They Wouldn’t Really Attack Iran, Would They?

by Paul Street; April 18, 2007

Remember the old neoconservative half-joke that “sacking Baghdad is fine but real men go to Teheran?” We are moving into the time when many Washington watchers have thought it possible and even likely that George W. Bush and Dick Cheney would order an attack on Iran (1).

They wouldn’t really do it, would they?

God knows there are a large number of reasons for a rational White House NOT to attack. United States and global public opinion is opposed to a U.S. assault on Iran. So are European and other leading and allied governments, the U.S. intelligence community and much of the nation’s military leadership. According to a February 25th London Times report, “most senior [United States] commanders are prepared to resign if the White House orders a strike against Iran” (1.5).

Key sections of the U.S. foreign policy establishment oppose attacking Iran. The Baker-Hamilton Commission’s Iraq Study Group advocated engaging Iran diplomatically to help de-escalate the mess in Iraq and the Middle East.

Expressing concerns that the administration will manufacture false pretexts for attacking Iran, former National Security Advisor Zgbniew Bzrezinski recently told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that Bush’s “imperial hubris” is “undermining America’s global legitimacy,” “intensifying regional instability” and putting the U.S on track for a “quagmire lasting 20 years or more and eventually ranging across Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan” (2).

United States troops are overstretched and have been badly bloodied in Iraq. The American Empire’s strung-out, battered and mostly working-class soldiers are increasingly skeptical about Bush’s military adventurism (3).


As Samar Sepehri notes in the latest International Socialist Review, “Iraq is a glaring example for the U.S. (as Hezbollah was for Israel) that superior firepower and the best laid [military] plans are no guarantee of imperial success” (4).

While “Iran cannot [militarily] defend itself against U.S. attack,” Noam Chomsky recently noted, “it can respond in other ways, among them by inciting ever more havoc in Iraq. “Some issue warnings that are more grave,” Chomsky adds, noting British military historian Corelli Barnett’s judgment that “an attack on Iran would effectively launch world war three” (5).

According to ZNet writer Stephen Lendman, citing a CIA assessment, “if the U.S. attacks Iran, South Shia Iraq will light up like a candle and explode uncontrollably throughout the country...expanding the Iraq conflict to a regional one with [unpredictable] consequences that would not be good for U.S. interests. It will inflame the region,” spark “a tsunami of Shia rage” and “unite the Muslim world in fierce opposition to America,” Lendman says (6).

Iran has signaled its readiness to strangle oil shipments through the Strait of Hormuz – the crucial and narrow passageway between the Persian Gulf and the Indian Ocean – and thereby to damage the global economy if the U.S. and/or Israel attack its nuclear facilities.

A military strike against Iran would be thoroughly illegal under international law and the U.S. Constitution. It would evoke horror and condemnation across the world, further tarnishing the United States’ fading “moral credentials” (Bzrezinski), especially if it employs (as it likely would) “low yield” nuclear missiles that would (as a senior U.S. intelligence official told Seymour Hersh) produce “mushroom clouds, radiation, mass casualties and contamination over years”(7).

The administration’s key charges against Iran are without basis. There is little evidence to support U.S. claims that predominantly Shiite Iran has been sparking the Sunni-led Iraq “insurgency” and that Iran poses a reasonably imminent “nuclear danger.”

Also lacking credibility are U.S. claims that Iraq seeks to eliminate Israel – a charge that ignores Iran foreign policy chief Ayatollah Ali Khameni’s repeated statements of support Israel’s continued existence alongside a separate Palestinian state.

As John Pilger notes, “the ‘threat’ from Iran is entirely manufactured, aided and abetted by familiar, compliant media language that refers to Iran’s ‘nuclear ambitions’ just as the vocabulary of Saddam’s non-existent WMD arsenal became common usage”(8).

Another public relations fiasco looms, perhaps, for those who would launch yet another mass-murderous assault on a major Muslim state without credible basis for threat claims concocted to justify the brazen violation of international law and civilized norms.

