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What to read about Iran? Rosner's time-saver
Line
Michael Hirsh: Let's think about all this for a moment. World War III? Is that really what would result if Iran gained the "knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon"? Not if you listen to one of Bush's former top generals, recently retired CENTCOM commander Gen. John Abizaid. "There are ways to live with a nuclear Iran," Abizaid said at the Center for Strategic and International Studies last month. "I believe nuclear deterrence will work with the Iranians," Abizaid said. "I mean, Iran is not a suicide nation. They may have some people in charge that don't appear to be rational, but I doubt that the Iranians intend to attack us with a nuclear weapon ? Let's face it: we lived with a nuclear Soviet Union, we've lived with a nuclear China, and we're living with [other] nuclear powers, as well."
But that's the realist line, and Bush is taking the Israeli line. For the Israelis, angered by Ahmadinejad's lunatic rhetoric about wiping them off the map, an Iranian bomb would seem to portend World War III. And indeed, an Iranian bomb, followed perhaps by several Arab bombs, would put Israel in mortal danger. But the same isn't true of the United States. Even many Israelis know that what Israel needs most to survive is a strong United States, not an overzealous friend in the White House. "Israel benefits when America performs well, when it is respected and succeeds in the world," Uzi Arad, Likudnik Bibi Netanyahu's adviser, told me. "If on the other hand the U.S. is in trouble, is in distress, it is little consolation the president has tremendous sympathies for Israel. President Bush by predisposition is clearly such a man, but the fact that he is in such difficulties is affecting the substance of the relationship."
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Quds
Barbara Slavin: The Iranian ambassador to Baghdad, Hassan Kazemi-Qomi, is a Quds force commander, according to Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. military man in Iraq. Does that mean that U.S. ambassador Ryan Crocker,¬ who has met twice with Kazemi-Qomi, cannot speak to him again? Or just that Crocker can?t lend him money?
One man's terrorist is another's diplomat.
Petraeus seemed surprised that Iran would send a military man to Baghdad as its ambassador. Given Iran?s security concerns about its neighbor and the perilous state that Iraq is in, it would be surprising if Iran sent someone who was not a member or veteran of the Guards or its Quds branch.
Far from being the rogue operation the Bush administration portrays it to be, the Quds or Jerusalem force is an elite unit, from the Iranian government perspective, that has been a key element in Iran's security and defense policy for more than a quarter century. Kazemi-Qomi is among scores of members and veterans of the Quds force and the Guards who hold senior positions in the Iranian government. Hopes of stabilizing Iraq, Lebanon and to some extent, the Palestinian territories and Afghanistan, could rely on the U.S. ability to deal with these people and to acknowledge their growing role, for better or worse, in the Middle East.
U.S. military and intelligence have a long and mostly bitter history of tangling with the Quds force and Guards and the Arab militant organizations they have spawned. Hezbollah was such a creation, formed by the Guards after the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982. In 1983, Hezbollah staged suicide attacks against U.S. and European forces who had intervened in support of a pro-Israel Lebanese government. Attacks on the U.S. Embassy, the Marine barracks and a French military compound killed 361 people, including 258 Americans.
The Quds Force is said to have helped train a Saudi Shiite group, Saudi Hezbollah, which blew up a U.S. Air Force barracks in Saudi Arabia in 1996, killing 19 Americans and wounding hundreds, after the Clinton administration slapped a comprehensive economic embargo on Iran.
In Iraq, the Quds force has forged links with a variety of Shiite militant groups, beginning long before the U.S. invasion. One such organization, the Badr Brigades?like Hezbollah, an Iranian creation in the 1980s?formed from Iraqi Shiites fleeing Saddam Hussein. Since Saddam's overthrow, Iran has spread its bets by offering arms and training to the Mahdi Army and other Shiite factions. The United States alleges that Iran is the source of powerful explosives that have killed dozens of American troops.
