Will the US
attack Iran?
“Frankly, I think the
military would revolt and there would be no pilots to fly those missions. This
is a little bit of hyperbole, but not much. Just look at what General Casey, the
Army chief, said yesterday – that the tempo of operations in Iraq would make
it very hard for the military to respond to a major crisis elsewhere. Beside,
it’s not the ‘war’ or ‘bombing’ part that’s difficult; it’s the morning after
and all the days after that. Haven’t we learned that (again) from Iraq?” [1]
Those are the words of Dana Priest,
the National Security Correspondent for the Washington Post, on 27 September
2007, when she was asked if President Bush would order the bombing of Iran. Dana Priest is an experienced and highly
regarded investigative journalist (the author of, for example, the expose of
the CIA’s secret prisons overseas [2],
which contributed to her winning a Pulitzer Prize).
She may have overstated the US military’s reluctance to be party to the
bombing of Iran
and to having to cope with the “morning after”.
But her words are worth quoting as an antidote to the widespread media
assumption that Bush will bomb Iran
before leaving office in January 2009.
Here’s another quote on the matter:
“This constant drumbeat
of conflict is what strikes me, which is not helpful and not useful. …I expect that there will be no war and that
is what we ought to be working for. … It
is not a good idea to be in a state of war. We ought to try and to do our
utmost to create different conditions.” [3]
Those are the words of Admiral
William Fallon speaking about Iran
in an interview on al-Jezeera on 21 September 2007. Fallon is the head of US Central Command
(CENTCOM) and, as such, would be in overall command of any military operations
against Iran in the near
future, as he is of the ongoing US
military operations in Iraq
and Afghanistan. (CENTCOM covers 25 countries from the Horn of
Africa through the Middle East to Kazakhstan
in Central Asia).
More recently on 12 November 2007,
Fallon was quoted in the Financial Times as saying that a strike against Iran was not
“in the offing” [4]. He continued:
“None
of this is helped by the continuing stories that just keep going around and
around and around that any day now there will be another war which is just not
where we want to go.
“Getting
Iranian behaviour to change and finding ways to get them to come to their
senses and do that is the real objective. Attacking them as a means to get to
that spot strikes me as being not the first choice in my book.”
Fallon’s immediate predecessor was
General John Abizaid, who retired in March 2007. He told the Center for Strategic and
International Studies (CSIS) in Washington
on 17 September 2007:
“We need to understand
that war in the state-to-state sense in that part of the region would be
devastating for everybody, and we should avoid it, in my mind, to every extent
that we can.” [5]
That recognises that attacking Iran isn’t a cost free option for the US.
Like March
2003?
At times during the past year, the
noises coming out of Washington about Iran have sounded like those we heard in the run
up to the invasion of Iraq
in March 2003, with Iran
being painted not just as a nuclear threat but also being accused of lending
increasing assistance to Shia militias in Iran. And you could be forgiven for thinking that
the White House was about to use the latter as an excuse for a military strike
inside Iran – and to use the
Iranian response as an excuse for a major military strike against Iran. This may still happen.
However, the political balance in Washington is very different
today compared with what it was in March
2003. The neo-conservative cheerleaders
for the invasion of Iraq,
who are now crusading for military action against Iran,
are no longer dominant in the US
administration. Vice-President Dick
Cheney is the only major neo-conservative figure left in the
administration. Crucially, the
Department of Defense, which up until November 2006 was headed by neo-conservative
Donald Rumsfeld, with Paul Wolfowitz as his deputy, is now headed by Robert
Gates, who has a very different view about how the US
should pursue its interests in the Middle East, especially in respect of Iran.
Gates was the co-chair (with
Zbigniew Brzezinski) of a Council on Foreign Relations task force on US policy towards Iran, which reported in July 2004.
The recommendations for US
policy from its report entitled Iran: Time for a new approach [6]
advocated diplomatic engagement with Iran:
“The United States should offer Iran a direct
dialogue on specific issues of regional stabilization. This should entail a
resumption and expansion of the Geneva track
discussions that were conducted with Tehran
for eighteen months after the 9/11 attacks. The dialogue should be structured
to encourage constructive Iranian involvement in the process of consolidating
authority within the central governments of both Iraq
and Afghanistan
and in rebuilding their economies.”