A U.S. attack would likely unite the factions contesting for power inside Iran, to the detriment of the Bush administration’s declared mission of causing regime change there. That mission could be pursued without resort to massive air assault, through the intensified application of methods already being employed: economic and financial sanctions and the related promotion of ethnic, religious, factional and regional strife inside Iran.

And yet, despite all this and more, we really can’t rule out the possibility of the feared U.S. attack sometime this or next year. Bush has been preparing the ground for such an assault by making repeated, high-profile references to the alleged Iran threat. As presented in his January 23rd State of the Union Address (SOUA), the supposed menace of Iran goes beyond alleged nuclear ambitions and support for the Iraqi resistance. It includes the threat of a rising “Shia crescent” led by Iran in alliance with Hezbollah, Hamas and the Syrian state. Bush raised this specter “despite the fact,” as Tom Englehardt notes, “that the Bush administration is officially at war with Sunni extremism in Iraq (and in the more general War on Terror)”(9).

As Seymour Hersh shows in a recent New Yorker article titled “The Redirection,” the Bush administration’s Middle East policies has undergone a “sea change” as the U.S. seeks to enlist the region’s Arab Sunni people and regimes against Persian Iran and the danger of Shia dominance (10).

The administration’s 2006 National Military Strategy claimed that “we may face no greater challenge from a single country than from Iran.” (11). The U.S. may have supported Israel’s invasion of Lebanon last July partly to destroy Iran-linked Hezbollah’s capacity to deter a U.S.-Israel assault on Iran.

The U.S. “Surge” in Iraq is specifically targeting forces allied with Iran, seeking to reduce Iran’s ability to respond to a U.S. attack by sparking retaliation against the U.S in Iraq. As Sepehri notes, “although the surge in U.S. troops will do little to really secure Iraq (an idea which has been ridiculed even by the administration’s supporters), it is designed to pressure, fragment and break away parts of the forces allied with Iran, pulling away forces which can be acquiesced through military pressure, while isolating and destroying those who will not submit. The aim of this is to remove many of Iran’s options to respond to an attack including retaliation against the U.S. forces in Iraq” (12).

U.S. Air Force Planning Groups have been “drawing up lists of targets” (Hersh) in Iran since at least early 2002. The Joint Chiefs of Staff have recently completed contingency plans that will permit Bush to bomb Iran on 24 hours notice.

U.S. Special Ops and CIA teams have been placed in Iran, marking targets for future air assaults, studying the terrain, and fomenting rebellion among ethnic and religious minorities.

The Pentagon has placed two full carrier groups in the Persian Gulf, giving the U.S. the capacity to sustain a month-long bombing and missile campaign against Iran. Even before the Stennis and Eisenhower groups arrived, the U.S. and the United Kingdom possessed a giant naval presence in the Gulf.

Last December, the Pentagon replaced General John Abizaid with Admiral William Fallon as the head of Centcom, the command authority developed by Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan to “guard oil flows” from the Persian Gulf. Abizaid had supported the ISG’s recommendation of diplomatic engagement with Syria and Iraq. The new Centcom chief is an expert coordinator of the sort of combined air and sea operations that would be involved in a confrontation with Iran.

The U.S. has been illegally sending unmanned aerial surveillance drones into Iranian air space. It recently invaded the Iranian consulate in northern Iraq and seized six Iranian nationals.

The U.S. has been stockpiling oil reserves and has pressured its arch-reactionary oil-rich client state Saudi Arabia to increase petroleum production levels.

Thousands of U.S. troops have been moved to the Iraq-Iran border. In February, the Los Angeles Times reported that U.S. Air Force and Navy planes were going to be used more aggressively along that border – the point being to provoke an Iranian response that could be used (ala the Gulf of Tonkin) as a pretext for a U.S. assault.

The U.S. has installed “defensive” Patriot Missiles in Israel, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and the Arab Emirates. This is meant to defend these states against intermediate range (Shihab-3) ballistic missiles that Washington suspects Iran would launch in response to a U.S and/or Israeli attack.