However, the Quds force and the United States have not always worked at cross purposes. The Bush administration is also close to the Supreme Islamic Council in Iraq, the political party affiliated with the Badr Brigades. Iran backed the Northern Alliance, an anti-Taliban Afghan group, long before the Bush administration threw its support behind the militia after 9/11. Senior Quds force officers were present as advisers when the alliance captured Kabul in November 2001.
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Lesson
Chicago ST: sanctions that freeze the Iranian military's assets, ban Americans from doing business in Iran and encourage our allies and the United Nations to pressure Iraq are a more reasonable approach than threatening to bomb Iran and replace Ahmadinejad. That's what Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney have intimated they are eager to do.
Bush insists his October 2002 authorization from Congress to fight terror gives him the right to order the military to respond to aggression without seeking further congressional approval. That sounds like war to us. And if Ahmadinejad doesn't suspend Iran's nuclear program, how long will this administration be able to resist initiating another war?
"I continue to be concerned that this administration is going to move too far, too fast, toward military action against Iran," Durbin said.
Practically speaking, the United States doesn't even have enough soldiers to fight in Iraq. We've outsourced the war to mercenaries. We haven't even had enough National Guard troops to help with the California wildfires.
Most Americans agree that the United States went to war in Iraq for the wrong reasons. Bush's suggestion that restoring democracy in Iraq would help us win the war on terror turned out to be as evasive as those scary weapons of mass destruction that never turned up in Iraq.
The problem is that terror doesn't have a specific geographical address. Wouldn't it have made more sense to root out Osama bin Laden and lop off the brain trust of al-Qaida than to split our focus and invade another country on a different continent, as we did in Iraq?
We should take a lesson from our failures in Iraq and try to handle our conflict in Iran with more level-headed diplomacy.
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Sanctions
David Warren:
The new U.S. sanctions officially "target" the Revolutionary Guard -- the paramilitary organization commanded from the centre of the Iranian revolution, with tentacles caressing every part of the country's daily life, from business and banking, to the protection of nuclear investments, to the routine intimidation of students and other domestic opponents. They also reach through Hezbollah and various purchased clients, from Hamas to "Al Qaeda in Iraq," to tickle Iran's enemies abroad. I put the word "target" in quotes for this reason: that there is little to distinguish the operation of the Revolutionary Guard from the operation of the regime itself.
Iran has responded, naturally, by both condemning and mocking the sanctions, and predicting that they will fail -- which Iran would do even if they promised to be effective. But they are doomed to fail, as all legalistic sanctions have always failed to deter criminal regimes. They will, to some mild degree, make Iran depend more on trade with Russia and China, and to that degree, happily enough, a more reliable customer for inferior technology.
This does not represent much change, however. To use perhaps the best example, the Iranians are already saddled with a Russian air defence system with loopholes to compare with those in the sanctions. The Israelis demonstrated this in early September, while penetrating Syrian air space en route to an "alleged" nuclear reactor under construction on the upper Euphrates -- right across the breadth of the country from where the Israeli planes went in. The Syrians clearly did not know what was happening until this airborne commando operation was over. And the Syrians bought approximately the same air defence system as the Iranians.
But that is in itself a demonstration of the pointlessness of sanctions. For what the Israelis began taking out (leaving materials that the Syrians have since removed to some other location, according to satellite photos published this week) was built in defiance of all kinds of sanctions. Sanctions do not stop uninspected ships from entering and leaving a nation's harbours, to say nothing of the airports and land frontiers.
Blockades are necessary for that; yet an effective blockade is a very discernible act of war. A blockade that, for instance, prevented Iran from exporting her crude oil, and importing refined, would of course play havoc with world oil prices already headed for $100 a barrel, while entailing retaliation risks. But it would bring the regime of the ayatollahs to their knees in fairly short order. Whereas, sanctions are not going to do that.
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Cost
Hanson: in truth, most players don't care enough to stop Iran from getting the bomb, or apparently don't think it's worth the effort and cost. Some may even see some advantages to a nuclear Iran.
The Arab Gulf monarchies, for example, know that their enormous dollar reserves would likely buy them some reprieve from a nuclear Iran, or at least bring in the U.S. Navy to offer them deterrence from attack.
