Page 1 of 2 DISPATCHES FROM AMERICA Why the US won't attack Iran
By Tom Engelhardt
It's been on the minds of antiwar activists and war critics since 2003. And
little wonder. If you don't remember the pre-invasion of Iraq neo-con quip,
"Everyone wants to go to Baghdad. Real men want to go to Tehran ..." - then
take notice. Even before American troops entered Iraq, knocking off Iran was
already "Regime Change: The Sequel". It was always on the George W Bush agenda
and, for a faction of the administration led by Vice President Dick Cheney, it
evidently still is.
Add to that a series of provocative statements by Bush, the vice president and
other top US officials and former officials. Take Cheney's daughter Elizabeth,
who recently sent this verbal message to the Iranians, "[D]espite what you may
be hearing
from Congress, despite what you may be hearing from others in the
administration who might be saying force isn't on the table ... we're serious."
Asked about an Israeli strike on Iran, she said, "I certainly don't think that
we should do anything but support them." Similarly, former United Nations
ambassador John Bolton suggested that the Bush administration might launch an
Iranian air assault in its last, post-election weeks in office.
Consider as well the evident relish with which the president and other top
administration officials regularly refuse to take "all options" off that
proverbial "table" (at which no one bothers to sit down to talk). Throw into
the mix semi-official threats, warnings and hair-raising leaks from Israeli
officials and intelligence types about Iran's progress in producing a nuclear
weapon and what Israel might do about it. Then there were those recent reports
on a "major" Israeli "military exercise" in the Mediterranean that seemed to
prefigure a future air assault on Iran. ("Several American officials said the
Israeli exercise appeared to be an effort to develop the military's capacity to
carry out long-range strikes and to demonstrate the seriousness with which
Israel views Iran's nuclear program.")
From the other side of the American political aisle comes a language hardly
less hair-raising, including Democratic Senator Hillary Clinton's infamous
comment about how the US could "totally obliterate" Iran (in response to a
hypothetical Iranian nuclear attack on Israel). Congressman Ron Paul recently
reported that fellow representatives "have openly voiced support for a
pre-emptive nuclear strike" on Iran, while the resolution soon to come before
the House (HJ Res 362), supported by Democrats as well as Republicans, urges
the imposition of the kind of sanctions and a naval blockade on Iran that would
be tantamount to a declaration of war.
Stir in a string of new military bases the US has been building within
kilometers of the Iranian border, the repeated crescendos of US military
charges about Iranian-supplied weapons killing American soldiers in Iraq, and
the revelation by Seymour Hersh, the US's premier investigative reporter, that,
late last year the Bush administration launched - with the support of the
Democratic leadership in Congress - a US$400 million covert program "designed
to destabilize [Iran's] religious leadership", including cross-border
activities by US special operations forces and a low-level "war of terror"
through surrogates in regions where Balochi and Ahwazi Arab minorities are
strongest. (Precedents for this terror campaign include previous US Central
Intelligence Agency-run [CIA] campaigns in Afghanistan in the 1980s, using car
bombs and even camel bombs against the Russians, and in Iraq in the 1990s,
using car bombs and other explosives in an attempt to destabilize Saddam
Hussein's regime.)
Add to this combustible mix the unwillingness of the Iranians to suspend their
nuclear enrichment activities, even for a matter of weeks, while negotiating
with the Europeans over their nuclear program. Throw in as well various threats
from Iranian officials in response to the possibility of a US or Israeli attack
on their nuclear facilities, and any number of other alarums, semi-official
predictions ("A senior defense official told ABC News there is an 'increasing
likelihood' that Israel will carry out such an attack ..."), reports, rumors
and warnings - and it's hardly surprising that the political Internet has been
filled with alarming (as well as alarmist) pieces claiming that an assault on
Iran may be imminent.
Hersh, who certainly has his ear to the ground in Washington, has publicly
suggested that a victory by Democratic Senator Barack Obama in the presidential
race might be the signal for the Bush administration to launch an air campaign
against that country. As Jim Lobe of Inter Press Service has pointed out, there
have been a number of "public warnings by US hawks close to Cheney's office
that either the Israelis or the US would attack Iran between the November
elections and the inaugural of a new president in January 2009".
Given the Bush administration's "preventive war" doctrine which has opened the
way for the launching of wars without significant notice or obvious
provocation, and the penchant of its officials to ignore reality, all of this
should frighten anyone. In fact, it's not only war critics who are increasingly
edgy. In recent months, jumpy (and greedy) commodity traders, betting on a
future war, have boosted these fears. (Every bit of potential bad news relating
to Iran only seems to push the price of a barrel of oil further into the
stratosphere.) And mainstream pundits and journalists are increasingly joining
them.
No wonder. It's a remarkably frightening scenario, and, if there's one lesson
this administration has taught us these last years, it's that nothing's "off
the table", not for officials who, only a few years ago, believed themselves
capable of creating their own reality and imposing it on the planet. An
"unnamed administration official" - generally assumed to be former presidential
advisor Karl Rove - famously put it this way to journalist Ron Suskind in
October 2004:
[He] said that guys like me were "in what we call the
reality-based community", which he defined as people who "believe that
solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality". I nodded
and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me
off. "That's not the way the world really works anymore," he continued. "We're
an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're
studying that reality - judiciously, as you will - we'll act again, creating
other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort
out. We're history's actors ... and you, all of you, will be left to just study
what we do."
