UFPJ Talking Points: Escalating Threats of U.S. Attacks Against Iran |
By Phyllis Bennis “Iran: The Day After” ** The Bush administration is significantly ratcheting up its threats against Iran, in the context of arguing about a battle between “moderates” and “extremists” in the region. ** U.S. efforts to control or undermine Iran are long-standing, and are rooted in Iran’s historic role as one of only two indigenous regional powers in the Middle East (with water, wealth and size) who can contend with U.S. domination there. ** A U.S. (or U.S.-Israeli) strike on Iran, especially with the nuclear “bunker-buster” bombs being talked about, would be deadly for tens or hundreds of thousands of Iranians, and would be a preventive attack – in violation of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), the UN Charter, and other parts of international law, as well as the U.S. Constitution. ** Overheated U.S. rhetorical accusations against Iran are expanding earlier allegations about Iran’s alleged nuclear ambitions to claims (including show-and-tell but absent real evidence) that Iran is directly responsible for “killing American troops” in Iran. Current U.S. policy in Iraq calls for “dual escalations” – not only an escalation in troop numbers, but a geographic escalation, expanding from Iraq to Iran. ** Beyond rhetoric, U.S. provocations include sending a second aircraft carrier group to the Persian Gulf, sending minesweepers to the Strait of Hormuz, arresting Iranian officials legally working in Iraq, openly backing the anti-Iranian Mujahideen el-Khalq (MEQ) guerrillas, appointing a naval flier as head of Central Command, continuing pressure in the United Nations to expand sanctions against Iran. ** Iran is not a threat to the United States. It does not have a nuclear weapon and is not threatening to attack the U.S; it is a signatory to the NPT and the UN’s nuclear watchdog agency has found no evidence of a nuclear weapons program; Iran’s nuclear power program, including enriching uranium, is legal under the NPT. As early as 2003 Iran had proposed a comprehensive “grand bargain” with the U.S., which the Bush administration has ignored. The February 2007 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) asserts that Iran’s involvement in Iraq “is not likely to be a major driver of violence” there. ** Israeli rhetoric against Iran is largely paralleling U.S. claims; unlike the run-up to the Iraq War, Israel and the pro-Israeli lobbies in the U.S. are pressing hard for an attack on Iran, and any Israeli involvement would significantly undercut Congressional opposition. ** The U.S. efforts to force American-dependent Arab regimes to back a U.S. (or U.S.-Israeli) attack on Iran include imposing a “rising Shi’a threat” framework over regional events and renewing the appearance of Palestinian-Israeli peace talks. ** The U.S. is more isolated now than at any time since the beginning of the 2003 Iraq War; no U.S. allies except Israel are supporting calls for a U.S. attack on Iran. ** So what are the demands of the peace movement?
**** Even the New York Times has editorialized that the Bush administration is “bullying” Iran. Noting that “the one tactic the administration is refusing to consider is diplomacy,” the Times warned that Bush “could end up talking himself into another disastrous war, and if Congress is not clear in opposing him this time, he could drag the country along.” The temperature of anti-Iranian hysteria has escalated rapidly, particularly since Bush’s January speech on Iraq and his State of the Union address. While U.S. antagonism towards Iran is an old story, the particular timing of the current escalation is linked to the ever-clearer failure of U.S. strategy in Iraq. The framework for the current drumbeat is the claim that Iran is at the center of the bad-guy side of the new Middle East divide allegedly pitting the “moderates” (read: our guys – the absolute monarchs, flawed “democracies” and military dictatorships of the region, such as Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, etc.) against the “extremists” (read: the bad guys, Iran, Syria, al-Qaeda, Hamas, Hezbollah…). The framework is sometimes overlaid on Washington’s “good Sunnis, bad Shi’as” grid for dividing regional forces (the opposite of how they view the Iraqi situation). But even on a regional level that doesn’t always work since neither Syria nor Hamas are Shi’a-based, and Hezbollah’s Shi’a base is allied with a host of Christian, secular and even a few Sunni forces. And the Sunni leadership of al-Qaeda, of course, are anti-Shi’a in the extreme. The