Iran
steps up assault on terror By
Brian M Downing
Iran recently offered to
assist in a new probe of the 1994 bombing of a
Jewish community center in Argentina that killed
85 people - an event often attributed to Iran and
its Hezbollah ally. While Iran has hinted at
evidence that might be in its favor, this is
unlikely, and another motive could be at work in
Tehran stepping forward to help solve the case.
Iran is raising the issue of world
terrorism and presenting itself as having endured
numerous attacks over the past few years. Sympathy
will not readily flow toward the Iranian clerics
whose regime has not been innocent in similar
endeavors, and whose oppression has drawn
considerable attention around the world.
However, there has been a slew of recent
incidents against Iran
and complicity may well
attach, embarrassingly, to other states.
Attacks inside Iran Over the
past few years, several attacks have taken place
inside Iran, aimed at halting its nuclear program
and effecting regime change. Tehran has been
accused of developing nuclear weapons - a charge
it denies.
Some of the attacks have been
military targets and as such fall outside the
definition of terrorism, but others have clearly
targeted civilians and can be seen as terrorism.
While Iran has internal groups capable of such
action, many of the attacks almost certainly have
had foreign support.
In February of 2007,
a bomb blast in southeastern Iran killed 18
members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps
(IRGC). In April of the following year, a mosque
in the southwestern city of Shiraz was bombed,
resulting in over 200 casualties. In January 2010,
a nuclear physicist was assassinated and two more
were killed the following November. In October
2010, explosions rocked an IRGC base in
west-central Iran.
Aside from these
incidents, low-level insurgencies smolder in the
northwestern Kurdish region and in the
southeastern Baloch region. Tribal grievances
against central government are the stuff of
Persian-Iranian history dating back centuries, but
those today are supported from without. A group or
two seeking to bring back the Pahlavi monarchy
make their presence felt.
External
support A few years ago there would be
little doubt but that most of these acts were
supported, if not directed from the United States
as part of the neo-conservative strategy of
bringing regime change. Iran, after all, had been
identified as part of the "axis of evil, and Iraq,
one of the "axis" powers, had been invaded and
defeated. The third member of the "club" was North
Korea.
Iran thwarted the neo-conservative
ambitions by directing Shi'ite militias against US
forces. The attacks dropped off markedly in early
2007, as did US threats against Iran - a sign that
a confidential agreement had been reached between
the two states. Chess is thought to have begun in
Persia and its practice is better training for
foreign policy than football.
Israel is
gravely concerned over Iran's nuclear program and
livid that the US has backed away from confronting
Iran more forcefully on the matter. Israel has had
longstanding ties with Kurdish groups in both Iraq
and Iran. Largely forgotten now, Israel could once
count Iran as its closest ally in the region, as
they both opposed Arab powers, especially Iraq
after Saddam Hussein took power in the 1970s.
Israeli intelligence officers operated from the
safety of Kurdish Iran and conducted operations
across the border inside Iraq.
Israeli
intelligence worked with Iranian and Iraqi Kurds
to limit the forces Saddam could deploy against
Israel and Iran. With the destruction of Saddam's
army in the first Gulf War (1991), Israel saw Iran
as a growing threat and began to use its Kurdish
assets to cause trouble in Iran. Today, Israeli
intelligence officers operate from the safety of
Kurdish Iraq and conduct operations across the
border inside Iran.
Saudi Arabia's concern
with Iran's nuclear program is intensified by its
fear of growing Shi'ite power in the region - a
dynamic begun with the Ruhollah Khomeini-led
revolution in 1979 and greatly strengthened by the
ouster of Saddam, whom the Saudis saw as an ally
against Iran, though a rather mercurial one. Saudi
Arabia is as livid over US inaction as is its
strange Israeli bedfellow.
Saudi
intelligence is not as dexterous or lethal as that
of Israel but it brings vast financial resources
and extensive influence in the Sunni world. The
Saudis are coalescing disparate Sunni forces of
Iraq to counter Iranian influence there and, in
conjunction with Pakistan's intelligence services,
supporting Baloch militants in southeastern Iran
and also countering Iranian influence in
Afghanistan.
Iranian response Tehran has responded to these actions more
cautiously than might have been expected. Its
Hamas ally in Palestine has increased rocket
attacks into Israel; Shi'ite militias in Iraq have
renewed their attacks on US troops after a lengthy
respite; and the IRGC is giving the Taliban in
Afghanistan more sophisticated weapons.
Nonetheless, and despite Saudi claims,
there has been thus far no discernible effort on
Iran's part to stir up Shi'ite groups in Saudi
Arabia, Bahrain and other Gulf states. Nor has the
IRGC retaliated directly against the states
supportive of assassinations and bombings inside
Iran - again, thus far.
Iran is developing
a protracted diplomatic response. Tehran hosted a
conference on the issue of world terrorism last
month, which was widely viewed as propagandistic
and unblushingly incongruous, but the United
Nations sanctioned it and influential Iranian
allies, most notably China, lauded it.
Iran is unlikely to win substantial
sympathy around the world. It may be able to
present a case that it is taking more than it has
given. It will further note that sanctions,
currency manipulations, and computer viruses are
one thing, but bombings, assassinations, and
insurgencies are quite another.
States
less doctrinaire and more practical than Saudi
Arabia and Israel - European Union states and
smaller Gulf states, perhaps - may be important.
Iran may be able to underscore to them the dangers
of intrigue and provocation in so economically
vital a region.
Gunboats of numerous flags
and of antagonistic outlooks ply the same narrow
straits. Shi'ite populations in the region do not
need distant mullahs to point out oppression to
them. Events can get out of control, sending oil
prices skyrocketing and gravely worsening the
global economic situation.
These more
practical states may also point out the
ineffective and counter-productive nature of such
attacks. Historically, they do not usually
undermine support for regimes. On the contrary,
they tend more often to coalesce support for them,
problematic and even oppressive though they might
be.
There may be some urgency to Iran's
effort. The US has been forced from a more
aggressive stance vis-a-vis Iran by the latter's
chess moves in Iraq and Afghanistan. But the US
pieces will be almost entirely off the Iraqi board
in five months, and in the next year their numbers
will decline significantly in Afghanistan as well.
At some point in the troop reduction, Israel
and Saudi Arabia will press the US to return to
its more aggressive stance on Iran.
Each
of those powers has a great deal of influence in
Washington; combined they may be irresistible.
American foreign policy, after all, has been known
to stray from the sobriety of its national
security under the influence of lobbies.
Paradoxically, a US departure from region - an
objective of Iranian policy for many years now -
may be destabilizing and highly problematic for
Iran.
Brian M Downing is a
political/military analyst and author ofThe
Military Revolution and Political Change and
The Paths of Glory: War and Social Change in
America from the Great War to Vietnam. He can
be reached at brianmdowning@gmail.com.
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