A future global oil shock
Nonetheless, sometimes - as in Iraq - reality has a way of biting back, no
matter how mad or how powerful the imperial dreamer. So, let's consider reality
for a moment. When it comes to Iran, reality means oil and natural gas. These
days, any twitch of trouble, or potential trouble, affecting the petroleum
market, no matter how minor - from Mexico to Nigeria - forces the price of oil
another bump higher.
Possessing the world's second-largest reserves of oil and natural gas, Iran is
no speed bump on the energy map. The National Security Network, a group of
national security experts, estimates that the Bush administration's policy of
bluster, threat and intermittent low-level actions against Iran has already
added a premium of $30-$40 to every $140 barrel of oil. Then there was the
one-day $11 spike after Israeli Deputy Prime Minister Shaul Mofaz suggested
that an Israeli attack on Iranian nuclear facilities was "unavoidable".
Given that, let's imagine, for a moment, what almost any version of an air
assault - Israeli, American or a combination of the two - would be likely to do
to the price of oil. When asked recently by Brian Williams on NBC Nightly News
about the effects of an Israeli attack on Iran, correspondent Richard Engel
responded, "I asked an oil analyst that very question. He said, 'The price of a
barrel of oil? Name your price: $300, $400 a barrel'." Former CIA official
Robert Baer suggested in Time Magazine that such an attack would translate into
$12 gas at the pump. ("One oil speculator told me that oil would hit $200 a
barrel within minutes.")
Those kinds of price leaps could take place in the panic that preceded any
Iranian response. But, of course, the Iranians, no matter how badly hit, would
be certain to respond - by themselves and through proxies in the region in
myriad possible ways. Iranian officials have regularly been threatening all
sorts of hell should they be attacked, including "blitzkrieg tactics" in the
region. Oil Minister Gholam Hossein Nozari typically swore that his country
would "react fiercely, and nobody can imagine what would be the reaction of
Iran".
The head of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), Mohammed Jafari,
said, "Iran's response to any military action will make the invaders regret
their decision and action." (Jafari had already warned that if attacked, Iran
would launch a barrage of missiles at Israel and close the Hormuz Strait, the
outlet for oil tankers leaving the Persian Gulf.") Ali Shirazi, Iranian Supreme
Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's representative to IRGC, offered the following,
"The first bullet fired by America at Iran will be followed by Iran burning
down its vital interests around the globe."
Let's take a moment to imagine just what some of the responses to any air
assault might be. The list of possibilities is nearly endless and many of them
would be hard even for the planet's preeminent military power to prevent. They
might include, as a start, the mining of the Strait of Hormuz, through which a
significant portion of the world's oil passes, as well as other disruptions of
shipping in the region. (Don't even think about what would happen to insurance
rates for oil tankers!)
In addition, American troops on their mega-bases in Iraq, rather than being a
powerful force in any attack - Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has already
cautioned Bush that Iraqi territory cannot be used to attack Iran - would
instantly become so many hostages to Iranian actions, including the possible
targeting of those bases by missiles. Similarly, US supply lines for those
troops, running from Kuwait past the southern oil port of Basra might well
become hostages of a different sort, given the outrage that, in Shi'ite regions
of Iraq, would surely follow an attack. Those lines would assumedly not be
impossible to disrupt.
Imagine, as well, what possible disruptions of the modest Iraqi oil supply
might mean in the chaos of the moment, with Iranian oil already off the market.
Then consider what the targeting of even small numbers of Iranian missiles on
the Saudi and Kuwaiti oil fields could do to global oil markets. (It might not
even matter whether they actually hit anything.) And that, of course, just
scratches the surface of the range of retaliatory possibilities available to
Iranian leaders.
Looked at another way, Iran is a weak regional power (which hasn't invaded
another country in living memory) that nonetheless retains a remarkable
capacity to inflict grievous harm locally, regionally and globally.
Such a scenario would result in a global oil shock of almost inconceivable
proportions. For any American who believes that he or she is experiencing "pain
at the pump" right now, just wait until you experience what a true global oil
shock would involve.
And that's without even taking into consideration what spreading chaos in the
oil heartlands of the planet might mean, or what might happen if Hezbollah or
Hamas took action of any sort against Israel, and Israel responded. Mohamed
ElBaradei, the sober-minded head of the International Atomic Energy Agency,
considering the situation, said the following, "A military strike, in my
opinion, would be worse than anything possible. It would turn the region into a
fireball ..."
This, then, is the baseline for any discussion of an attack on Iran. This is
reality, and it has to be daunting for an administration that already finds
itself militarily stretched to the limit, unable even to find the
reinforcements it wants to send into Afghanistan.
Can Israel attack Iran?
Let's leave to the experts the question of whether Israel could actually launch
an effective air strike against Iranian nuclear facilities on its own - about
which there are grave doubts. And let's instead try to imagine what it would
mean for Israel to launch such an assault (egged on by the vice president's
faction in the US government) in the last months, or even weeks, of the second
term of an especially lame lame-duck president and an historically unpopular
administration.
From Iran's foreign minister, we already know that the Iranians would treat an
Israeli attack as if it were an American one, whether or not American planes
were involved - and little wonder. For one thing, Israeli planes heading for
Iran would undoubtedly have to cross Iraqi air space, at present controlled by
the United States, not the nearly air-force-less Maliki government. (In fact,
in Status of Forces Agreement negotiations with the Iraqis, the Bush
administration has demanded that the US retain control of that air space, up to
29,000 feet (8,839 meters), after December 31, 2008, when the United Nations
mandate runs out.)
In other words, on the eve of the arrival of a new American administration,
Israel, a small, vulnerable Middle Eastern state deeply reliant on its American
alliance, would find itself responsible for starting an American war
(associated with a vice
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