On February 11, the Washington Post reported that Dick Cheney’s new national security advisor John Hanna considers 2007 “the year of Iran.” A central player in the making of the Bush administration’s deceptive case for the invasion of Iraq, Hannah said that a U.S. assault on Iran was “a real possibility” this year (13).

The Bush administration’s recent willingness to accommodate China by cutting a bargain with North Korea may in part reflect a desire to stop China from opposing a U.S. assault on Iran. As David Whitehouse notes, “the North Korea deal raises the stakes for Iran. China has been a potential obstacle to U.S. action against Iran, but progress over North Korea may make the Chinese more willing to accept a military strike…the favor the U.S. is extending to China over North Korea could be returned with Chinese acquiescence to the U.S. police role in the Middle East.”

The Bush administration knows that neither of its two closest military rivals – Russia and China – will back Iran in an armed conflict with the superpower. While they will block a force resolution against Iran at the UN, they will stand clear once U.S. attack becomes imminent (14).

Last December the Bush administration succeeded in persuading the United Nations Security Council to pass a resolution imposing economic sanctions on Iran for supposedly threatening international peace with nuclear activities. This has set the stage for Bush to demand that the Security Council sanction the use of force against Iran. When Security Council members Russia and China (inevitably) reject that demand, Bush may well (on the model of the 2002-2003 run to the invasion of Iraq) cite earlier resolutions to justify direct U.S. military action. “We’ve done all we can through the inadequate channels of international law and the UN,” Bush will claim (in essence) “but now the time has come for us to act” against an Evil State that the UN itself has identified as ‘a danger to world peace’” (14.5)

The assault envisioned, it should be noted, is a “Shock and Awe” air attack, not a ground invasion or prolonged occupation that will cause mass U.S. casualties. The problem of GI burnout and casualties will not deter Washington from undertaking a month-long high-tech air war launched mainly from sea-born vessels. The White House is contemplating the use of nuclear weaponry, something that would involve an especially high ratio of “enemy” devastation to U.S. troop loss. As Alenjandro Nadal notes in La Jornada:

“Many people think that an offensive by Washington would be foolish because the Americans can hardly cope with Iraq. How are they going to attack a country that is twice as big and has double the number of inhabitants? But...Washington’s objective is not to invade and occupy Iran. The central purpose is to eliminate it as an obstacle to controlling the resources of Central Asia and the Persian Gulf. And, to achieve that, it is not necessary to invade the country. It is enough to destroy its military capacity, aerial and naval, something that the armed forces of the United States and its few allies can achieve in some week of selective bombardment...In reply, Iran can unleash a nightmare for the Americans in Iraq. But the sacrifice of additional tens of soldiers in Baghdad is not something that is going to stop the...the Bush-Cheney duo...[and] the American people...will be faced with a fait accompli”(15).

The fact that the world economy could be damaged by the disruption of oil flows from the Middle East is of little concern to Washington. U.S. policymakers are concerned first and foremost that the United States continues to bolster its world domination by controlling the strategically hyper-significant energy resources of the Middle East, not that not that they or the rest of the world enjoy unimpeded access to Middle Eastern oil. Iraq’s oil production has fallen from nearly 3 million barrels to about 1.5 billion barrels since the United States invaded – something that has led the major oil companies to jack up their prices (helping them garner record profits) even as increased Saudi production has helped make up the difference (16).

The White House has made its contempt for the relevance of world and domestic opinion (and even much informed elite opinion) on numerous occasions, including the occupation of Iraq. Indifference to public opinion and law is hardly a “novel” stance on the part of U.S. policymakers, “but the statist reactionaries at the helm in Washington,” Chomsky notes, “have set new records in flaunting their credentials as international outlaws” (17).

Asked about the opposition of the Congress and the American people to the U.S. “Surge” (escalation) in (and beyond) Iraq, Darth Cheney was blunt in his response: “it won’t stop us,” he said, leading one concerned U.S. citizen to write the following to the Editors of the New York Times: “What I want to know is, Who is ‘us’? If it's not the American electorate or the United States Congress, which was elected to represent American citizens, who is it? Or maybe the question should be, Who is this administration and what has it done with my country?"(18).

