The current flurry of Western diplomacy will probably turn out to be
groundwork for launching missiles at Iran.
Air attacks on targets in Iran are very likely. Yet many antiwar
Americans seem eager to believe that won’t happen.
Illusion #1: With the U.S. military bogged down in Iraq, the Pentagon
is in no position to take on Iran.
But what’s on the horizon is not an invasion -- it’s a major air
assault, which the American military can easily inflict on Iranian
sites. (And if the task falls to the Israeli military, it is also
well-equipped to bomb Iran.)
Illusion #2: The Bush administration is in so much political trouble
at home -- for reasons including its lies about Iraqi WMDs -- that it
wouldn’t risk an uproar from an attack on Iran.
But the White House has been gradually preparing the domestic
political ground for bombing Iran. As the Wall Street Journal
reported on Feb. 3, “in recent polls a surprisingly large number of
Americans say they would support U.S. military strikes to stop Tehran
from getting the bomb.”
Above those words, the Journal’s headline -- “U.S. Chooses Diplomacy
on Iran’s Nuclear Program” -- trumpeted the Bush administration’s
game plan. It’s a time-honored scam: When you’re moving toward
aggressive military action, emphasize diplomacy.
Donald Rumsfeld proclaimed at a conference in Munich on Feb. 4 that
-- to put a stop to Iran’s nuclear program -- the world should work
for a “diplomatic solution.” Yet the next day, the German daily
newspaper Handelsblatt reports, Rumsfeld said in an interview: “All
options including the military one are on the table.”
Top U.S. officials, inspired by the royal “W,” aren’t hesitating to
speak for the world. Condoleezza Rice said: “The world will not stand
by if Iran continues on the path to a nuclear weapons capability.”
Meanwhile, Rumsfeld declared: “The Iranian regime is today the
world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism. The world does not want,
and must work together to prevent, a nuclear Iran.”
Translation: First we’ll be diplomatic, then we can bomb.
Illusion #3: The U.S. won’t attack Iran because that would infuriate
the millions of Iran-allied Shiites in Iraq, greatly damaging the
U.S. war effort there.
But projecting rationality onto the Bush administration makes little
sense at this point. The people running U.S. foreign policy have
their own priorities, and avoiding carnage is not one of them.
Non-proliferation doesn’t rank very high either, judging from
Washington’s cozy relationships with the nuclear-weapons powers of
Israel, India and Pakistan. Unlike Iran, none of those countries are
signatories to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Only Iran has
been allowing inspections of its nuclear facilities -- and it is Iran
that the savants in Washington are now, in effect, threatening to
bomb.
With sugar-plum visions of Iran’s massive oil and natural-gas
reserves dancing in their heads, the Washington neo-cons evidently
harbor some farfetched hopes of bringing about the overthrow of the
Iranian regime. But in the real world, an attack on Iran would
strengthen its most extreme factions and fortify whatever interest it
has in developing nuclear arms.
“The U.S. will not solve the nuclear problem by threatening military
strikes or by dragging Iran before the U.N. Security Council,” Iran’s
2003 Nobel Peace Prize winner Shirin Ebadi wrote in the Jan. 19
edition of the Los Angeles Times, in an oped piece co-authored by
Muhammad Sahimi, a professor of chemical engineering at the
University of Southern California. “Although a vast majority of
Iranians despise the country’s hard-liners and wish for their
downfall, they also support its nuclear program because it has become
a source of pride for an old nation with a glorious history.”
The essay added: “A military attack would only inflame nationalist
sentiments. Iran is not Iraq. Given Iranians’ fierce nationalism and
the Shiites’ tradition of martyrdom, any military move would provoke
a response that would engulf the entire region, resulting in
countless deaths and a ruined economy not only for the region but for
the world. Imposing U.N. sanctions on Iran would also be
counterproductive, prompting Tehran to leave the Nuclear
Non-Proliferation Treaty and its ‘additional protocol.’ Is the world
ready to live with such prospects?”
While calling for international pressure against Iran’s serious
violations of human rights, Ebadi and Sahimi said that “Iran is at
least six to 10 years away from a nuclear bomb, by most estimates.
The crisis is not even a crisis. There is ample time for political
reform before Iran ever develops the bomb.”
On Feb. 3, the Iranian Student News Agency quoted Iran’s former
president Muhammad Khatami, who urged the Iranian government to offer
assurances that the country’s nuclear program is only for generating
electricity. “It is necessary to act wisely and with tolerance so
that our right to nuclear energy will not be abolished,” he said.
Though he failed to develop much political traction for reform during
his eight years as president, Khatami was a moderating force against
human-rights abuses. His demagogic successor, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is
a menace to human rights and peace. But it’s by no means clear that
Ahmadinejad can count on long-term support from the nation’s ruling
clerics.
The man he defeated in the presidential runoff last summer, former
president Hashemi Rafsanjani, wields significant power as head of the
government’s Expediency Council. Though he has a well-earned
reputation as a corrupt opportunist, Rafsanjani is now a beacon of
enlightenment compared to Ahmadinejad.
In early January, a pair of Iran scholars -- Dariush Zahedi and Ali
Ezzatyar, based at the University of California in Berkeley -- wrote
an LA Times piece making this point: “Contrary to popular belief, the
traditional conservative clerical establishment is apprehensive about
the possibility of violence inside and outside Iran. It generally
opposes an aggressive foreign policy and, having some intimate ties
with Iran’s dependent capitalist class, is appalled at the rapid
slide of the economy since Ahmadinejad’s inauguration. The value of
Tehran’s stock market has plunged $10 billion, the nation’s vibrant
real estate market has withered and capital outflows are increasing.”
And the scholars added pointedly: “The history of U.S.-Iran relations
shows that the more Washington chastises Tehran for its nuclear
ambitions, the more it plays into the hands of the radicals by riling
up fear and nationalist sentiment.”
Right now, the presidents of Iran and the United States are thriving
on the belligerency of the other. From all indications, a military
assault on Iran would boost Ahmadinejad’s power at home. And it’s a
good bet that the U.S. government will do him this enormous favor.
Unless we can prevent it.
___________________________
Norman Solomon’s latest book is “War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits
Keep Spinning Us to Death.” For information, go to:
www.WarMadeEasy.com