Raging US pulls no punches on Iran
By Kaveh L Afrasiabi
TEHRAN - United States officials may be busy plotting the sequences of action
against Iran that began with the allegation of a terror plot in Washington last
week and has now extended to the nuclear issue. This is in light of President
Barack Obama's call on the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to go
public with its evidence of Iran's alleged proliferation activities - but in
Tehran the mood is defiant and many analysts wonder what is behind the new
well-orchestrated US offensive against Iran.
The US is considering how to respond after accusing Iran of sponsoring a plot
to assassinate Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to the United States. Obama said last
week there were "direct links" to Iran’s government, which has rejected the
claim. The US president is calling on inspectors at the IAEA, the United
Nations nuclear watchdog, to release data showing Iran is designing atomic
weapons technology in a bid to further isolate Tehran, the
New York Times reported on Sunday.
The US moves, according to some media pundits, are rooted in insecurities
caused by the Arab Spring, an Islamic revival and the power vacuum sure to
follow the departure of US forces from Iraq this year, which will undoubtedly
increase Iran's sphere of influence in the region. This has prompted a powerful
US jab at Iran aimed at putting Tehran on the defensive and to reverse the
country's fortunes.
An important aspect of this explanation is the role of Saudi Arabia, which is
seeking a game-changing approach to Iran and its rising power by pressuring the
US to escalate threats against Tehran. Saudi Arabia has accused Iran of
fomenting trouble both in Bahrain and (increasingly) among the Shi'ite
population in Saudi Arabia itself.
A political science professor at Tehran University, who spoke with the author
on the condition of anonymity, said Obama was exploiting this for re-election
purposes, given the fact that most pro-Israel forces "lambasted him for a tardy
reaction to the Palestinian initiative at the United Nations for statehood".
According to this theory, Obama is compensating for his shortcomings in
defending Israel, and prioritizes the Iran threat in terms of how it can be
used to secure his re-election next year for another four-year term.
While the above perspectives focus on external or internal factors, other
theories are also float around, one of which is that Obama has been forced into
the new hawkish anti-Iran corner by certain institutional forces, such as the
Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), nowadays headed by General David Petraeus.
The former top US military man in Iraq and Afghanistan has by all accounts an
extreme dislike of the Islamic Republic, which he has repeatedly accused of
engaging in a proxy war against US forces in both Iraq and Afghanistan.
This interpretation relies on reports in the US media that the CIA has been
involved in the investigation of the terror plot from the outset, contrary to
initial information that portrayed the September 29 arrest of Iranian-American
Mansour Arabsiar simply as an FBI (sting) operation.
On the more pessimistic side, some analysts in Tehran have regarded the timing
of Israel's unequal exchange of prisoners with Hamas (ie one Israeli soldier
for over 1,000 Palestinians) with the alleged Iran terror plot as a bad omen,
indicating that Israel's intention is to quiet the Palestinian front as part of
a military strategy against Iran. This is at a time when Iran's key ally in
Syria, President Bashar al-Assad, is under siege and would be practically
incapable of coming to Iran's assistance in any showdown between Israel and
Iran.
In this "war scenario", the impending IAEA report on Iran plays a pivotal role
in completing the US-Israeli justification to commence a wave of air strikes
and carpet bombardment of Iran's nuclear facilities, or at a minimum, targeting
some military installations as an act of retaliation against Iran's alleged
terror plot.
One advantage of a military campaign against Iran would be domestic in terms of
deflecting the public's attention from the mounting economic problems that have
caused a new and rising social movement dubbed "Occupy Wall Street". But, if
capitalism is theft, as an anarchist saying goes, a self-justified
"pre-emptive" or retaliatory strike on Iran is by all indications tantamount to
political theft, capitalizing on a highly suspicious and yet-to-be
substantiated terror plot to pursue a long-term strategy of defanging the
assertive Islamic Republic, which has refused to consent to the American
hegemony for the past 33 years.
Bottom line, this would be a new leaf in the ongoing superpower strategy to
sustain its hegemony in oil-rich Middle East in the face of mounting
challenges.
The trouble with the war scenario would be its cost and drain on the US economy
and the possible shocks such as a disruption in the flow of oil from the
Persian Gulf, the extension of insecurity to the oil sheikdoms, and the chances
that world economic recovery could be imperiled. Skyrocketing oil prices are a
sure bet in this scenario, and would hurt the already weak European economies,
among others.
Still, the so-called realists and neo-realists in international relations who
find it improbable that the US would attack Iran due to high costs and the
regional ramifications may put too much faith in the rationality of
decision-making in the United States, which at times believes its own lies and
succumbs to the irrationality of expelling the cost-benefit mode of reasoning
in favor of a blind power approach rooted in psychological insecurity.
Perhaps this was the story of the multi-trillion dollar Iraq war, that is now
about to conclude by, for all practical purposes, folding business and dishing
out a harvest into Iran's hands. That is too much for the likes of Petraeus,
who sees this as a unique moment to isolate Iran by a combination of powerful
jabs, including more sanctions.
"Iran will not be a passive recipient of US blows and it will reciprocate where
it can," says a Tehran analyst who hopes that both sides can step back from
further escalation and allow "reason to prevail". That may be a hope against
hope.
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