It doesn’t help that the Democratic Party’s leadership and leading presidential candidates are hawkish on Iran – reflecting deeply shared doctrinal assumptions on the United States’ right and “responsibility” to exercise imperial “leadership” (global dominance) in and beyond Middle East (18.5) – even as they criticize the Bush administration’s sorry performance in Iraq. Or that dominant U.S. war and entertainment media has been willing to play much the same role regarding Iran that it played vis-à-vis Iraq in 2002 and 2003. It is dutifully relaying administration propaganda about the mythical Iran threat.

And then there’s the vicious madness of boy-king George. Bush the Second combines profound mental mediocrity with sloppy, dry-drunk Protestant Fundamentalism, an advanced case of Narcissistic Personality Disorder and a sneering authoritarianism born of an especially vile and aristocratic upbringing. These toxic features and his life history blind him to his own mistakes and crimes and make him susceptible to the influence of powerful and deranged proto-fascists like Dick Cheney. They push him to respond to his Iraq fiasco by doubling down his bets on Iran - convinced that he can still “hit the jackpot” if he just keeps rambling and gambling in the oil-rich Middle East. They tell him he is endlessly free to transgress without consequence and insulate from the counsel of more rational elites within the imperial establishment. According to Bush’s own brother Jeb, as recounted in Ron Suskind’s book The One Percent Doctrine, “Dubya” appears to enjoy compelling other people to “knuckle under” and doesn’t really care about whether he’s right or wrong. He may actually find it more amusing to be wrong and still force everyone to follows his command.

How much do rational warnings of possible or likely disaster matter to George “The Decider” Bush and his dark overlord Cheney? As their “untidy” (in the lovely description of Donald “Shit Happens” Rumsfeld) fiasco deepened in Iraq, it is worth remembering, the White House claimed that neither they nor anyone else had good reasons to anticipate the chaos that lay ahead when they invaded that shattered nation. This was completely false. Beyond technically irrelevant predictions of turmoil from within the Middle East and from the U.S. and global Left, numerous key establishment figures advanced serious “elite” warnings about possibly disastrous consequences after a quick military victory over a weak regime. The agents of advance warning (to name just some of the more prominent voices) included George Bush Senior’s National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft, retired Air Force Col. John Warden, Marine Corps consultant Frank Hoffman, National Defense University professor Daniel Kuehl, conservative Congressman Ike Skelton (the senior Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee), and the Committee on International Security Studies at the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (19).

All of these and other voices within and beyond the foreign policy establishment issued relevant notes of caution and alarm regarding the difficulties inherent in illegally occupying Mesopotamia.

None of if it was worth a pile of West Texas horseshit. The warnings went unheeded by an administration that clung to the notion of quick and easy “victory” (20).

Four years later, to make things yet more dangerous, Bush, Cheney and others in the White House may be caught up in the “wounded predator” syndrome. Figuratively bloodied by an Iraqi quagmire so obvious and humiliating that even Bush can’t completely miss it, the injured monsters in the White House may be driven to act recklessly out of terrible desperation. As Gilbert Achcar noted in early 2006:

“They want to control the energy resources of the region. The problem is what means can they use to achieve that goal? And...they are in real disarray about what to do. When you follow closely what they do on the ground, you have a sense of shifting policies; they are pragmatically trying to react to adversity but the fact is they have no general long-term strategy. The problem is that all this is truly worrying. The Iraqi vox populi is certainly right to be worried about U.S. plans, because the wounded beast could be truly dangerous” (21).

The Iranian “vox populi” also has reasons to worry. As Chomsky noted last July, “Bush planners have created remarkable catastrophes for themselves in the Middle East. And it is conceivable that they might strike out in desperation, hitting the system with a sledgehammer to see if somehow the results will come out in their favor” (22).

