Page 2 of 2 The great games over
Iraq By Kaveh L Afrasiabi
bipartisan
Iraq Study Group, opting instead for the
path of hostility and confrontation. There is now
open talk of "crossing into Iran" and smashing
the Iranian networks inside Iraq, as if those
networks are constantly working at cross-purposes with
the US mission. But what exactly is the US
mission in Iraq?
The facade of a
self-imposed mission to "spread democracy" is
wearing thinner by the hour, seeing how Secretary
of State
Condoleezza Rice did not
bother to invoke the word "democracy" once in
her latest trip to Cairo and Riyadh, focusing
instead on "stability" and raising the specter that "the
Iranians are coming" - this from a specialist in Russia
and the Cold War who is at home with
Cold War posturing.
Handicapped by
her lack of knowledge of Middle Eastern history
and politics, Rice must now ponder the quick
drift toward military confrontation with Iran in
light of the nuclear standoff and the seemingly
irresistible Israeli pressure to act now before
Iran reaches "the point of no return". We must
also add: before the Bush administration becomes a
"lame duck" and is drawn by the president's own
weakness into yet another foreign gambit by the
weight of upcoming electoral politics.
Spring of military action Various US pundits have openly opined that the
first half of 2007 is the best time for military
action against Iran, with that country
internationally isolated, the Arab tide against
Tehran at its all-time highest, and Iran's own
house divided among competing factions unable to
reach consensus on important foreign-policy
priorities.
Bulking up its
military presence by dispatching a fresh aircraft-carrier task force to the
Persian Gulf, as well as several nuclear-armed
submarines, and sending Patriot missiles to the
US-friendly states in the region, the Bush
administration might actually gain in Iraq by
subduing Iran militarily, ostensibly over the
nuclear issue.
The
problem with this rationale, however, is that
it disregards the likelihood of Iranian
retaliation in Iraq, regional "blowback", and the threats
to the world economy posed by curtailed
oil traffic through the Strait of Hormuz. Concerning the
last, the US has reportedly made contingency
plans for the indefinite takeover of Iranian
territory in Chah Bahar, which would deny Tehran its strategic
leverage with Hormuz.
A
limited war with Iran is, as pointed out by this
author previously, likely to degenerate into a regional
conflagration, substantially complicating the
picture in Iraq (and Afghanistan as well), perhaps
prompting the US to push for outright "regime
change" in Tehran, despite the lack of troops
necessary for even a limited, contained war. That
would mean expanding the Iraq war to Iran, with
several intended and unintended consequences, one
of which is potentially depriving Russia of the
Iranian buffer it now enjoys vis-a-vis the power
of the US military machine.
It comes as no
surprise, then, that in the midst of US-Russian
common cause at the UN Security Council against
Iran, Moscow has proceeded with the delivery of an
air-defense system to Iran and is hinting at the
sale of an even more advanced system in the
future. Russia's national-security interests would
be badly bruised by a US-Iran military showdown
that would bring the intrusive Western superpower
closer to Russia's (insecure) southern borders.
Nor would China benefit geostrategically
from such an outcome, in light of that country's
burgeoning energy relations with Iran today,
further solidified by a new US$3.6 billion
Tehran-Beijing agreement for liquefied natural
gas.
In signing this LNG
deal, the Chinese government had to ignore a blunt US warning
not to proceed, with the foreign minister telling
the US "not to meddle" in China's relations
with Iran. Clearly, China could not have
the same expectations about the nature of Iranian
regime change after an unequal bout between
the recalcitrant Iranians and the US.
In a
word, the long-term geopolitical ramifications for both China
and Russia are too serious to ignore by
their policymakers. Moscow and Beijing have joined the
bandwagon over US-led efforts to impose sanctions on Iran,
overlooking their own previously stated insight that
such sanctions would be a "prelude to war".
Indeed, how little time
Washington has lost in following up Security
Council Resolution 1737 with ratcheted-up military threats against
Iran. Looking far ahead, this, in turn, raises
another vexing question: Is the US-Iran rivalry
the outer ring of a broader, new Cold War between
the US and the countervailing powers of China and
Russia?
Kaveh L Afrasiabi, PhD,
is the author of After Khomeini: New
Directions in Iran's Foreign Policy (Westview
Press) and co-author of "Negotiating Iran's
Nuclear Populism", Brown Journal of World Affairs,
Volume XII, Issue 2, Summer 2005, with Mustafa
Kibaroglu. He also wrote "Keeping Iran's nuclear
potential latent", Harvard International Review,
and is author of Iran's Nuclear
Program: Debating Facts Versus Fiction.
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