Reply #61: Middle East at a crossroads [View All]

[54anickel]

http://www.energybulletin.net/18904.html

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Iran: Will the US Attack Before November?

At the ASPO conference a riveting presentation was delivered by Terence Ward, a writer (Searching for Hassan) who grew up in Iran and is currently a cross-cultural consultant for businesses, foundations, and governments in the Islamic World and the West. Ward believes that a US bombing attack on Tehran is nearly inevitable (a view that I put forward in MuseLetter #155, March 2005, “Onward to Iran”), and that it will have devastating consequences for the region and for the world.

He began by reminding the audience that there is no clear proof of an Iranian nuclear weapons program, and that what the US and Israel have pointed to as evidence falls short of what would be needed to publicly justify pre-emptive military action. The central question hanging over the proposals and counter-proposals involving the US, Iran, the UN Security Council, and other interested parties including Russia and China, is this: What if both the US and Iranian presidents seek confrontation and war?

Sure enough, on August 1 the US was able to obtain a UN Security Council resolution giving Iran 30 days to end its uranium enrichment program (otherwise permitted by the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty)—which it seems unlikely to do. Events appear to have achieved a relentless, irrational momentum in a direction all too reminiscent of those in the weeks leading up to the 2003 US invasion of Iraq.

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Neoconservatives appear to believe that, as soon as the bombing commences, Iranians will rise up en masse to overthrow their humiliated rulers—just as they believed that the Iraqi people would welcome an American effort to completely reshape their country’s economy and political system following the invasion.

Ward speculates that Mr. Bush may bomb before the November elections in order to preserve his Republican majority in Congress. However, the US military is already under enormous strain, and would be unable to deal with likely chain reactions following an air attack; and the likely response of the American people is difficult to gauge.

Why might the Iranian leaders want confrontation? Ward made the important point that the current Tehran regime is even less popular domestically than is its US counterpart among Americans. This is shown in the remarkable statistic that, according to a report by the Islamic Republic’s Ministry of Culture and Guidance, less than two percent of the population attends Friday prayers regularly. Ahmadinejad, whose support comes almost entirely from the dwindling ranks of religious fundamentalists, is in power only because his opponent in the most recent election rendered himself utterly odious through blatant corruption.

Iranian hard-liners believe the US bombing will enrage and unite their people. Lacking a strong popular base, the Tehran regime has seized upon “nuclear nationalism” as a way of gaining legitimacy with the masses—just as Bush and company seized upon the issue of national security following 9/11. Ahmadinejad and his cohorts evidently believe that, in the event of an American attack, the Iranian people will rally behind their government, thus injecting new life into the Islamic revolution. In confronting the US and Israel, the hard-liners also expect to be propelled to the forefront of the radical Muslim world.

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Iran’s response is not hard to guess. The nation has hundreds of undeclared dock and port facilities along its Persian Gulf coast. The Iranian Navy recently conducted exercises in the Strait of Hormuz, in which a thousand small Iranian boats simulated attacks on American ships. The Strait is the world’s only access point for millions of barrels per day of OPEC oil. The passage of tankers through this narrow waterway would almost certainly be interrupted for days, weeks, and perhaps months if hostilities erupted.

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