Meanwhile, the current tension and ongoing fear of disruption in the Persian Gulf sends billions in windfall oil profits the Gulf states' way.
Leaders of Arab states also have to fear their own populations' reactions to any action taken against Islamic Iran. Despite his religious Shiite background, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is far more popular among Sunni populations in the Gulf than George Bush -- and even perhaps more popular than the autocratic Arab thugs and dictators who run most of the Middle East.
The European Union, like the Arab states, believes as a last resort that its economic clout and deft diplomats can always work out some sort of arrangement with Tehran's clerics, who, after all, need customers to buy their high-priced oil.
So most in Europe bristle at French President Nicolas Sarkozy's warnings about an impending war to stop an Iranian bomb. Instead, they feel it's an American problem to organize global containment of Iran.
Israel also has reason to fear a war with Iran. If Israel were to attack Tehran, it could find itself in three instantaneous wars -- and be hit with thousands of missiles from the West Bank, Gaza, Lebanon, Syria and Iran. That shower would make last year's Hezbollah barrage seem like child's play.
In Russia, Vladimir Putin's foreign policy is nursed on grievances about a lost empire, America as the sole superpower and the independence of cocky former Soviet republics. In the thinking of oil-exporting Russia, anything that causes America to squirm and world oil prices to soar is a win/win situation. That's why Russia supplies Iran with its reactor technology and stirs the nuclear pot.
China, like Russia, is a large nuclear power and doesn't fear all that much Iranian missiles that it thinks are more likely to be pointed westward anyway. True, it would like calm in the Gulf to ensure safe oil supplies, but thinks it still could do business with a nuclear Iran.
And, as in the case of Russia, anything that bothers the United States can't be all that bad for Beijing. While Ahmadinejad ties the U.S. down in the Middle East, China thinks it will have more of a free hand to expand its influence in the Pacific.
Then there's the complacent situation here at home. After Afghanistan and Iraq, most Americans don't feel we're up to a third war. Some point to nuclear Pakistan and believe we could likewise live with Iran having the bomb.
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Agents
Senior Iraq advisor David Satterfield said "there is no question in our minds whatsoever" that Iranian Revolutionary Guard troops "are very much under the direction and command of the most senior levels of the Iranian government. Full stop."
The administration has repeatedly charged that Iranian troops and agents are shipping sophisticated explosives into Iraq, training Iraqi militants and taking other actions counter to American goals. However, U.S. military officials have released no conclusive evidence that Iranian weapons and training were supplied by top authorities in Tehran, and have been careful not to say whether they believe senior or lower-level government officials are involved.
Iran has denied providing military aid to combatants in Iraq.
Satterfield's comments to reporters at a media breakfast come as senior administration officials have been speaking out forcefully on Iran. President Bush warned last week that World War III was possible if Tehran acquired the capability to build a nuclear weapon, and Vice President Dick Cheney said Sunday that the United States and its allies would not allow Iran to build a bomb.
Bruce Riedel, a former CIA and White House official, said Satterfield's comments reflected "the growing frustration the administration is feeling about this" because officials believe Tehran has not heeded warnings to scale back its alleged activities in Iraq.
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WW3
NYT: Iran is believed to be accumulating the technical know-how to build nuclear weapons. It has rockets powerful enough to reach Israel and other Middle Eastern countries, although none powerful enough to strike the United States, as the old Soviet Union had, and as Russia does.
It was likely no coincidence that Mr. Bush spoke just after Russia?s president, Vladimir V. Putin, visited Iran and issued a warning of his own.
?We should not even think of making use of force in this region,? Mr. Putin declared at a meeting of the five nations that border the Caspian Sea.
President Bush, on the other hand, has refused to rule out force against Iran, and recently French officials have made statements indicating a similar stance.
So does that mean the West and the Russian leader are at odds?
Maybe not completely. Mr. Bush and top administration officials are known to believe that to renounce force unequivocally beforehand ? as a general diplomatic rule, not just in dealing with Iran ? would render the United States powerless diplomatically.
