Iran's 'crisis' of
overconfidence By Jason
Motlagh
WASHINGTON - Emboldened by the US
quagmire in Iraq and the resilience of its
Hezbollah proxy versus arch-enemy Israel, Iran has
a handful of aces as it faces down United Nations
pressure to suspend its controversial
uranium-enrichment program.
The prevailing
wisdom in Tehran appears to be that an aggressive
stance wins more concessions, and bluster and
recent war games suggest the Islamic republic is
ready to call the West's
bluff - even at risk of
triggering military action that neither side can
afford.
The month-long Israeli-Hezbollah
war could not have been better timed for Iran.
There is no way of knowing for sure whether the
Shi'ite militia's July 12 kidnapping of two
Israeli soldiers that set off hostilities was
orchestrated by Iran, yet there is little doubt
Hezbollah did so without its patron's endorsement.
Flush with more than 10,000 Iranian-made rockets,
Iran's front arm in the Middle East gave it a
telling test run against the most formidable army
in the region, equipped with US military hardware
and America's tacit blessing.
The failure
of the Israelis to rout Hezbollah suggests the
high cost of a potential ground war on Iran to
Israel and to US forces already bogged down in
Iraq. The conflict also boosted Iran's popularity
to unprecedented levels on the Arab street,
according to a Wednesday report by leading British
think-tank Chatham House, giving Tehran even
greater leverage to use at the international
bargaining table.
"There is little doubt
that Iran has been the chief beneficiary of the
war on terror in the Middle East," the report
said, asserting that fighting in the region had
put Tehran in "a position of considerable
strength". Even al-Qaeda second-in-command Ayman
al-Zawahiri issued a statement invoking the late
ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, father of the Iranian
revolution, that some interpreted as an overture
toward a Sunni-Shi'ite rapprochement.
President Mahmud Ahmadinejad insists
Iran's pursuit of nuclear technology is an
"absolute right" after his country's rejection on
Tuesday of United Nations Security Council demands
that it suspend uranium-enrichment activities.
Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said the
Islamic Republic had "made its own decision and in
the nuclear case, God willing, with patience and
power, will continue its path".
And Iran
is wasting no time flexing its power, both hard
and soft. Iranian armed forces conspicuously
kicked off the first stage of massive war games
this week along border areas. Dubbed "Blow of
Zulqifar" after the sword of the Imam Ali, the
exercises appear to have been intended to send a
message to hawks in the US and Israel that Iran,
with its rugged terrain, embedded nuclear
facilities and robust military, is another class
of foe.
"Army commandos, parachutists,
mobile shoulder-firing units, electronic-war
forces and rapid-reaction units enjoying high
combat capability will demonstrate their readiness
during the war games," maneuver spokesman
Brigadier-General Kiumars Heidari told an Iranian
news agency. Several short-range missiles with a
range of up to 250 kilometers were also fired.
The timing of the games, which are slated
to last several weeks in 14 of Iran's 30
provinces, on the heels of the Israeli-Hezbollah
war is no coincidence. Nor was the latest muscle
spasm in the Strait of Hormuz, where Iranian naval
forces this week fired on a Romanian oil rig,
dropping volatile European oil stocks. Roughly 20%
of the world's oil supply passes through the
waterway, which Iran has threatened to blockade in
the event of a preemptive attack by Israel or the
United States. Such activity sends small tremors
suggestive of Iran's capacity to control the flow
of crucial Persian Gulf energy supplies, and the
severe backlash it could facilitate abroad in a
showdown.
Simmering Middle East violence
has meanwhile shot crude prices up to US$75 a
barrel, to the delight of a government that
depends on oil for almost 80% of its revenues.
Because, by some estimates, the state controls
two-thirds of the national economy, increased oil
wealth appears to have bought the regime a cushion
with a mercurial domestic base that has now
largely been consolidated in its support of Iran's
right to develop a nuclear program.
But
despite Iran's leverage on the international
energy market, current vogue on the Arab street
and capacity to wreak havoc in Iraq and the Middle
East at large via the Shi'ite militia alliance of
Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad, Hamas and Syria,
analysts say Iran wants to avoid an open conflict.