The administration’s desperation could be furthered by its awareness of the remarkable strategic stakes at play in the Middle East. Cheney and Bush have sparked events that could end up significantly damaging the United States’ position in the world system. Their incompetent and delusional actions have enabled a potential decisive separation of largely Shiite-inhabited Middle East oil lands from U.S. control, something that would cost the United States critical leverage over world-capitalist rivals and significantly accelerate its demotion to the position of a “second-rate world power.” Seen from the perspective of the American Empire Project, of course, there is nothing irrational about U.S. policymakers’ longstanding obsession with the control of Middle Eastern oil (23).

Other depressing facts are that Bush and Cheney see the historical window closing on their probably cherished desire to attack Iran and could be motivated by their party’s deepening domestic political crisis to “Wag the Dog” (distract the enraged homeland populace with military actions overseas) on a large scale, looking for a domestic political twist on Chomsky’s “sledgehammer.”

If Bush and Cheney can be convinced that bearing their nuclear tipped teeth is combining with other tactics – the fanning of Sunni-Shiite conflicts, external strangulation, and the cultivation of internal Iranian rebellion, etc. – to effectively show Iran and the Middle East who’s boss, then perhaps Washington will stand down from a full-blown assault. The Godfather doesn’t always have to actually kill; sometimes he can be convinced that the demonstration of his capacity for violence was sufficient to enforce proper obedience.

Will they attack Iran sometime this or next year? If I were a betting man, I’d put my money on Washington standing down. It seems like too crazy a proposition even for Bush and Chenet at this point. But who knows? I didn’t think they’d invade Iraq at first and I’m not into prognostication. It’s not about the crystal ball.

The facts that we have to work like Hell just to form educated guesses about what “our” “leaders” might do in our name – not to mention the name of “democracy” – and that the attack is a possibility are indications show the building of a serious anti-imperialist movement is long overdue inside the United States.

It shouldn’t be like this. U.S. citizens should begin building a serious Left and anti-imperial movement aiming to replace dominant domestic structures of Empire and Inequality with egalitarian institutions of justice, equality and peace. Such “radical reconstruction of society” – Martin Luther King Jr.’s declared objective by 1966 (24) – is required, among other reasons, to eliminate the chance for demented war criminals and authoritarian militarists like Bush and Cheney to become structurally super-empowered predators in the first place.

Veteran radical historian, journalist, and speaker Paul Street (paulstreet99@ yahoo.com) is a Left political commentator in Iowa City, IA. Street is the author of Empire and Inequality: America and the World Since 9/11 (Boulder, CO: Paradigm, 2004), Segregated Schools: Educational Apartheid in the Post-Civil Rights Era (New York, NY: Routledge, 2005), and Still Separate, Unequal: Race, Place, and Policy in Chicago (Chicago, 2005) and The Empire and Inequality Report. Street’s next book Racial Oppression in the Global Metropolis: A Living Black Chicago History (New York, 2007) will be released next June.



NOTES

1 John Pilger, “Iran: the War Begins,” ZNet Sustainer Commentary, February 3, 2007, available online at www.zmag.org/sustainers/content/2007-02/03pilger.cfm; Michael T. Klare, “Bush’s Future Iran War Speech,” Tomdispatch, reproduced on ZNet, February 26, 2007, available online at http://www. zmag.org/ content/ showarticle.cfm?itemid=12218.

1.5 Michael Smith and Sarah Baxter, “U.S. Generals ‘Will Quit’ if Bush Orders Iran Attack,” London Times, 25 February 2007, available online at http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/ news/world/iraq/article1434540.ece).

2. Bzrezinski is quoted in Stephen Lendman, “George Bush’s Sampson Option,” ZNet March 8, 2007, available online at http://www.zmag.org/content/ showarticle.cfm? SectionID=67&ItemID=12284).

3. Paul Street, “ ‘ Without Question?’ On Growing Military Opposition to the Invasion of Iraq,” ZNet, January 11, 2007, available online at http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID=11825.

4. Saman Sepehri, “The Pressure is On: The U.S. is Gearing Up for a Fight With Iran,” International Socialist Review, (March-April 2007), p. 12.