Mr. Putin, on the other hand, has his own reasons for playing up to the Iranians at this point, including a huge Russian interest in developing the Caspian region?s oil resources. But that does not mean Russia wants Iran to develop nuclear weapons.
President Bush said he and Mr. Putin actually agree on a lot of issues. ?Iran is one,? he said. ?Nuclear proliferation is another.?
That may have been an overstatement. Mr. Putin has reportedly called for ?deeper? relations between Russia and Iran.
In any event, taking everything into context, the hyperbole about world war last week does not make it less remote than it already is. The maneuvers so far have been diplomatic, more like chess, a game Russians love, than war games.
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Threat
LAT: Despite the very real causes for U.S. complaint, the escalation of American threats against Iran is unwise. It is grossly premature. It is dangerous, as it greatly increases the likelihood of accidental escalation into a preventable war. It is alarmingly ill-timed, as an isolated United States wages simultaneous ground wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and both conflicts are going badly. And it is diplomatically counterproductive. Congress and U.S. opinion leaders should slam on the brakes -- if they can.
Under ordinary circumstances, the U.S. commander in chief shouldn't have to publicly rule out the option of using military force if necessary. Ordinarily, presidents should be able to bluff or threaten in order to win concessions from a foreign adversary. But these are not ordinary times, and the Bush administration's judgment about what is "necessary" to protect U.S. national security has been shown to be extraordinarily poor.
Military threats are a last resort and should only be made by nations prepared to make good on them. But the United States is militarily unready and politically unwilling to open a third front against Iran -- nor should it, because Iran poses no imminent threat. In February, Bush's own director of National Intelligence, Adm. Mike McConnell, and director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, Lt. Gen. Michael D. Maples, told Congress that the earliest Iran could develop a nuclear weapon or intercontinental ballistic missile with which to deliver it would be 2015.
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Help
NYT: Last week?s agreement by North Korea to disable its nuclear facilities ? announced in Beijing, tellingly ? showed just how much Mr. Bush?s foreign policy has come to rely, for better or worse, on the help of the Chinese. They might just be the administration?s best hope for peacefully resolving the next big crisis on the horizon, Iran?s refusal to give up the right to enrich uranium. Or so some in the administration are hoping.
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NAVY
Ferguson: The big question of 2007 therefore remains: Will he do it?
With every passing day, the president attracts less media coverage, while the contenders to succeed him attract more. Yet Bush made news last week with his observation at a White House news conference that "if you're interested in avoiding World War III, it seems like you ought to be interested in preventing them [the Iranians] from having the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon." That would seem to suggest that he is ready to use military force against Iran if he sees the alternative as mere appeasement. One eminent expert on nuclear warfare told me last week that he still puts the probability of air strikes on Iran as high as 30%.
In domestic politics, it's always a good idea to follow the money. When it comes to grand strategy, however, you need to follow the navy -- to be precise, the aircraft carriers that would be the launching platforms for any major air offensive against Iran's nuclear facilities. To do this, you don't need to be very skilled at espionage. The U.S. Navy makes the information freely available at http://www.gonavy.jp/CVLocation.htmlor in the "Around the Navy" column published each week in the Navy Times.
The U.S. has 11 active aircraft carriers. Of these, the Kitty Hawk is in port in Japan. The Nimitz and Reagan are in San Diego. The Washington is in Norfolk, Va. The Lincoln and Stennis are in Washington state. And the Eisenhower, Vinson, Roosevelt and Truman are undergoing various sorts of refitting and maintenance checks in the vicinity of "WestLant" (Navy-speak for the western Atlantic). Only one -- the Enterprise -- is in the Persian Gulf.
At present, then, talk of World War III seems to be mere saber-rattling, not serious strategy. U.S. aircraft carriers can move fast, it's true. The Lincoln's top speed is in excess of 30 knots (30 nautical miles per hour). And it, along with the Truman, Eisenhower and Nimitz, are said to be "surge ready." But take a look at the map. It's a very long way from San Diego to the Strait of Hormuz. Even from Norfolk, it takes 17.5 days for an aircraft carrier group to reach Bahrain. If you were Ahmadinejad, how worried would you be?