Instead, Tehran "thinks [it] has a strong hand and
wants to push for the maximum" in its nuclear
negotiations, Vali Nasr, an Iran expert at the
Council on Foreign Relations, told Asia Times
Online. "The West responds better to an
intransigent Iran."
Nasr noted that Iran
has internalized the rewards of its experience in
driving a hard bargain. Under former president
Mohammad Khatami, a leader far more conciliatory
than Ahmadinejad, the European Union-3 (Britain,
France and Germany) offered a less generous
incentives package predicated on a guaranteed
supply of fuel for civilian reactors provided they
were under full supervision of the UN nuclear
watchdog. In June, after years of cat-and-mouse
with the West, six industrial powers extended a
sweeter offer, with further trade advantages and
security guarantees, to a radical president with
messianic tendencies who has hinted at the
destruction of Israel.
As long as the UN
appears soft, hamstrung by the lack of a clear US
policy toward Iran, and there is reluctance on the
part of trade partners Russia and China to enforce
economic sanctions, more saber-rattling can be
expected from Tehran, said Nasr. "A conflict
could, however, result from a miscalculation," he
said, adding that the Iranians "could overplay
their hand".
The drumbeat for a tactical
US-Israeli strike on Iranian nuclear facilities
that was audible this spring has been drowned out
by fighting in south Lebanon, sectarian clashes in
Iraq and a resurgent Taliban in Afghanistan. But
US President George W Bush has refused to rule out
the use of force against Iran; there is no telling
how Israel or the US would respond to evidence of
continued arms shipments to Hezbollah or threats
to take the Persian Gulf hostage; and recent
setbacks have hardly dampened the resolve of
influential neo-conservatives in the US to push
for military action.
"We are in a way
lucky that Iran has revealed its aggression, its
recklessness, its terror ties before they
[Iranians] succeeded in becoming a nuclear power,"
William Kristol, editor of the Weekly Standard
magazine, said last month in a Fox News TV
interview typical of the hawks' refrain. "We have
to stop them from getting nuclear weapons. We can
try diplomacy ... We have to be ready to use
force."
Just as Iranian officials have
called for a "new formula" to end the nuclear
impasse, coupled with "serious" negotiations on a
broader range of issues, Ahmadinejad has
reportedly ordered that the production of Iran's
military arsenal - including missiles, torpedoes
and fighter jets - be accelerated.
Meanwhile, the 15,000-strong UN
peacekeeping force proposed for south Lebanon as
mandated by Resolution 1701 and the 130,000 US
troops deployed in Iraq, where several thousand
Iranian intelligence agents are said to be in
place, remain vulnerable to the Ahmadinejad
regime's will. The picture grows bleaker if the
West finally imposes sanctions. Iran has until
next Thursday, August 31, to stop
uranium-enrichment activities or risk sanctions.
Iran has repeatedly shown its willingness
to buy time for its nuclear program through a
combination of diplomatic charades and proxy
support, experts say. The latter connection
between its nuclear ambitions and terror strategy
could very well backfire if Tehran grows reckless
in its efforts to escalate - overtly or covertly -
combustible political tensions. "It is quite
conceivable the US makes the decision not to allow
Iran to run with this," said the council's Nasr.
Jim Phillips, Middle East expert at the
Heritage Foundation, a conservative think-tank,
agrees that Iran is prone to overestimate its
power in seeking a nuclear deterrent against the
US and Israel. But he maintains that Israel is
most likely to strike Iran first, given that Iran
is "already at war" with the Jewish state through
its proxies.
"If I had to guess, I'd say a
[preemptive Israeli attack] is probable," Phillips
told Asia Times Online. "Iran does seem to be
taking a lot of risks [it] could live to regret."
Jason Motlagh is deputy foreign
editor at United Press International in
Washington, DC. He has reported freelance from
Saharan Africa, Asia and the Caribbean for various
US and European news media.
(Copyright
2006 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved.
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