Page 3 of
5 REVAMPING US FOREIGN POLICY, Part
1 Full speed ahead, with
menace By W Joseph Stroupe
number of key issues.
These include Iran's nuclear program and on
Syria's exercising of undue influence within
Lebanon.
In other words, the
administration expects the two virtually to cave
in first before it will engage them in an Iraq or
wider regional solution. The same is true of Iran
and Syria - they expect the US virtually to cave
in by "changing its attitude" of seeking to cut
them down to size in the region before they will
agree to sit at the
same
negotiating table with the US. Both sides have
become more, not less, intransigent as the Iraq
situation nears crisis stage. Therefore, any
prospect of serious and fruitful negotiations
between the US and the two key players is
extremely remote, at best.
Top US
officials recently stated that they wished to
engage Saudi Arabia and other oil-rich regimes
(rather than Iran and Syria) in an intensified
effort to end the mounting sectarian chaos in
Iraq. However, it is unclear along what lines such
regimes would specifically be asked to become
engaged. These are Sunni regimes. Would they be
asked to assist in tangible ways to help stabilize
and strengthen the current Shi'ite-dominated Iraqi
government? It is not likely they would be
interested in helping to boost the already
worrying rise of Shi'ites in the region.
Many experts have recognized that Iraq's
sectarian militias must be disarmed if the
violence is to be stemmed. Would the Sunni regimes
be asked to assist the US military in its efforts
to disarm Iraq's Sunni and Shi'ite militias? That
would be a recipe for regionwide conflagration
because it would risk spreading rather than
containing Iraq's bloody sectarian rivalries.
Additionally, any move by the Sunni
regimes to assist materially in the disarming of
Iraq's Shi'ite militias and the weakening of the
Shi'ite faction would risk an explosion of Shi'ite
rage among their own people, since every one of
the Sunni regimes must deal with its own large
domestic Shi'ite population. If the US somehow
succeeds in getting the Sunni regimes more
tangibly involved, it will be an impending sign
not of a solution to Middle East instability, but
of a loss of control over the situation, its
spinning out of control.
Even if the US
engages in real negotiations with Iran and Syria
over the Iraq crisis, the Sunni regimes are
extremely unlikely to cast their lot with a
severely weakened United States in any
negotiations over a regional solution that would
end up codifying de facto Persian dominance of the
Gulf.
Yet those very regimes have no
viable solution among themselves - they cannot
stem Iran's regional rise. With the US
increasingly in impending forfeiture in Iraq, they
may wish to play Israel secretly as counterweight
to Iran, but even the hint of such a policy shift
risks the total alienation of their vehemently
anti-Israel populace and the prospect of sharply
increased domestic unrest and an overthrow of the
current Sunni regimes. That would play directly
into Iran's hands: the oil-rich Arab regimes are
strategically stuck, and they know it.
Military, military and more military
Against this backdrop, ongoing Iranian
efforts to "bear-hug" Iraq and intimidate other
Gulf Arab states into a Tehran-led alliance are
intensifying. Iran is suspected in the November 4
explosion and fire in one of Kuwait's refineries,
and Shi'ite unrest and ever more serious threats
against the Sunni regimes in Bahrain, Saudi Arabia
and elsewhere in the region. These are only some
of the more easily recognizable tactics employed
by Tehran to herd the Gulf Arab states into an
alliance.
According to recent reports from
the Middle East Newsline, for agreeing to ally
with Tehran it will "reward" regimes by ceasing
its provocative destabilization tactics. The
growing Arab openness to such a regional
"solution" deeply concerns Washington, which is
now pointedly increasing its naval military
presence inside and within striking distance of
the Persian Gulf.
Additionally, Iran's
recent 10-day Great Prophet II war games shocked
the West with respect to Iran's ability to launch
many dozens of assorted ballistic missiles in
perfect coordination in mock retaliation against
an Israeli/US/European attack. This demonstrated
that all US bases in the Middle East and even
Europe are in Iran's retaliatory striking range.
Only days after Iran's coordinated
ballistic-missile launches, France successfully
test-launched its newest nuclear-tipped ballistic
missile, obviously pleased to let that test launch
serve as a non-verbal warning to Iran that it
faces a potent European retaliation if it targets
Europe with its own missiles. Taking the measure
of the powerful and growing US naval armada now in
and near the Persian Gulf along with European
North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) forces,
it is no stretch to surmise that something much
more than a mere passive containment of Iran may
be in the offing much sooner rather than later.
What is the likely purpose behind the
mounting US and European NATO naval forces in and
near the Persian Gulf, if not merely for an
ongoing and passive attempt at containment of
Iran? Diplomatic attempts at the United Nations
aimed at strapping Iran with punishing sanctions
over its nuclear pursuits have miserably failed,
and they are most likely to continue to fail.
Russia and China will see to that. Iran has shown
a stubborn determination to continue its
nuclearization at almost any cost. If the West
absolutely cannot get what it wants solely within
the confines of conventional interpretation of UN
measures, then it is preparing to accomplish the
stalwart isolation of Iran by hyper-extending
those measures to a significant degree.
The strategy of the West that is building
here against Iran is illuminated by an examination
of what has transpired in the North
