Iran flirts with
confrontation By Michael A
Weinstein
Tensions between Iran and the
United States have heated up to the point that
some analysts, particularly in the Arab world,
surmise that the struggle between the Iraqi
transitional government and the Shi'ite resistance
led by Muqtada al-Sadr is in essence a proxy war
between Iran and the US.
Iran has been the
instigator of much of the present surge in
tensions over its nuclear program, taking
advantage of the military and diplomatic
vulnerabilities of the US that were revealed by
Washington's campaign for regime change in Iraq.
Despite deep internal divisions in Iran
over the vision of its future (Western or
Islamic), all of its significant political forces
are
nationalist,
uniting on the premise that any foreign attempts
to change the Iranian regime and forfeit the
revolution of 1979 (however its meaning is
interpreted) are unwelcome, indeed intolerable,
and are to be firmly resisted.
Political
forces in Iran are also at one in the belief that
the country should pursue a policy of enhancing
its military machine to make it an effective
deterrent against external attack, and expanding
its influence as a regional power in all
directions. Tehran's bid to alter the regional
balance of power in its favor is evidenced by its
increasing defiance of international controls over
its nuclear program and its financial and probable
military support of a wide spectrum of Shi'ite
movements and factions in southern Iraq.
Iran's actions have sparked a strong
reaction from the US, which has made it clear that
it will not tolerate a nuclear-armed Iran. The
threat has been answered with the comment that
there were established political circles in Iran
recommending preemptive military "replies" against
any entity that "decides to inflict harm" on the
country.
Despite the bellicose rhetoric from both sides,
there is no direct war between the two
adversaries in the immediate works. The rhetoric is an
indicator of Iran's push for power and
America's attempts to resist that push.
(Several reports published over the weekend said
that the Bush administration was studying options for
military strikes against Iran, and an article in
The New Yorker magazine by Seymour Hersh suggested
the possibility of the US using nuclear bombs
against Iran's underground nuclear sites.)
Iran's strategic scenarios That
Iran is the protagonist and the US the antagonist
in the current tensions means that the Iranian
regime senses the opportunity to enhance its power
position. Several strategic scenarios dominate
Iranian thinking, reflecting the possibilities
that policymakers perceive in the current
situation.
The best-case scenario for Iran
is that the US military is forced to withdraw from
Iraq, leaving Iran with a sphere of influence over
a Shi'ite-dominated Iraq or a breakaway Shi'ite
mini-state in the south, and that Iran is able to
achieve nuclear-weapons capability. Were this
outcome to occur, Iran would be the dominant power
in the Persian Gulf region, displacing the United
States.
The worst-case scenario is that
the United States or Israel launches a preemptive
strike on Iran's nuclear complex, possibly
associated with US military efforts at regime
change.
In between the two extreme cases
is a gamut of more realistic scenarios. On the
favorable side, Iran would exhaust the US in
southern Iraq through its support of resistance
and would drag out negotiations on its nuclear
program by exploiting divisions among external
powers working through international agencies. On
the unfavorable side, Iran would be excluded from
influence in Iraq by a US-oriented regime, would
suffer economic sanctions for failing to submit
its nuclear program to international supervision
or would feel constrained to give up that program,
and would be diplomatically isolated.
The
recent assertive behavior of Iran suggests that it
is determined to resist any concessions on its
perceived vital interests, risking the worst-case
and other unfavorable scenarios to realize as many
of its ambitions as possible.
Iran's
strategic situation The scenarios projected
by Iranian policymakers are relative to Iran's
strategic situation. That situation is marked by
threats to and opportunities for Iran's vital
interests, giving rise to the range of
possibilities from best-case to worst-case
scenarios. In seeking to ward off threats and
exploit opportunities, policymakers are
constrained to play a hand that has assets and
liabilities.
Liabilities:
The most important obstacle to Iran's drive for
regional power is the presence of US ground forces
in its eastern neighbor Afghanistan and its
western neighbor Iraq, and US naval and air forces
in the Persian Gulf. Iran is partially encircled
by the US, whose explicit best-case scenario is
Iranian regime change. The immediate proximity of
US military forces results in a bias among
policymakers toward building up military security
above any other priority.
