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February 10, 2007
Don't make me go in there
This is a relief. I hope Iran will renounce her belligerence, but I'm glad we're prepared to give her a good hard smack. Of course it's not a complete surprise - for several months news media and bloggers who follow such things have been tracking the number of naval vessels congregating in the Persian Gulf.
Last month Mr Bush ordered a second battle group led by the aircraft carrier USS John Stennis to the Gulf in support of the USS Eisenhower. The USS Stennis is due to arrive within the next 10 days. Extra US Patriot missiles have been sent to the region, as well as more minesweepers, in anticipation of Iranian retaliatory action. In another sign that preparations are under way, Mr Bush has ordered oil reserves to be stockpiled.
Those of us who spent 2006 reassuring the nail-biters that Bush was planning something have been vindicated.
Colonel Sam Gardiner, a former air force officer who has carried out war games with Iran as the target, supported the view that planning for an air strike was under way: "Gates said there is no planning for war. We know this is not true. He possibly meant there is no plan for an immediate strike. It was sloppy wording. All the moves being made over the last few weeks are consistent with what you would do if you were going to do an air strike. We have to throw away the notion the US could not do it because it is too tied up in Iraq. It is an air operation."Duh.
According to the Guardian, the driving forces behind this war buildup are various neocon institutes, natch. But we here at Kesher Talk say good for them. While the American Enterprise Institute favors the air strike,
Other neo-cons elsewhere in Washington . . . advocate a different form of military action, supporting Iranian armed groups, in particular the Mujahideen-e Khalq (MEK), even though the state department has branded it a terrorist organisation. Raymond Tanter, founder of the Iran Policy Committee, which includes former officials from the White House, state department and intelligence services, is a leading advocate of support for the MEK. If it comes to an air strike, he favours bunker-busting bombs. "I believe the only way to get at the deeply buried sites at Natanz and Arak is probably to use bunker-buster bombs, some of which are nuclear tipped. I do not believe the US would do that but it has sold them to Israel."
Great, so Israel is once more designated to take out the world's trash. Thanks, guys.
Another neo-conservative, Meyrav Wurmser, director of the centre for Middle East policy at the Hudson Institute, also favours supporting Iranian opposition groups. She is disappointed with the response of the Bush administration so far to Iran and said that if the aim of US policy after 9/11 was to make the Middle East safer for the US, it was not working because the administration had stopped at Iraq.
Warmongers!
Judith | 02/10/07 at 06:44 PM | Categories: - Iran
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Comments
How can you possibly think this is a good idea?
Avram | February 11, 2007 01:12 AM
Which? Amassing aircraft carriers in the Gulf? Actually bombing the reactors? Getting israel to bomb the reactors?
Judith | February 11, 2007 09:14 AM
Either of the latter two -- us bombing, or Israel bombing.
The aircraft carriers might not be such a great idea either, but it's the actual bombing that'll make life difficult for pro-Western Iranians, increase support for Ahmadinejad, and inspire even more of Iraq's twenty million Shiites to take up arms against US troops, and possibly spiral the whole situation into a region-wide free-for-all in which al Qaeda will be the only winner.
Avram | February 11, 2007 02:28 PM
Avram, if you have any ideas for how to get Iran to stop building the bomb, I'd love to hear them. I do like the idea of funding more resistance groups, since the mullahs seem to be on pretty shaky ground. Michael Ledeen has been calling for this for years.
I would not assume that bombing the reactors would turn the Iranian population against the US, especially if we precisely target. Some of them, sure, but opinion there is very diverse, and most of them are pro-American. Also don't conflate the Iranian and Iraqi Shia. Most Iraqis do not want to be ruled by Iran.
As for regional-free-for-all . . . . the more stable Arab states are getting very freaked out by Iran's ambitions, and if Iran keeps pushing there may be a free-for-all without our obvious help.
And Al Queda will not be a winner of anything. We are kicking Al Queda's ass in Iraq right now.
Do you read Michael Totten's blog? You can get a deeper appreciation of the diversity of Middle East opinion there.
Judith | February 11, 2007 04:25 PM
Judith, don't confuse Al-Qaeda-in-Iraq (al-Zarqawi's organization, which had a different name before they changed it in 2004) with the general al Qaeda organization.
And don't underestimate the mistrust Iranians feel towards the US. Many of them still resent us for overthrowing their government in 1953. If I know that damn fascist Ledeen, he's talking about trying to stage another revolution.
There probably isn't a way to keep Iran from making nukes within the next couple of decades, unless there's a drastic change in relations between Iran and the US (a new US administration, or maybe Bush pulling a Nixon-goes-to-China). We had a chance to slow it down through diplomacy a few years ago, when we were working with the Iranians to overthrow the Taliban and stabilize the Afghan government, but Bush blew it.
So what we're going to wind up with, if we're lucky, is Iran and Israel staring each other down for a while, like the US and USSR did for most of the second half of the 20th century. If we're not lucky, then Bush starts a war with Iran, and it spirals out of control like I outlined above.
Avram | February 11, 2007 06:38 PM
