Page 2 of 2 The writing's on the wall for
Iran By Leon Hadar
that
the Israelis and the Saudis, backed by Washington,
have been conducting secret talks to coordinate
the anti-Iran strategy.
Indeed, according
to Israeli press reports, Olmert and Prince Sultan
have met to discuss Iran and related issues. The
meeting and other signs of coordination on Iran
among Washington, Jerusalem and Riyadh have raised
the possibility that the Bush administration is
trying to draw the outlines of a new strategic
consensus involving it, Israel
and the pro-US Arab-Sunni regimes (Saudi Arabia
and the other Arab Gulf states, and Egypt and
Jordan).
These reports recalled a similar
"strategic consensus" that evolved in the 1980s
during the Ronald Reagan administration, when the
Americans, Israelis and Saudis - and, yes, then-US
partner, Saddam's Iraq - were cooperating in
dealing with both the Soviet invasion of
Afghanistan and with the challenge from
revolutionary Iran.
And anyone who knows
how to assess the balance of power in Washington
will tell you that when the Americans are joined
by the Saudis and the Israelis and their powerful
supporters in Washington in a coordinated effort
to harm you, run fast for cover. Both the Soviets
fighting against Osama bin Laden and his
mujahideen allies (assisted by Washington) in
Afghanistan and the Iranians attacked by Saddam's
Iraqi military (assisted by Washington) learned
that lesson in the 1980s.
In addition to
the pressure exerted by the Saudis and Israelis on
Washington, Bush in his January 11 speech blamed
the Iranians for targeting US troops in Iraq and
threatened to use US military power to disrupt
such actions. The next day Bush announced that he
was sending an aircraft carrier to visit Iran's
neighborhood, and the military ordered US troops
to raid an Iranian consulate in the Iraqi Kurdish
city of Irbil. Such actions could lead even a
low-level intelligence analyst to see "signals"
coming out of the White House aimed at Iran.
Moreover, the decision by the Bush
administration to appoint Admiral William Fallon
to oversee US military operations in Iraq and
Afghanistan has raised many red flags among
observers in Washington. Why choose a navy admiral
to lead two ground wars in the Middle East and
South Asia, unless you regard that as a
preparatory step for a strike on Iran's nuclear
military sites? If that happened, Iran would
retaliate by attacking oil platforms and tankers,
closing the Strait of Hormuz, and perhaps hitting
oil infrastructure in Saudi Arabia; the US Navy
would probably play a key role in protecting the
oil flowing from the Persian Gulf.
Many
members of Congress have also been reading the
signals, and they are worried that the Bush
administration may be making the conditions for
another war in the Middle East. During testimony
before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee,
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice insisted that
the administration had no plans to cross Iraq's
borders into Iran to attack supporters of the
Iraqi insurgency and militias.
But
Republican Senator Chuck Hagel compared Bush's
strategy to the late president Richard Nixon's
escalation of the Vietnam War. "You cannot sit
here today, not because you are dishonest or don't
understand - once you get to hot pursuit, no one
can say we won't engage across border," he said.
"Some of us remember 1970 and Cambodia, and our
government lied to us and said we didn't cross the
border. When you set in motion the kind of policy
the president is talking about here, it is very,
very dangerous."
Other Democratic and
Republican lawmakers expressed similar concerns
that the rising tensions with Iran could ignite a
full-blown war and demanded that the White House
consult Congress before going to war with Iran.
But Bush-Cheney and their neo-con advisers may
have found a way to overcome the threat of
congressional and Democratic opposition, and it
has to do with the potential Israeli role in a
crisis with Iran.
If Israel decides to
attack Iran's nuclear sites, many of the same
lawmakers would probably applaud the move, a
reflection of their pro-Israeli disposition. After
all, can anyone imagine Democratic presidential
candidate Senator Hillary Clinton bashing the
Israelis on the eve of the primaries or the
general election?
But any retaliation from
an Israeli attack on Iran would probably
necessitate a US response, which Congress would
have no choice but to support. It is quite likely
that if Iran also decided to unleash its Hezbollah
allies in Lebanon and encouraged them to attack
Israel, the Israelis would respond by invading
Syria and forcing out Bashar al-Assad - another
"regime change" that might benefit the interests
of US allies in Lebanon.
And of course,
the Bush administration would then dismiss the
notion that the strike by a client state received
a green (or at least a yellow) light from the
White House as another "urban legend". (We'd
probably have to wait for Woodward's next volume
to learn that while US lawmakers were whining, the
green light was flashing as the Americans,
Israelis and Saudis were readying for a war with
Iran.)
But it's also possible that such a
book would not conclude with a
neo-conservative-scripted happy ending in which
the Bush administration celebrates the triumph of
Pax Americana. Bush, Cheney and their
neo-conservative aides have already tried to use
Israel's strategic services, when they gave Olmert
a green light to attack Hezbollah infrastructure
in Lebanon last summer, hoping that devastating
the partner of Iran and Syria would serve as a
blow to Tehran.
But the best-laid plans of
mice and neo-cons often go awry. Hezbollah
resisted the Israeli invasion of southern Lebanon
and emerged with a political victory in the
aftermath of war, providing Iran and Syria with a
win. Similarly, an Israeli strike against Iran
could fail and/or result in thousands of civilian
casualties. The Shi'ite-led government in Iraq
could be forced to ally with the Iranians and
demand the withdrawal of US troops from the
country, while anti-US sentiments in the Middle
East and the Muslim world would skyrocket.
Other possible consequences could include
a dramatic increase in energy prices, especially
if Venezuela decided to join an oil embargo;
demonstrations by outraged citizens in major
European (not to mention US) cities; and most
important, growing pressure from the European
Union, Russia and China on Washington to convene
an international conference on the Middle East.
While the United States and Israel could
emerge victorious from the military campaign (not
unlike the British, French and Israelis after the
1956 Suez Campaign against Egypt), they could also
find themselves totally isolated in the
international community, facing enormous
diplomatic and economic pressure to reverse their
policies. That is what happens when history
transforms an urban legend into a tragedy.
Leon Hadar, a Washington-based
journalist and contributor to Right Web
(rightweb.irc-online.org), is author most recently
of Sandstorm: Policy Failure in the Middle
East (2006). He blogs at
globalparadigms.blogspot.com.
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