Iran's nuclear
program, which it insists is only for peaceful
purposes but is likely for weapons capability, is
only one part of an ongoing program for military
self-dependence in the face of sanctions. Iran
recently tested advanced torpedoes and missiles as
part of week-long war games in the Persian Gulf.
It has also successfully tested a new version of
its Shahab-3 missile with a range of 1,300
kilometers and a capability of striking Israel.
Iran also produces tanks, armored personnel
carriers and a fighter plane.
Yet Iran
would still be no match for a full-scale US attack
- its only effective deterrent would be nuclear
weapons. Iranian policymakers are aware that the
US threat is ever present, even if it has receded
for the moment.
Iran also faces a military
threat from Israel, which might launch a
preemptive strike against Iran's Bushehr reactor
and is reportedly working with Iraqi Kurds to
destabilize the Iranian regime. Iran has recently
threatened to bomb Israel's nuclear complex at
Dimona if Israel attacks Bushehr. As the country
that feels most threatened by Iran, Israel has a
vital interest in eliminating Iran's nuclear
program or at least setting it back seriously.
Iranian policymakers can do very little about the
Israeli threat and have begun a program to install
technologies and procedures to minimize the
effects of the release of radiation that would
follow a successful strike on Bushehr.
Iranian ambitions to create a sphere of
influence in Iraq are checked not only by the US
military presence, but also by divisions in Iraq's
Shi'ite population and leadership. At present,
they are not seeking Iranian protection, although
they are willing to accept Iranian aid.
Internally, Iran is socially divided by
the familiar split between Westernizers and
traditionalists that has marked countries on the
borders of the West, such as Russia and Turkey. In
Iran's complex post-revolutionary political
institutions, the executive is currently
controlled by the reformists, and the parliament,
judiciary and supreme religious authorities by the
theocrats.
Outside the state institutions,
the increasingly youthful population generally
favors a loosening of theocratic rule and a more
Western lifestyle. With the successful suppression
of reformists in the last parliamentary elections,
the theocrats have engineered a short-term victory
at the cost of intensifying social polarization.
Washington's strategy toward Iran makes
the division between Westernizers and
traditionalists the centerpiece of plans for
regime change. Iranian exile groups and US
neo-conservatives argue that an aggressive policy
of weakening the Iranian regime, if not an
invasion of the country, would unleash the forces
of Westernization and bring Iran into the circle
of US-led, capitalist globalization.
Iranian policymakers, increasingly
dominated by the traditionalists, have responded
to the social and political divide by appealing to
the need to defend the country's integrity above
any other interest.
Assets:
Counterbalancing the negatives in Iran's strategic
environment are a number of assets that give it
the room to maneuver necessary for pursuit of its
ambitions. Most important, the US military is
overextended from its Iraq and Afghanistan
missions, and its continuing needs and commitments
to maintain Asian and European presences. It is
unlikely at present that the US is militarily
ready or politically capable of mounting an
operation against Iran similar to the one that it
undertook in Iraq.
Iran is also a much
more formidable adversary than was Ba'athist Iraq.
Its population of 70 million dwarfs Iraq's 26
million and, unlike Iraq, Iran is not a
construction of colonial rule combining diverse
ethnic and religious groups without a common
history, but a relatively homogeneous society with
a long history of independence and a strong sense
of nationalism.
Iran's military is also
more capable than Iraq's was, and it is a center
of post-revolutionary nationalism. In its war with
Iraq in the 1980s, Iran absorbed heavy losses and
eventually repelled an aggressor that had the
backing of the United States.
If the US
tried to occupy Iran, it could not use the
divide-and-rule strategy that it has employed in
Iraq. The Iranian regime banks on the expectation
that in the case of external attack, nationalism
will override the rift between Westernizers and
traditionalists. Analysts in the Middle East
generally agree that the regime's judgment is
correct.
Iran's trump card is the
geopolitical fact that it is a major oil producer
bordering other major oil producers. A large-scale
war undertaken by the US would almost surely lead
to a disruption of world oil supplies and the
danger that Iran would use its missiles to attack
Saudi or Gulf-state oil complexes.
