SPEAKING
FREELY Existential threats and wars of
choice By Alan G Jamieson
Speaking Freely is an Asia Times
Online feature that allows guest writers to have
their say. Please
click hereif you are interested in
contributing.
The article is
entitled "Bombs Away: A Suitable Case for
Pre-Emption?". It warns of the threat posed by
Iran's supposed programme to develop nuclear
weapons. It notes that the Israeli prime minister
has said that his country cannot live with a
nuclear-armed Iran. The article declares that if
sanctions are not successful in curbing Iran's
nuclear ambitions, then Israel
(inevitably supported by the
US) has plans to launch a pre-emptive military
attack against Iranian nuclear sites. Faced with a
dire threat to its very existence, the state of
Israel reserves the right to strike first.
Given its content, a casual reader might
think this article appeared in the media today, or
yesterday, or maybe last week. In fact it was
published in The Economist magazine in July 2007,
more than five years ago. One would have thought
that if Iran was an existential threat to Israel
in 2007 the latter country would have taken some
action by now to remove the threat, instead of
endlessly postponing its attack from year to year.
The fact is that Israeli governments are
rightly worried about starting a new war in the
Middle East whose final outcome nobody can
definitely predict. In the end Israel can probably
co-exist with a nuclear-armed Iran, just as the US
learned to live with a nuclear-armed Soviet Union.
After all, Israelis and Iranians have one thing in
common: both groups dislike the Arabs.
Saudi Arabia and the other Arab monarchies
of the Gulf Co-operation Council (GCC) have played
as great a role as Israel and the US in bringing
about the present situation where an attack on
Iran seems increasingly likely. Indeed Saudi
Arabia has now replaced Egypt as Israel's
principal de facto Muslim ally, whatever the
denials from Riyadh.
Thus the forces
assembling to assault Iran are not doing so
because of some existential threat posed by that
country, but are engaged in an exercise in great
power aggression. The three principal actors -
Israel, the US, and Saudi Arabia - believe that
curbing Iran's power, and possibly overthrowing
the regime of the ayatollahs, will benefit their
interests. Israel wants to preserve its monopoly
of nuclear weapons in the Middle East; America
wants vengeance on the only non-nuclear armed
state which has persistently defied its hegemonic
power since 1979; and Saudi Arabia desperately
wants to preserve its self-declared leadership of
the Muslim world in the face of Iranian
challenges. Will these three powers succeed in
their aims?
If past precedent is anything
to go by, they may be successful, at least in the
short run. The traditional script for an Israeli
or American attack on a Muslim country in the
Middle East goes as follows. Israel/US is said to
be provoked beyond endurance by the state and
threatens military action. The target Muslim state
blusters and makes wild threats about the
destruction it will inflict on any attackers, a
refrain taken up by its supporters around the
world, who forecast world chaos if the country is
attacked.
Israel/US launches a military
assault on the country; its armed forces are
quickly defeated; and the world does not collapse
into chaos. Any wider effects of the conflict
(higher oil prices, etc.) are only short-lived.
The regime of the country may or may not be
overthrown as a consequence of its defeat, but it
will certainly be reluctant to face such a
military onslaught again, no matter how much its
people may resent their humiliation.
Only
if Israel or the US unwisely turns military
victory into the occupation of Muslim territory
does their success all too quickly turn to
prolonged, expensive and bloody asymmetric
warfare. Israel learned this in Arab lands after
1967 and in Lebanon after 1982; the US has had
similar experiences in Afghanistan since 2001 and
in Iraq from 2003. Governments are easy to curb or
overthrow, but popular resistance is much more
difficult to deal with.
Despite Iran's
dogged performance in its war with Iraq from 1980
to 1988, when it eventually ended up fighting an
Iraq supported not just by the rest of the Arab
world but also by the US and other Western states,
such prolonged revolutionary resistance is
unlikely in a future conflict. More likely a new
war with Iran will follow the scenario noted
above. Israel and the US (now with the added
assistance of a Muslim power, Saudi Arabia) will
find continued Iranian intransigence a provocation
and will threaten military action.
