WASHINGTON - When Israeli Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu told the UN General Assembly
last month that Iran's nuclear program was
unlikely to breach his "red line" for presumed
military action until next spring or summer, many
observers here looked forward to some relief from
the nearly incessant drumbeat for war by US
neo-conservatives and other hawks.
But
even as the Barack Obama administration and its
Western European allies prepare a new round of
sanctions to add to what already is perhaps the
harshest sanctions regime imposed against a UN
member state, the war drums keep beating.
Earlier this week, Republican Senator
Lindsay Graham said he is working on a new
Congressional resolution he hopes to pass in
any lame-duck session
after the November 6 elections that would promise
Israel US support, including military assistance,
if it attacks Iran.
And after the new
Congress convenes in January, he suggested he
would push yet another resolution that would give
the president - whether the incumbent, Obama, or
his Republican challenger, Mitt Romney - broad
authority to take military action if sanctions
don't curb Iran's nuclear program.
"The
30,000-foot view of Iran is very bipartisan," he
told the Capitol Hill newspaper, Roll Call.
"This regime is crazy, they're up to no
good, they are a cancer spreading in the Mideast.
... Almost all of the Democrats and Republicans
buy into the idea that we can't give them a
nuclear capability," he said.
While
Graham, who succeeded last month in pushing
through the Senate - by a 90-1 margin - a
resolution ruling out "containment" as an option
for dealing with a nuclear weapons-capable Iran,
disclosed his new plans, the CEO of the
influential foreignpolicy.com website published an
article in which he claimed that the US and Israel
were actively considering a joint "surgical
strike" against Iran's uranium enrichment
facilities.
Citing an unnamed source
"close to the discussions", David Rothkopf, a
well-connected former national security official
under President Bill Clinton, claimed that such a
strike "might take only 'a couple of hours' in the
best case and only would involve a 'day or two'
overall," using primarily bombers and drones.
Such an attack, according to "advocates
for this approach" cited by Rothkopf, could set
back Iran's nuclear program "many years", and do
so "without civilian casualties".
In an
echo of the extravagant claims by
neo-conservatives that preceded the attack on
Iraq, one "advocate" told Rothkopf such an attack
would have a "transformative outcome: saving Iraq,
Syria, Lebanon, reanimating the peace process,
securing the Gulf, sending an unequivocal message
to Russia and China, and assuring American
ascendancy in the region for a decade to come."
Rothkopf's article spurred a flurry of
speculation about his source - at least one keen
observer pointed to Israeli Ambassador Michael
Oren, a long-time personal friend who has kept up
his own drumbeat against Iran on the op-ed pages
of US newspapers.
It also caused
consternation among most informed analysts, if
only because of the Obama administration's
not-so-thinly-veiled opposition to any military
strike in the short- to medium term and the
Pentagon's preference, if it were ordered to
attack, for a broad offensive likely to stretch
over many weeks.
"The idea that the
American military would agree to any quick single
strike seems fantastical to me," said Jon
Wolfsthal, a non-proliferation expert who served
in the Obama White House until earlier this year.
"Should we decide to go, I believe US military
planners will - rightly - want to go big and start
with air defense and communication suppression.
This means many hundreds of strikes and a lot of
casualties."
Meanwhile, the Bipartisan
Policy Center (BPC), a think tank that has issued
a succession of hawkish reports by a special task
force on Iran since 2008, released a new study
here on Thursday on the potential economic costs -
as measured by the likely increases in the price
of oil - of a "nuclear Iran".
The 47-page
report, "The Price of Inaction: Ana Analysis of
Energy and Economic Effects of a Nuclear Iran",
appeared intended to counter warnings by other
experts that an Israeli or US attack on Iran would
send oil prices skyward - as high as three times
the current price depending on the actual
disruption in oil traffic - with disastrous
effects on the global economy.
"In the
public debate during the last year, a recurring
concern has been the economic risks posed by the
available means for preventing a nuclear Iran,
whether tough sanctions or military action," it
began. "Such risks are a legitimate concern."
"…Inaction, too, exposes the United States
to economic risks," the task force, which includes
a number of neo-conservative former officials of
the George W Bush administration, noted.
The report provides a variety of possible
scenarios and estimates the probabilities of each.
It stressed that a "nuclear Iran" - which went
undefined in the report but which one task force
staffer described as the point at which Tehran's
neighbors, notably Saudi Arabia and Israel, were
persuaded that it either had a weapon or its
acquisition was imminent - would "significantly
alter the geopolitical and strategic landscape of
the Middle East, raising the likelihood of
instability, terrorism, or conflict that could
interrupt the region's oil exports".
"It's
hard to imagine Iran with a nuclear umbrella as
behaving more responsibly than they do today,"
said Ambassador Dennis Ross, a task force member
who served as President Barack Obama's top Iran
adviser until late last year.
And while
Washington would probably try to persuade Saudi
Arabia not to go nuclear itself, that would prove
unavailing, according to Ross, who quoted King
Abdullah as telling him, "If they (the Iranians)
get it, we get it."
"Our analysis
indicates that the expectation of instability and
conflict that a nuclear Iran could generate in
global energy markets could roughly increase the
price of oil by between 10 and 25%," according to
the report.
If actual hostilities broke
out between a nuclear Iran and Saudi Arabia or
Israel, the price could far higher, particularly
in the event of a nuclear exchange, the report
found. It rated the chances of an Iran-Israel and
an Iran-Saudi nuclear exchange at 20% and 15%,
respectively, within three years of the perception
that Iran had become a nuclear state.
Whether these latest efforts by hawks to
maintain the momentum toward confrontation with
Iran will succeed remains to be seen.
While both presidential candidates have
stressed that they are determined to prevent Iran
from attaining nuclear status, the emphasis for
now should be placed on sanctions and that a
military attack should only be considered as a
last resort.
At the same time, a war-weary
US public shows little enthusiasm for the kind of
resolution sought by Graham in support of an
Israeli attack on Iran.
In a survey of
more than 700 respondents concluded by the
University of Maryland's Program on International
Policy Attitudes (PIPA), a week ago, 29% said
Washington should discourage Israel from taking
such action, while 53% said the US should stay
neutral. Only 12% said the US should encourage
Israel to strike.
Jim Lobe's
blog on US foreign policy can be read at
http://www.lobelog.com.
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