Iran
also has a strategic ally in Syria, which shares
the same security interests and which borders Iraq
on the west. The Iranian and Syrian regimes have
been conferring closely since the US occupation of
Iraq and have a common line that the US should
withdraw from the region. Russia is a benevolent
neutral, perhaps ally, providing help with Iran's
nuclear program and interested in diminishing US
power in the region.
The European powers
are ambivalent, subject to US pressure to bring
the issue of Iran's nuclear program to the United
Nations Security Council where sanctions could be
imposed, and desirous of pursuing economic
interests in Iran.
Thus far, Iran's policy
of "commercializing" relations with Europe has
been a relative success, leading to reluctance by
the Europeans to follow the US hard line. Instead,
they have followed an independent, diplomatic path
to resolve the nuclear question. Recently, as Iran
has taken a harder line toward the International
Atomic Energy Agency, the Europeans have begun to
tilt toward the US, but it is still not certain
that they will back a sanctions regime.
Finally, it is possible that Iran can turn
the presence of US forces in Iraq and Afghanistan
to its advantage. Historically, Iran has had close
contact with, and political and cultural influence
in, the regions on its eastern and western
borders. Long-standing economic and cultural
interchange gives Iran footholds in the west of
Afghanistan and the southeast of Iraq, which it is
currently using to back political forces that
favor its strategic interests.
When the
positives and negatives of Iran's strategic
situation are weighed, it becomes clear that the
complex balance of opportunities and threats
provides the opportunity for Iran to try to expand
its regional power at considerable risk.
The reasoning of the hardliners, who are
gaining increasing control over Iranian foreign
and security policy, is that Iran has little
choice but to try to strengthen itself by
militarizing and pressing for spheres of
influence, since the alternative is acceptance of
US hegemony in the Persian Gulf region.
Their posture is primarily defensive, but
they believe that the best defense at the present
time is an assertive one. They will act with the
best-case scenario in mind as they maneuver to
avoid the worst-case scenario, resorting to
brinkmanship and tactical retreats.
Conclusion Iran plays its hand
through one of the most complex sets of political
institutions in the contemporary world. Not only
are clerical institutions overlaid on the
conventional executive, legislature and judiciary,
but different factions have vested influence and
authority within each of them. Iran does not speak
with one voice or act with one hand.
Indian political analyst Hamid Ansari
observes that Iran's shifting stances of
conciliation and defiance, and its elliptical and
contradictory policy statements, are "fully
reflective of the multiplicity of centers that
characterize the decision-making mechanism of the
Islamic Republic".
Unlike Iraq under
Saddam Hussein, Iran has polycentric politics, in
which decisions on security and foreign policy are
the result of shifting alliances and independent
initiatives. This complexity leads to the
simultaneous pursuit of seemingly opposed
policies, but it would be a mistake to interpret
this as a sign of weakness, since all participants
are committed to Iranian independence and
integrity.
Iran's polycentric
decision-making system is, in fact, a source of
strength in its current situation, since it leads
structurally, rather than by design, to a
multi-pronged strategy that hits all possible
vulnerabilities of its adversaries, confuses them
and allows for flexibility. If one policy fails,
it will be de-emphasized in favor of another.
If one faction is discredited, another is
ready to take its place. If all possible proxies
in Iraq and Afghanistan are backed by one Iranian
faction or another, downside risk is minimized and
opportunity is enhanced. If reformists pursue
commercialization of foreign relations and
hardline traditionalists pursue militarization,
Iran potentially gets the benefit of both tracks.
It is impossible to predict whether Iran
will succeed or fail in its bid for security and
regional power, but its regime has impressive and
surprising assets that work in its favor.
Michael A Weinstein is professor
of political science at Purdue University and a
senior analyst with the Power and Interest News
Report. He has been the recipient of Guggenheim
and Rockefeller Foundation Fellowships and is the
author of 21 books and numerous scholarly and
analytical articles in the fields of general
political science and political theory.
Published with permission of
thePower and Interest News
Report, an analysis-based
publication that seeks to provide insight into
various conflicts, regions and points of interest
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