The
Iranians will bluster and threaten the destruction
of anybody who attacks them, while worldwide
'liberal' opinion will prophesy the end of
civilization if war comes to the Middle East. Iran
will be attacked and its armed forces swiftly
crushed (so that oil prices do not soar to great
heights for too long). The chastened ayatollahs
(if their regime survives) will have to admit
defeat, but most Iranians will never forget this
unholy attack by Christians, Jews and (Sunni)
Muslims, and sooner or later Iran will return to
the pursuit of the nuclear option as the only way
to guarantee national independence.
If the
United States is reckless, it may (as has been
suggested) occupy Iran's Gulf coast, where most of
the country's oil and gas reserves are located.
Probably the retreating Iranians would destroy
most of the production facilities, creating a
worse environmental disaster than Saddam Hussein's
retreating forces caused in Kuwait in 1991, but
the Americans would have the lure of an occupation
that would pay for itself once the facilities had
been repaired.
No doubt some of the
profits from American exploitation of Iran's
energy resources would be put in a special fund to
be released once a regime favorable to the US had
been established in Tehran, but the Americans
would find it difficult to present such
exploitation as anything other than naked
imperialist robbery. Iranian guerrilla resistance
might pose problems, while the ending of American
energy dependence on Saudi Arabia and other GCC
states would soon alienate them, however popular
it might be with the American public.
Of
course the past is merely a possible guide to the
future. Nothing is inevitable. The Iranians may
not collapse as rapidly as all their Muslim
predecessors from Nasser's Egypt to Saddam
Hussein's Iraq. If the Iranians can survive the
initial attack and preserve the means to
retaliate, then they may be able to sustain a
prolonged war against their principal adversaries,
certainly longer than the one month war recently
forecast by an Israeli government minister. The
longer the war goes on, the more likely that its
effects will further damage an already weak world
economy.
Although missiles dropping on Tel
Aviv or sinking American warships may give
satisfaction to some Iranians, they are more
likely to direct their retaliation against the
weaker members of the anti-Iran coalition: Saudi
Arabia and the other GCC states.
If the
Iranians destroy the oil and gas production,
storage and loading facilities on the Gulf coasts
of states like Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain and
Qatar, it will not matter if the United States
Navy keeps the Strait of Hormuz open for tanker
traffic. Any tankers that get through will find
nowhere to load cargoes of oil and gas.
The price of oil is currently around
US$100 a barrel. If a war with Iran led to the
doubling of that price, the US would soon find its
European and Japanese allies begging for an end to
the conflict. Should the price of oil go
appreciably higher than $200 a barrel and remain
at that level for more than a month or so, then
the world economy would be in a major crisis.
An early sign would be the end of
commercial air traffic as prolonged high oil
prices would soon drive most airlines into
bankruptcy. Should such a situation arise, perhaps
those who have decided to start a war of choice
not necessity might then recognize the need to
bring it to an end before it threatens the
economic prosperity of the whole world.
Alan G Jamieson received his
doctorate in history from the University of Oxford
and currently lives in Canada. His publications
include Faith and Sword: A Short History of
Christian-Muslim Conflict and, most
recently, Lords of the Sea: A History of the
Barbary Corsairs.
Speaking Freely is an
Asia Times Online feature that allows guest
writers to have their say. Please click here
if you are interested in contributing. Articles
submitted for this section allow our readers to
express their opinions and do not necessarily meet
the same editorial standards of Asia Times
Online's regular contributors.
Head
Office: Unit B, 16/F, Li Dong Building, No. 9 Li Yuen Street East,
Central, Hong Kong Thailand Bureau:
11/13 Petchkasem Road, Hua Hin, Prachuab Kirikhan, Thailand 77110