reasons have not changed. Iran is one of only two countries in the Middle East that contains the three prerequisites for indigenous power: oil/wealth, water, large land and population. The only other country is (or was…) Iraq. Iran and Iraq traditionally competed for territory, oil rights, military control, and regional influence; this competition was always that of national interests – economic, military, influence. The two nation-states competed – not because Iran was Shi’a and Iraq’s government privileged its minority Sunnis and was allied with largely Sunni Arab regimes, but for the same reason that Germany and France or Argentina and Brazil historically fought regional wars –for territory, money and power. Later the U.S. moved strategically to prevent either from challenging overall U.S. domination of the Middle East. It was on that basis that the U.S. backed Saddam Hussein’s Iraq throughout the Gulf War – because Iran was stronger, so the U.S. weighed in on the side of the weaker competitor to keep the war going and encourage both regional challengers to waste their blood and treasure fighting each other, rather than turning on the U.S. So U.S. interest has always been in controlling Iran’s oil (less for direct access, which was never a real necessity or real problem, than for control of pricing and supply, and to be able to act as guarantor of access for Washington’s allies and now competitors such as China and India). Washington’s current anti-Iran campaign has pushed Arab governments towards a much more aggressive, and much more dangerous, stance against Iran. The same regional competition that once led to the Iran-Iraq War is already resulting in a new regional contest between Iran and a Saudi-led and U.S.-backed consortium of Arab governments. Saudi Arabia is not an indigenous regional power on its own or even backed by the other weak and legitimacy-challenged states in the area, and the current conflict is unlikely to lead to an “Iran-Arab” war. But the new U.S.-backed high profile of the Saudi king (in negotiating the recent internal Palestinian ceasefire, for instance) must be seen in the context of Washington continuing to encourage regional competitors to challenge Iran. What’s wrong with a U.S. attack on Iran? Any U.S. military strike on Iran - ANY strike - would be a violation of international law that prohibits preventive war. And George Bush now admits that "preventive war" - not his earlier claim of pre-emptive war - is indeed his strategic doctrine. According to the International Court of Justice, even threatening to use nuclear weapons is a violation of international law - and the Bush administration is threatening to use nuclear "bunker-buster" bombs to attack Iran. Iran does not have nuclear weapons, and has not threatened the United States. Under the Non-Proliferation Treaty, the U.S. is absolutely prohibited from using – or even threatening to use – nuclear weapons against Iran, a non-nuclear signatory of the NPT. But the Bush administration has threatened exactly that, specifically by circulating calls for use of nuclear “bunker-buster” bombs to destroy hardened sites attached to Iran’s nuclear power program. According to the National Academy of Sciences “the use of such a weapon would create massive clouds of radioactive fallout that could spread far from the site of the attack, including to other nations. Even if used in remote, lightly populated areas, the number of casualties could range up to more than a hundred thousand…” The Bush administration seems to have recognized that their efforts to win public support (in the U.S. and internationally) for a preventive attack on Iran on the basis of Iran’s alleged but never seen nuclear weapons program have failed. Too many people, in the U.S. and globally, remain suspicious because of the legacy of the administration’s false claims regarding Iraq’s alleged WMDs. As a result, new rhetorical accusations – similarly unproven – are now being floated, claiming that Iran is directly responsible for “killing American troops” by providing bomb equipment to Iraqi insurgents. The heated language is clearly designed to mobilize “protect the troops” sentiments and to galvanize Americans’ anger, regardless of whether the claim is true. And members of Congress including Democratic opponents of the Iraq war are asserting that regarding Iran, “all options must remain on the table.” U.S. policy towards Iran now is going far beyond rhetorical accusations. Current U.S. strategy in Iraq calls for “dual escalations” – not only an escalation in troop numbers inside Iraq