5. Noam Chomsky, “A Predator Becomes More Dangerous When Wounded,” The Guardian, 9 March 2007, available online at www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/ story/0,,2030015,00.html.

6. Lendman, “George Bush’s Samson Option.”

7. Seymour Hersh, “Annals of National Security: The Iran Plans,” The New Yorker, April 17, 2006, available online at http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2006/04/ 17/060417fa_fact

8. John Pilger, “Iran: the War Begins,” ZNet Sustainer Commentary, February 3, 2007, available online at www.zmag.org/sustainers/content/2007-02/03pilger.cfm.

9. Tom Engelhardt, “The Seymour Hersh Mystery,” TomDispatch, March 13, 2006, available online at http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?pid=174764

10. Seymour Hersh, “The Redirection,” New Yorker, March 3, 2007, available online at http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/022507Z.shtml.

11. Quotation in Lendman, “Bush’s Samson Option.”

12. Sepehri, “The Pressure is On,” p.12.

13. Karen De Young, “U.S. Keeps Pressure on Iran,” Washington Post, 11 February 2007, p. A18.

14. David Whitehouse, “Desperate for a Deal,” International Socialist Review (March-April 2007), p.10; Sepehri, “The Pressure is On.” “The Chinese know the U.S. is in a Middle East quagmire,” Whitehouse adds, “and they might not mind handing Bush a shovel to dig even deeper.”

14.5 Klare, “Bush’s Future Iran War Speech.”

15. Alenjandro Nadal, “Blitzkrieg Against Iran: Bush and Cheney’s Twisted Logic,” La Jornada, Mexico, April 4, 2007.

16. Noam Chomsky and Gilbert Achcar, Perilous Power: The Middle East and U.S. Foreign Policy (Boulder, CO: Paradigm, 2006], p.58; Mathew Wald, “War and Cheap Oil: A Second Look,” New York Times, 7 January 2007, sec. 4, p. 2.

17. Chomsky and Achcar, Perilous Power, p. 232.

18. Stephanie Nicholas, Letter to the Editor of the New York Times, January 27, 2007.

18.5 On shared doctrinal assumptions, see Tony Smith’s candid commentary, “It’s Uphill for the Democrats: They Need a Global Strategy, Not Just Tactics for Iraq,” Washington Post Sunday, March 11, 2007, p. B1, available online at www.washingtonpost.com/wp- dyn/content/article/2007/03/09/AR2007030901884_pf.html

19. Paul Street, Empire and Inequality: America and the World Since 9/11 (Boulder, CO: Paradigm, 2004), pp. 57-66.

20. Thomas E. Ricks, Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq (New York, 2006), p. 59.

21. Chomsky and Achcar, Perilous Power, p. 114.

22. Chomsky and Achcar, Perilous Power, pp. 230-231. See also Chomsky, “A Predator Becomes More Dangerous When Wounded.” The potential benefits of inflicting chaos through “sledgehammer” assault are suggested by the ironic fact that, as Sepehri notes, “the unfolding disaster in Iraq” has “provided the means for the U.S., Israel and the Arab regimes to combat Iran’s political influence through Sunni/Shiite divisions and sectarianism. While the sectarian violence in Iraq has undermined the U.S. ability to bring security or claim any control over the situation in Iraq,” Sepehri observes, “it has also provided the tool to break apart any united political opposition to the U.S. (and Israel).” See Sepehri, “The Pressure is On,” p. 12.

23. Chomsky and Achcar, Perilous Power, pp. 25-26, 53-55, 57-58, 114, 231.

24. Paul Street, “ ‘ Until We Get a New Social Order:’ Reflections on the Early Radicalism of Martin Luther King, Jr.” ZNet (January 16, 2007), available online at http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID=11871; Paul Street, “The Pale Reflection: Barack Obama, Martin Luther King Jr. and the Meaning of the Black Revolution,” Black Agenda Report (March 21, 2007), available online at http://www.blackagendareport.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id= 149&Itemid=34.