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Repercussions
ChicagoT editorial: It's not hard to see how this plays out. Absent a diplomatic breakthrough, or military action, Iran eventually will gain the wherewithal to build a bomb. It could take two years. It could take five or more. Or Tehran may stop just short of actually building a bomb. That may be enough for its strategic purposes. An Iran capable of building a bomb, whether it has or not, would dominate the region even more and set off an arms race in the Middle East, with Egypt, Saudi Arabia and others clamoring to balance Iran's nuclear might. Meanwhile, Tehran's ability to aid terrorists and menace Israel without fear of serious repercussions would be significantly enhanced. Much of the talk in the U.S. has been about what the Bush administration may do. Will the U.S. bomb Iran and could that really destroy its nuclear program? What kind of retaliation could America and its allies expect?
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Quest
Despite the push for a Palestinian State, it isn't "Palestine" the Administration is seeking. It is, rather, unified regional - Arab and Israeli - opposition to the nuclearization of Iran and Iran's export of terrorism and missile technology. In that worthy quest, Secretary of State Rice has returned to the early days of Bush 43 and to its antecedents in Bush 41. She is listening to Arab leaders (mainly the Saudis) who say they would just LOVE to help us, but as long as Palestine is occupied, their "street" just won't permit it.
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Investment
NYT: Iran, the subject of two recent rounds of United Nations sanctions for its suspected nuclear weapons ambitions and a long boycott by the United States, has few opportunities to invest abroad. The end result, Western diplomats and analysts say, is that Washington has effectively pushed Damascus and Tehran into deepening their alliance of nearly three decades. "It's logical why we have been working much closer with the Iranians," said Mustafa Alkafri, head of the Syrian Investment Agency, a government body. "We're both under the American blockade." The Syrian government estimates that Iranian investment in 2006 alone surged to more than $400 million, making Tehran the third-largest foreign investor here, behind Saudi Arabia and Turkey. Though exact figures are unavailable, by some estimates Iran has invested a total of $3 billion in Syria, most of that in the last few years.
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Lightning
The latest in a series of "messages" being sent to the West is the news reported this past week of Ahmadinejad presiding over a military parade that featured a cornucopia of weapon systems now in the hands of the Iranian armed forces. Among these was a new Iranian-designed and produced fighter aircraft, the Sa'eqeh (Lightning), which had just begun series-production in August according to Iran's official state news outlets. Amadinejad told the crowd, which was assembled to commemorate the 27th anniversary of the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war, that "those (countries) who assume that decaying methods such as psychological war, political propaganda and the so-called economic sanctions would work and prevent Iran's fast drive toward progress are mistaken."
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Illusion
So far, the UN has proven to be its usual dysfunctional self. A strategy of compelling Iran to end its nuclear program by imposing broad-based sanctions has proved illusory. The Bush administration has repeatedly stated that no option is off the table -- including a military option -- but has given those words little content, instead stressing diplomacy as the only way forward. The result is that Ahmadinejad arrives in New York brimming with confidence that the West is busy negotiating with itself while his nuclear program proceeds undeterred.
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Progress
WP editorial: Even if Tehran provides satisfactory answers, its uranium enrichment -- and thus its progress toward a bomb -- will continue. That doesn't trouble Mr. ElBaradei, who hasn't hidden his view that the world should stop trying to prevent Iran from enriching uranium and should concentrate instead on blocking U.S. military action. Do Russia and China share this judgment? If so, they are more likely to precipitate a U.S. or Israeli military strike than to prevent one.
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Condemnation
In theory, a Senate resolution condemning a terrorist organization in Iran should be a slam-dunk. But in the poisoned atmosphere that pervades the war debate in Congress, even a simple ?sense of the Senate? resolution is much more complicated. Republicans on Tuesday rallied support for a resolution that would label Iran?s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as a ?foreign terrorist organization.? But while most Democrats say they support the resolution in concept, the level of mistrust between the parties has elevated a nonbinding resolution to a larger discussion about whether Republicans are pushing for military action against Iran.
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