This approach is reflected in the
report of the Iraq Study Group, of which Gates was a member until his
nomination as Defense Secretary.
Living with
a nuclear-armed Iran
What is more, Gates doesn’t seem to regard
Iran’s acquisition of
nuclear weapons as catastrophic for US interests in the Middle
East. During his confirmation
hearings before the Senate Armed Services Committee on 5 December 2006 [7],
Gates said he believed that Iran was seeking a nuclear weapons capability, but
remarkably he went on to suggest that it was a defensive measure on the part of
Iran. Asked by Senator Lindsey Graham if
he believed that Iran would
consider using nuclear weapons against Israel, he replied:
“I don’t know that they
would do that, Senator. ... And I think that, while they are certainly
pressing, in my opinion, for nuclear capability, I think that they would see it
in the first instance as a deterrent.
They are surrounded by powers with nuclear weapons: Pakistan to their east, the Russians to the
north, the Israelis to the west and us in the Persian Gulf.”
This comes close to saying that the US could live with a nuclear-armed Iran, implying that Israel should be able to as well.
(General John Abizaid stated this
overtly to the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) on 17
September 2007, saying:
“There are ways to live
with a nuclear Iran.
Let’s face it, we lived with a nuclear Soviet Union; we’ve lived with a nuclear
China;
we’re living with nuclear other powers as well. But I would tell you, I think
it’s very, very important that we do what we can to prevent that from
happening.” [5])
Not cost free
In March 2003, the invasion of Iraq was seen as a near cost free operation for
the US. It was assumed that the Iraqi Army would be speedily
overwhelmed and that US
forces would be welcomed with flowers.
Few people foresaw the extraordinary resilience and military skill of
the Sunni resistance to the subsequent occupation. Today, few people believe that attacking Iran would be cost free for the US, even if
such an attack did not involve a ground invasion.
In his confirmation hearings a year
ago, Robert Gates made it very clear that he believed there would be a great price
to pay. Asked by Senator Robert Byrd if he
supported an attack on Iran,
he replied:
“I think that military
action against Iran would be
an absolute last resort, that any problems that we have with Iran, our first option should be diplomacy and
working with our allies to try and deal with the problems that Iran is posing
to us.
“I think that we have
seen, in Iraq,
that once war is unleashed, it becomes unpredictable. And I think that the
consequences of a military conflict with Iran could be quite dramatic.
“And therefore, I would
counsel against military action except as a last resort and if we felt our
vital interests were threatened.”
Asked by Senator John Warner to
describe his “view of the likely consequences of a US
attack on Iran”,
Gates replied:
“... I think that while Iran cannot attack us directly, militarily, I
think that their capacity to potentially close off the Persian Gulf to all
exports of oil, their potential to unleash a significant wave of terror, in the
Middle East and in Europe and even here in
this country, is very real.
“They are certainly not
being helpful in Iraq
and are doing us -- I think, doing damage to our interests there. But I think they could do a lot more to hurt
our effort in Iraq.
…
“So I think that while
their ability to retaliate against us in a conventional military way is quite
limited, they have the capacity to do all of the things, and perhaps more, that
I just described.”
So, attacking Iran would be far from a cost free option for
the US, according to the man
now in charge of the US
military machine.
Iranian
retaliation
Iran possesses missiles
capable of striking US military targets across the Middle East, of which there
are many and not just in Iraq,
for example, CENTCOM headquarters in Qatar
and the headquarters of the US Navy’s Fifth Fleet in Bahrain. No doubt if the US
did decide to attack Iran,
it would not only target Iran’s
nuclear facilities but it would also seek to reduce Iran’s
ability to retaliate to a minimum by attacking every known military site in Iran. However, it must be assumed that Iran has made some provision to prevent its
missile capability being destroyed by a US first strike.
There is little doubt that US troops
on the ground in Iraq would
be subject to reprisals inspired from Iran
(and British troops based in Basra
airport, a few miles from the Iranian border, would be sitting ducks). The US
keeps asserting today that Iran
is providing weapons and training to Shia militias that are killing Americans. There is very little evidence to back this up
and, in any event, the weapons supplied, according to the US, are only
IEDs.
