Page 2 of 2 DISPATCHES FROM AMERICA Why the US won't attack Iran
By Tom Engelhardt
president of unparalleled unpopularity) and for a global oil shock of
staggering proportions, if not a global great depression. It would also be the
proximate cause for a regional "fireball". (Oil-poor Israel would undoubtedly
also be economically wounded by its own strike.)
In addition, the latest American National Intelligence Estimate on Iran
concluded that the Iranians stopped weaponizing parts of their nuclear program
in 2003, and American intelligence reputedly doubts recent Israeli warnings
that Iran is on the verge of a bomb. Of course, Israel itself has an estimated
- though unannounced - nuclear force of about 200 such weapons.
Simply put, it is next to inconceivable that the present riven Israeli
government would be politically capable of launching such an attack on Iran on
its own, or even in combination with only a faction, no matter how important,
in the US government. And such a point is more or less taken for granted by
many Israelis (and Iranians). Without a full-scale "green light" from the Bush
administration, launching such an attack could be tantamount to long-term
political suicide.
Only in conjunction with an American attack would an Israeli attack (rash to
the point of madness even then) be likely. So let's turn to the Bush
administration and consider what might be called the Hersh scenario.
The Obama factor
The first problem is a simple one. Oil, which was at $146 a barrel last week,
dropped to $136 (in part because of a statement by Iranian President Mahmud
Ahmadinejad dismissing "the possibility that war with the United States and
Israel was imminent"), and, on Wednesday, rose a dollar to $137 in reaction to
Iranian missile tests.
But, whatever its immediate zigs and zags, the overall pattern of the price of
oil seems clear enough. Some suggest that, by the time of any Obama victory, a
barrel of crude oil will be at $170. The chairman of the giant Russian oil
monopoly Gazprom recently predicted that it would hit $250 within 18 months -
and that's without an attack on Iran.
For those eager to launch a reasonably no-pain campaign against Iran, the
moment is already long gone. Every leap in the price of oil only emphasizes the
pain to come. In turn, that means, with every passing day, it's madder - and
harder - to launch such an attack. There is already significant opposition
within the administration; the American people, feeling pain, are unprepared
for and, as polls indicate, massively unwilling to sanction such an attack.
There can be no question that the Bush legacy, such as it is, would be secured
in infamy forever and a day.
Now, consider recent administration actions on North Korea. Facing a "reality"
that first-term Bush officials would have abjured, the president and his
advisors not only negotiated with that nuclearized "axis of evil" nation, but
are now removing it from the Trading with the Enemy Act list and the State
Sponsor of Terrorism list. No matter what steps Kim Jong-il's regime has taken,
including blowing up the cooling tower at the Yongbyon reactor, this is nothing
short of a stunning reversal for this administration. An angry Bolton, standing
in for the Cheney faction, compared what happened to a "police truce with the
Mafia". And Cheney's anger over the decision - and the policy - was visible and
widely reported.
It's possible, of course, that Cheney and associates are simply holding their
fire for what they care most about, but here's another question that needs to
be considered: does Bush actually support his imperial vice president in the
manner he once did? There's no way to know, but Bush has always been a more
important figure in the administration than many critics like to imagine. The
North Korean decision indicates that Cheney may not have a free hand from the
president on Iran policy either.
The adults in the room
And what about the opposition? I'm not talking about those of us out here who
would oppose such a strike. I mean within the world of Bush's Washington.
Forget the Democrats. They hardly count and, as Hersh has pointed out, their
leadership already signed off on that $400 million covert destabilization
campaign.
I mean the adults in the room, who have been in short supply indeed these last
years in the Bush administration, specifically Secretary of Defense Robert
Gates and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mike Mullen. (Secretary of
State Condoleezza Rice evidently falls into this camp as well, although she's
proven herself something of a president-enabling nonentity over the years.)
With former president Jimmy Carter's national security advisor Zbigniew
Brzezinski, Gates tellingly co-chaired a task force sponsored by the Council on
Foreign Relations in 2004 which called for negotiations with Iran. He arrived
at the Pentagon early in 2007 as an envoy from the world of former president
George H W Bush and as a man on a mission. He was there to staunch the madness
and begin the clean up in the imperial Augean stables.
