility at Natanz and possibly
one other place. Under the second category would
come the nuclear power stations at Bushehr under
construction by the Russians, despite US pressure
to stop.
A clandestine US and/or Israeli
strike on the construction sites at Bushehr should
be feasible without causing much collateral damage
to Iranian civilians and the environment. But how
about the Russians employed for the construction?
Will they cooperate by remaining away from the
site at the time of the raid?
A
strike against Bushehr, even if successful, would not
put an end to US concerns. The real source of
concern at present ought to be Iran's uranium-enrichment
capabilities. They would have the first priority
for both the US and Israel. Here, the dangers of
incalculable collateral damage to civilians and
the environment could be high. This ought to act
as a deterrent, but if the concerns of the US and
Israel cross the limits of tolerance, they may not
hesitate to organize a raid, even at the risk of
serious collateral damage.
The third
option is psywar, utilized with the aim of
breaking the Iranian will so that the other two
options become unnecessary. This option has no
unacceptable risks, but its ability to produce the
expected results is uncertain.
The US has
already embarked on this option. The psywar is
being waged at two levels - the political and the
paramilitary. The political psywar, which is
democracy-centric, is directed at the Iranian
people and is being waged through Iranian
dissidents in the US and elsewhere. It aims to
keep alive and aggravate the divide between the
reformists and the fundamentalist clerics and the
liberals and the conservatives in Iranian civil
society. It also seeks to exploit the already
existing pockets of alienation inside Iran - and
create more. The flow of US funds and
sophisticated means of propaganda mounted from
California and Iraq play an important role in
this.
The paramilitary (covert)
psywar, which is nuclear-centric, seeks to convey
a message not only to Tehran, but also to
Moscow, about the consequences of Iran pressing ahead
on the nuclear path in disregard of the concerns
of the US, other Western countries and Israel.
This psywar is being waged from bases in Iraq
and Pakistan. Its purpose is to create fear in
the minds of Tehran and Moscow about the
inevitability of US paramilitary action against Iran's
nuclear establishments if they do not see reason
and give up their present obduracy. The actions
mounted by the US also seek to demonstrate its
capability for paramilitary action, if it decides
to act.
It is in this context that one
has to view the reported mysterious blast at
Dailam, which is in Bushehr province. The location of
the blast is about 150 kilometers from the site
where the Russians are constructing the nuclear-power
stations.
Confusion in Tehran over the
incident, which was reportedly spectacular without
causing any human casualties, is evident from the
contradictory statements emanating from Iran on
the cause of the blast.
The Associated
Press news agency quoted an Iranian Interior
Ministry spokesman, Jahanbakhsh Khanjani, as
saying, "An airplane flew over Dailam today.
Minutes later, there was an explosion. But we have
no reason to say it's a hostile attack. There is a
big possibility that it was a friendly fire by
mistake."
Iran's state TV al-Alam,
which was the first to break the story, said
the explosion was possibly caused by a rocket from
an aircraft. Subsequently, it changed its version
and said the blast might have been the result of
an aircraft accidentally dropping its fuel tank.
Officials of Bushehr province, however,
said the explosion was connected to "geophysical
exploration" in the region, in connection with the
construction of a dam.
A spokesperson of
Iran's Supreme National Security Council said
there was no incident and that people were
stirring trouble with such reports. She reportedly
said the council had declared that reports of a
blast near the nuclear plant were just part of an
ongoing campaign of psychological warfare against
Iran.
Officials at the Russian Embassy in
Tehran and at the Russian Ministry of Atomic
Energy in Moscow - which is overseeing
construction at the Bushehr nuclear plant -
reportedly told CNN in a phone interview that there had
been no explosion at the plant area itself.
Given the normal lack of transparency in
Tehran, one may never know what really happened,
but it is quite possible that the explosion was
the result of a US air-mounted paramilitary (covert)
operation meant to demonstrate the United States'
ability to carry out such an operation without
being detected and prevented by the Iranians, and
at the same time convey a message to Tehran and
Moscow of the seriousness of US concerns over the
nuclear issue and its determination to put an end
to Iran's clandestine nuclear plans.
By
carrying out the strike in the same province in
which the Russians are constructing the nuclear
power stations, but away from the construction
site, the Americans could have sought to convey
their message without creating any international
controversy due to human casualties and other
damage.
B Raman is additional
secretary (retired), cabinet secretariat,
government of India, and currently director,
Institute for Topical Studies, Chennai, and
distinguished fellow and convener, Observer
Research Foundation, Chennai Chapter. Email:
itschen36@gmail.com.
(Copyright B Raman,
2005) |
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