From time to time over the past
year, US forces have taken a small number of Iranians into custody in Iraq for allegedly
assisting Shia militias. But, in many
instances, they have had to release them immediately because they were in Iraq on officially
approved business. On 9 November 2007,
nine Iranians were released from US custody, having been held
without trial for some months [8]. In the past, these were said to be members of
the Quds force of the Revolutionary Guard (which the US State Department designated
a Foreign Terrorist Organisation on 25 October 2007). Eleven other Iranians remain in US
custody. This is hardly evidence of
extensive Iranian military support for Shia militias in Iraq – at the
moment.
But the likelihood is that a US attack on Iran would change all that. In his report to the US Congress on 10-11
September 2007, General David Petraeus said that Iran “seeks” to set up “a
Hezbollah-like force to serve its interests and fight a proxy war against the
Iraqi state and coalition forces in Iraq” [9]. Up to now, Iran
has given limited, if any, support to Shia militias, presumably because it
didn’t want to provoke US
military retaliation. It has not set up a
force in Iraq,
armed and trained like Hezbollah with rockets and anti-tank weapons. But, if the US
attacked Iran, the reason
for Iranian restraint would disappear – with serious consequences for US ground
forces in Iraq.
There will be serious military consequences
for the US if it attacks Iran. There will also be economic
consequences. It goes without saying
that the price of oil will rise – and, if Iran manages to block the Straits
of Hormuz, the sky’s the limit.
Congressional
authority?
In March 2003, President Bush had unquestionable
congressional authority for invading Iraq. He was given that authority in October 2002
by Congress, which was then under Democratic control. On 10 October 2002, the House of
Representatives passed a resolution authorising the President to use US armed
forces against Iraq to, in the words of the resolution, “defend the national
security of the United States against the continuing threat posed by Iraq” and
“enforce all relevant United Nations Security Council resolutions regarding
Iraq” [10]. The next day the Senate passed the same
resolution by 77 votes to 23.
The President had clear, bipartisan,
authority for invading Iraq. He has no such authority today for attacking
Iran and it is very unlikely that Congress would grant him such authority if he
sought it, either on the grounds that Iran is developing nuclear weapons, or on
the grounds that it is assisting in the killing of US troops in Iraq, or both.
It is true that on 26 September 2007
the Senate passed by 76 votes to 23 an amendment to the National Defense
Authorization Act stating that “the United States should designate Iran’s
Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps as a foreign terrorist organization” because
of its alleged assistance to the Iraqi resistance. This seemed at the time to be close a green
light to the president to pursue a military course on the grounds that Iran was responsible for the deaths of American
troops in Iraq.
However, in early November, a number
of senators who voted for this amendment put their names to a letter to the
president stating that he hadn’t got congressional authority for military
action:
“We wish to emphasize
that no congressional authority exists for unilateral military action against Iran. This
includes the Senate vote on September 26, 2007 on an amendment to the FY 2008
National Defense Authorization Act. This amendment, expressing the sense of the
Senate on Iran, and the recent
designation of the Quds Force of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard as a Specially
Designated Global Terrorist, should in no way be interpreted as a predicate for
the use of military force in Iran.”
This letter was signed by 30
senators, including Hillary Clinton.
If President Bush is going to take
military action against Iran,
he will have to manufacture an Iranian aggression to which he can legitimately
respond without congressional authority.
David
Morrison
Labour
& Trade Union Review
12 November
2007
www.david-morrison.org.uk
References
[1] www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/discussion/2007/09/26/
DI2007092601556.html
[2] www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/11/01/
AR2005110101644.html
[3] democrats.senate.gov/newsroom/record.cfm?id=286575&
[4] www.ft.com/cms/s/0/38dd00ca-90a6-11dc-a6f2-0000779fd2ac.html
[5] www.csis.org/media/csis/events/070917_smartpower_abizaid.pdf
[6] www.cfr.org/content/publications/attachments/Iran_TF.pdf
[7] media.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/documents/rgates_hearing_120506.html
[8] www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/09/
AR2007110900235.html
[9] www.defenselink.mil/pubs/pdfs/Petraeus-Testimony20070910.pdf
[10] www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/middle_east/july-dec02/joint_resolution_10-11-02.html