In his Congressional confirmation hearings, he was absolutely clear: any attack
on Iran would be a "very last resort". Sometimes, in the bureaucratic world of
Washington, a single "very" can tell you what you need to know. Until then,
administration officials had been referring to an attack on Iran simply as a
"last resort". He also offered a bloodcurdling scenario for what the aftermath
of such an American attack might be like:
It's always awkward to talk
about hypotheticals in this case. But I think that while Iran cannot attack us
directly militarily, I think that their capacity to potentially close off the
Persian Gulf to all exports of oil, their potential to unleash a significant
wave of terror both in the - well, in the Middle East and in Europe and even
here in this country is very real ... Their ability to get Hezbollah to further
destabilize Lebanon I think is very real. So I think that while their ability
to retaliate against us in a conventional military way is quite limited, they
have the capacity to do all of the things, and perhaps more, that I just
described.
And perhaps more ... That puts it in a
nutshell.
Hersh, in his most recent piece on the administration's covert program in Iran,
reports the following:
A Democratic senator told me that, late last
year, in an off-the-record lunch meeting, Secretary of Defense Gates met with
the Democratic caucus in the Senate. (Such meetings are held regularly.) Gates
warned of the consequences if the Bush administration staged a preemptive
strike on Iran, saying, as the senator recalled, "We'll create generations of
jihadists, and our grandchildren will be battling our enemies here in America."
Gates' comments stunned the Democrats at the lunch.
In other
words, in 2007, early and late, the US's new secretary of defense managed to
sound remarkably like one of those Iranian officials issuing warnings. Gates,
who has a long history as a skilled Washington in-fighter, has once again
proven that skill. So far, he seems to have outmaneuvered the Cheney faction.
The March "resignation" of CENTCOM commander Admiral William J Fallon,
outspokenly against an administration strike on Iran, sent both a shiver of
fear through war critics and a new set of attack scenarios coursing through the
political Internet, as well as into the world of the mainstream media. As
reporter Lobe points out at his invaluable Lobelog blog, however, Admiral Mike
Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs and Gates' man in the Pentagon, has
proven nothing short of adamant when it comes to the inadvisability of
attacking Iran.
His recent public statements have actually been stronger than Fallon's (and the
position he fills is obviously more crucial than CENTCOM commander). Lobe
comments that, at a July 2 press conference at the Pentagon, Mullen "repeatedly
made clear that he opposes an attack on Iran - whether by Israel or his own
forces - and, moreover, favors dialogue with Tehran, without the normal White
House nuclear preconditions."
Mullen, being an adult, has noticed the obvious. As columnist Jay Bookman of
the Atlanta Constitution put the matter recently: "A US attack on Iran's
nuclear installations would create trouble that we aren't equipped to handle
easily, not with ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Adm Mike Mullen, the
chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, drove that point home in a press
conference last week at the Pentagon."
The weight of reality
Here's the point: yes, there is a powerful faction in this administration,
headed by the vice president, which has, it seems, saved its last rounds of
ammunition for a strike against Iran. The question, of course, is: are they
still capable of creating "their own reality" and imposing it, however briefly,
on the planet? Every tick upwards in the price of oil says no. Every day that
passes makes an attack on Iran harder to pull off.
On this subject, panic may be everywhere in the world of the political
Internet, and even in the mainstream, but it's important not to make the
mistake of overestimating these political actors or underestimating the forces
arrayed against them. It's a reasonable proposition today - as it wasn't
perhaps a year ago - that, whatever their desires, they will not, in the end,
be able to launch an attack on Iran; that, even where there's a will, there may
not be a way.
They would have to act, after all, against the unfettered opposition of the
American people; against leading military commanders who, even if obliged to
follow a direct order from the president, have other ways to make their wills
known; against key figures in the administration; and, above all, against
reality which bears down on them with a weight that is already staggering - and
still growing.
And yet, of course, for the maddest gamblers and dystopian dreamers in our
history, never say never.
Tom Engelhardt, co-founder of the American Empire Project, runs the
Nation Institute's TomDispatch.com.
The World According to TomDispatch: America in the New Age of Empire(Verso,
2008), a collection of some of the best pieces from his site, has just been
published. Focusing on what the mainstream media hasn't covered, it is an
alternative history of the mad Bush years.
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