US frets at Iran's 'strategic
dominance' By Gareth Porter
WASHINGTON - The George W Bush
administration recently concluded that the
increase in rocket attacks on coalition targets by
Shi'ite forces in Iraq over the summer was a
deliberate move by Iran to escalate the war to put
pressure on the United States to accept Iranian
influence in Iraq, according to a senior US
government official.
The reported
conclusions reached by administration officials
suggest that the advocates of war with Iran, led
by Vice President Dick Cheney, have won at least
one phase of the policy battle
within the administration
over the option of broadening the war into Iran.
The official, who spoke to Inter Press
Service on the understanding that there would be
no identification other than "senior government
official", said the increased attacks represent
"not just some new kinds of weapons but a new
dynamic" in the conflict with Iran over Iraq.
The official said the attacks had a "very
specific strategic purpose", which was "at a
minimum to push the United States to accept
certain Iranian desiderata" - apparently referring
to Iranian negotiating aims.
The official
did not specify what the administration believed
those aims to be. But it seems likely that the new
conclusion refers to long-established Iranian
desires to have the US recognize its legitimate
geopolitical and religious interests in Iraq.
The Iranian ambassador to Iraq, Hassan
Kazemi Qomi, was quite explicit in his May 28
meeting with US Ambassador Ryan Crocker that Iran
wanted Washington to accept that Iraq is Iran's
"back yard", according to a report on the Iranian
Baztab news website in June.
Iran's secret
negotiating proposal to the Bush administration in
May 2003 included a similar demand for "respect
for Iranian national interests in Iraq and
religious links to Najaf/Karbala", referring to
two holy Shi'ite cities in Iraq.
The Bush
administration now believes that Iran's "larger
strategic aim" in allegedly providing modern
weapons such as 240mm rockets to Shi'ite militias
targeting US and coalition forces in Iraq is "to
attempt to establish escalation dominance in Iraq
and strategic dominance outside", according to the
official.
The official said, "Escalation
dominance means you can control the pace of
escalation." That term has always been used to
refer to the ability of the US to threaten another
state with overwhelming retaliation to deter it
from responding to US force. The official defined
"strategic dominance" as meaning that "you are
perceived as the dominant center in the region".
The Bush administration has never used the
term "strategic dominance" in any public statement
on Iran. According to a concept of regional
"dominance" defined by perceptions - which would
mean the perceptions of Sunni Arab states who are
opposed to any Shi'ite influence in the region -
Iran could be seen as already having "strategic
dominance" in the region.
The reported
conclusion that the increased attacks by Shi'ite
forces represent an effort to achieve such
dominance could be the basis for a new argument
that only by reducing Iranian influence in Iraq
through military action can the United States
avert Iranian "strategic dominance" in the region.
That conclusion about "strategic
dominance" thus implies that destroying what is
perceived to be the political-military bases of
Iranian influence in Iraq has become the key US
war aim.
The conclusion that the Shi'ite
militias' rocket attacks on coalition targets
represent a bid to "control the pace of
escalation" could be interpreted as expressing a
concern that the US lacks the military capacity to
suppress those forces. That raises the question
whether the advocates of war against Iran have
introduced the concept of "escalation dominance"
as a way of supporting their favorite option -
attacking targets inside Iran.
Further
evidence that the Bush administration has taken a
step closer to geographic escalation of the war
came in a September 10 interview by Brit Hume of
Fox News with General David Petraeus, the top US
commander in Iraq. Hume, who appeared to have been
tipped off to ask about the option of broadening
the war into Iran, asked Petraeus whether the
"rules of engagement" allowed him to "do what you
think you need to do to suppress this activity on
the part of Iran, or perhaps do you need
assistance from military not under your command to
do this?"
Pressed by Hume, Petraeus said,
"When I have concerns about something beyond [the
border], I take them to my boss ... and in fact,
we have shared our concerns with him and with the
chain of command, and there is a pretty hard look
ongoing at that particular situation."
Joe
Cirincione, senior fellow at the Center for
American Progress, a Washington think-tank, said
that if the report of the administration's
conclusions about Iranian aims is true, "it is a
disturbing sign that the hardliners have regained
the pre-eminent policymaking position".
The use of the term "escalation
domination" in the Iraq context - suggesting that
Iran is responsible for the conflict - is "wildly
inappropriate", Cirincione observed. He said the
reported conclusions sound like the viewpoint of a
"group of people inside the administration who
view Iran as Nazi Germany" and who are "constantly
exaggerating" the threat from Iran.
The
view that Iraq has become a US-Iranian "proxy
war", with Iran pulling the strings in the Shi'ite
camp outside the government, was apparently
rejected by the US intelligence community in its
National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq issued last
February. The brief summary findings statement
released to the public stated, "Iraq' s neighbors
influence, and are influenced by, events within
Iraq, but the involvement of these outside actors
is not likely to be a major driver of violence or
the prospects of stability because of the
self-sustaining character of Iraq's internal
sectarian dynamics."
Gareth Porter
is a historian and national-security policy
analyst. His latest book, Perils of Dominance:
Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam,
was published in June 2005.
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