itself, but a geographic escalation of the war from Iraq to Iran. That strategy has had visible military components. A second aircraft carrier group is en route to the Persian Gulf, joining the first carrier, with its partner ships, bombers and fighter-planes, already in place. The U.S. has kept a carrier group off the Iranian coast since about 1980; sending a second represents a significant escalation. Months ago, the Pentagon also sent minesweepers to the Strait of Hormuz. This was widely viewed as a pro-active move in the expectation that Iran would respond to any attack by blockading the Straits, through which a huge percentage of Middle East oil flows to the rest of the world. In some of the most provocative actions, the U.S. command announced its intention to “seek out and destroy” Iranian networks found in Iraq, and U.S. troops have already raided sites in Iraq where Iranian diplomats, legally present in Iraq with the permission of the Iraqi government, were working. A number of Iranians were arrested, of whom several are still being held despite calls from both Tehran and Baghdad for their release. And the Bush administration remains committed to pressuring the United Nations to expand the sanctions imposed on Iran despite the IAEA having found no evidence of illegal nuclear weapons in Iran. In other actions, Bush’s new chief of Central Command, Admiral William Fallon, will oversea the two massive ground wars in landlocked Afghanistan and almost-landlocked Iraq, even though he is a Navy pilot. It was widely assessed as a sign that future expansions would be looking to naval and air power, rather than “boots-on-the-ground,” with Iran as the most likely candidate. CNN has reported that Bush has asked Strategic Command – which includes the U.S. nuclear arsenal – to prepare plans for a possible U.S. attack on Iran. And new reports are emerging indicating that neo-conservative analysts inside the Bush administration and in right-wing think tanks influential in the White House, are actively promoting Iranian exile leaders and especially the Mujahideen el-Khalq (MEK), an Iranian opposition guerrilla cult once backed by Saddam Hussein and listed as a terrorist organization by the U.S. State Department. What kind of threat does Iran pose? The U.S.-led demand that Iran give up its enrichment activities is not based on an Iranian violation of the NPT. Rather, it is simply a U.S. declaration that it “does not trust” Iran, and that therefore the UN Security Council should agree to enforce an Iranian halt in enrichment. The demand has no basis in international law or the terms of the NPT. Shortly after the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, Iran proposed a comprehensive “grand bargain.” It reportedly offered more stringent IAEA inspection of Iran’s nuclear activities, acceptance of the 2002 Arab League proposal that would allow normalization of relations with Israel in exchange for an Israeli withdrawal from all the 1967 occupied territory, ending material support to Hamas from Iran, and providing the U.S. with names of al-Qaeda operatives in Iranian custody. In return it asked for the U.S. to go after the anti-Iranian Mujahideen el-Khalq. But the U.S. government never took the offer seriously. It has been known for years that what Iran wants, beyond the specifics, is a security guarantee from the U.S. – giving up “regime change” or other efforts to attack or undermine Iran. Such a guarantee cannot be offered by the UN, the European Union, or any other country, only by the world’s sole military superpower. But the U.S. has never been prepared to offer such a guarantee. The Bush administration is now focusing on the claim that Iran is responsible for the deaths of U.S. soldiers inside Iraq. But the February 2007 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) makes clear that Iran’s involvement in Iraq “is not likely to be a major driver of violence” there. The February 11, 2007 press conference in Baghdad that purported to “prove” that the highest levels of the Iranian government were providing bombs to Iraqi insurgents simply showed the weapons, “without providing direct evidence,” as the New York Times reported. “The officials said such an assertion was an inference based on general intelligence assessments.” Two days later, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Peter Pace, said he saw no evidence that the Iranian government was actually involved in arming militias in Iraq. In London’s Independent, the respected Middle East analyst Patrick Cockburn wrote, “the evidence against Iran is even more insubstantial than the faked or mistaken evidence for Iraqi WMDs disseminated by the United States and Britain in 2002 and 2003. The allegations appear to be full of exaggerations. … It implies the Shiites have been at war with the U.S., when in fact they are controlled by parties which make up the Iraqi government.” Aside from the problem of lack of proof, there is a huge problem of hypocrisy in the U.S. making threats against Iran for ostensibly supporting militias, given that the U.S.-backed Iraqi government is itself inextricably bound up with support for various Iraqi militias. Further, even as it continues backing Prime Minister al-Maliki, Washington officials are publicly weighing the efficacy and advantages of turning their support to the other major Shi’a player in the Iraqi government, al Hakim, leader of the pro-Iranian SCIRI party. And there is the overarching hypocrisy of the U.S. – which illegally invaded, bombed, and continues to occupy the entire country of Iraq from 8,000 miles away – threatening war against Iran on the grounds that Iraq’s next-door neighbor is the one “meddling” in Iraq’s affairs. Is there really a serious possibility of a U.S. attack on Iran? An attack using nuclear “bunker-buster” bombs would be explicitly a violation of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, to which Iran is a signatory, and which prohibits any attack with nuclear weapons against a non-nuclear weapons state. The U.S., in threatening to use nuclear weapons against Iran, is directly undermining the no-first-use assumptions that have prevented nuclear war for more than half a century. In fact, the International Court of Justice has ruled that for a nuclear weapon-state such as the U.S. to even threaten to use a nuclear weapon against a non-nuclear signatory like Iran is a violation of the NPT. Iran is, even according to U.S. officials, at least four years from having the capability of making a nuclear weapon, even if it chose to do so. The U.S. remains in violation of the NPT’s requirement in Article VI that it, along with the other four recognized nuclear powers, move towards full and complete nuclear disarmament. An attack on Iran would be far more dangerous even than attacking Iraq. Militarily, Iran remains a regional military power; although Iran’s military is not close to the capacity of the Pentagon, it has not been destroyed by a dozen years of crippling global sanctions as Iraq was. Iran remains influential in the region, and the consequences of an attack would be felt beyond Iran’s own borders. Like the situation in pre-invasion Iraq, Americans have little familiarity with the people, culture and country of Iran, and the demonization of all things Iranian that began in 1979 with the overthrow of the U.S.-backed Shah of Iran has continued. Many members of Congress, even those strongly opposed to an attack on Iran, have little understanding of the dangers, of what might happen “the day after” a U.S. attack. Although no one is calling directly for an invasion of ground forces into Iran, the threat of a U.S. airstrike against Iran – “surgical” or otherwise – would almost certainly bring swift Iranian counter-attack, in self-defense (which much of the world would recognize as authorized under UN Charter Article 51 mandating self-defense after attack) or retaliation. Iran’s actions could include a direct attack on U.S. troops in Iraq, or in other neighboring countries including Saudi Arabia, Oman, Qatar, Bahrain, Djibouti, or elsewhere. It could attack U.S. interests through proxies, particularly in Iraq. It could destabilize Iraq even further, while uniting Iraqis (and Arabs across the region) even more strongly against the U.S. Iran might attack Israel, particularly if the U.S. claimed that its attack on Iran was somehow tied to “protecting” its Israeli ally. And it could use the oil weapon – manipulating prices or supplies, but even more dangerously, Iran could sink a ship to block the strategic oil waterway, the Strait of Hormuz. What is Israel’s connection to the U.S. escalation against Iran? However, Israel holds the fourth most powerful nuclear arsenal in the world, and its conventional military is by far the most advanced in the region even without its strategic alliance with the Pentagon. As a result, there are divisions even among Israeli elites, and some key sectors, particularly some in the military, do not share the government’s obsession with an alleged Iranian “threat.” What is the regional and international reaction? What does the peace movement need to do and to demand? ______________________________________ |