Beware the Bombing of Iran
Comment Beware the Bombing of Iran Just because a course of action is foolish, irrational, costly, and bloody doesn't mean the Bush Administration won't pursue it. And just because U.S. troops are...
...In the short term, people would rally around the President...
...But it serves a purpose for Ahmadinejad, who has not delivered on his promises to improve the lot of Iranians...
...The bombing of Iran is not a foregone conclusion...
...Finally, the bombing of Iran, unless total, would neither dislodge the fundamentalists from power nor end their nuclear ambitions...
...It also reiterates the Administration's justifications for preemptive war...
...Not anymore...
...It's still remotely possible that the American people will not be gulled again...
...If a terrorist group used one of Iran's nuclear weapons, Iran would have to worry that the victim would discover the weapon's origin and visit a terrible revenge on Iran," Barry Posen, professor of political science at MIT, wrote in The New York Times on February 27...
...And it would send a signal to Russia and China that the United States is still top dog in their neighborhood...
...And Iran would be likely to give more direct support to the insurgents...
...Ahmadinejad's recklessness allows Bush to argue that the Iranian regime is so wildly belligerent and bizarre that it cannot be deterred...
...As it did before launching its war on Iraq, the Bush Administration is now putting on a charade of working with allies and going to the United Nations...
...Bombing Iran would further enflame Iraq...
...And Hillary Clinton has positioned herself even further to the right on the Iran issue than Bush is...
...And he said: "We join other nations in sending that regime a clear message: We will not allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon...
...His reckless, lawless appetite for war has yet to be sated...
...Diplomacy is but the first course on his war menu...
...troops are bogged down in Iraq doesn't mean the Bush Administration has lost its appetite for military adventurism...
...They may find themselves trapped by their own rhetoric, particularly those with Presidential ambitions...
...The guys on the inside really want to do this," he said on CNN as far back as January 17, 2005...
...The United States may have the power to cause harm and pain," an Iranian official said in March, "but it is also susceptible to harm and pain...
...There is a 75 percent likelihood that Bush will bomb Iran before the 2006 elections, Michael Klare, professor of Peace and World Security Studies at Hampshire College, tells The Progressive...
...He was not alone in turning up the heat...
...power over another major oil producer...
...It now appears to be gearing up to bomb Iran...
...Many leading Democrats have painted themselves into a corner on the Iran issue...
...On top of all that, Ahmadinejad seems eager to play a rhetorical game of chicken with Bush...
...The Administration has been conducting secret reconnaissance missions inside Iran" since the summer of 2004...
...There are two overriding reasons for this: Bush's political needs and his psychological needs, Klare argues...
...At worst, it would accelerate Iran's efforts...
...Beyond crass political advantage, Klare believes Bush has a psychological reason for bombing Iran...
...Iran's supreme ayatollah, Ai Khamenei, said his country will "stand like steel" against any threat from the U.N...
...It's still remotely possible that the mainstream media will scrutinize Bush's propaganda more carefully this time around...
...Each sees a political advantage" in escalating the rhetoric...
...And it is something that they, I think, will look back on as having been an error in judgment...
...Despite the grave consequences that could ensue if the United States bombs Iran, Bush and his Iraq War gamblers want to go double or nothing...
...And Klare thinks he's right...
...Any attack by the United States would also further alienate the Arab and Muslim world from Washington, inciting fundamentalist forces and furthering the recruitment efforts of Al Qaeda...
...economy-and the global economy-into the tank...
...There are, of course, other reasons why the Administration would like to bomb Iran...
...Bush's low poll numbers and his Iraq fiasco may be reasons as much for him to launch bombs as not...
...Left to their own devices, many more Democrats are likely to go along with Bush's Iran bombing than with his Iraq War...
...But Bush doesn't want the diplomatic effort on Iran to succeed...
...We ought not be lulled into a false sense of complacency...
...The same week, John Bolton, the bull in the U.N...
...We do not rule out the use of force before attacks occur, even if uncertainty remains as to the time and place of the enemy's attack...
...On the same day as Cheney's speech, Rumsfeld warned that Iran was meddling in Iraq...
...And second, even if Iran had a handful of nukes, "there is no conceivable scenario whereby Iran would use them in an offensive manner," he says...
...It sees them as a deterrent against attack...
...If he did, he'd be engaging in direct negotiations with the Iranians, which is what they seek...
...Strategists at the Pentagon are drawing up plans for devastating bombing raids backed by submarine-launched ballistic missile attacks against Iran's nuclear sites...
...But Klare rebuts this...
...There's no doubt that Iran is the single biggest threat from a state that we face...
...So if the United States wants to pursue that path, let the ball roll...
...It is up to us, U.S...
...The cleric Moqtada Al-Sadr has already declared that his forces would attack the Americans...
...security issues for decades are increasingly certain that Bush is going forward with his Iran bombing plans...
...Joseph Cirincione, director for nonproliferation at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, used to think a bombing was unlikely...
...Seymour Hersh of The New Yorker has been warning for more than a year now that Bush will attack Iran...
...The goal is to identify and isolate three dozen, and perhaps more, such targets that could be destroyed by precision strikes and short-term commando raids...
...The Sunday Telegraph The consequences of a Bush assault would be costly...
...Rather than goad Ahmadinejad even further down the nationalist road toward acquiring nuclear weapons, the Bush Administration should engage in direct talks with Tehran on this issue...
...In my interviews, I was repeatedly told that the next strategic target was Iran," Hersh wrote in The New Yorker at that time...
...It's in his political interest if you're looking at the situation from the White House's perspective," Klare says...
...But Bush would prefer to bomb...
...Progressive experts who have been following U.S...
...We may face no greater challenge from a single country than from Iran," it states...
...He stressed that "the United States is keeping all options on the table in addressing the irresponsible conduct of the regime...
...This would roil the oil markets and could send the U.S...
...It could interrupt the flow through the Straits of Hormuz, and it could send paramilitary units to sabotage facilities in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates, the report warns...
...The nuclear issue and our other concerns can ultimately be resolved only if the Iranian regime makes the strategic decision to change these policies, open up its political system, and afford freedom to its people," the document states...
...As he did with his speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars in August of 2002, which put the Iraq War in the oven, Cheney gave a speech on March 7 that moved confrontation with Iran to the front burner...
...Joseph Cirincione of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace...
...or Washington...
...Once again, Cheney stirred the pot...
...As for crippling Iran's nuclear capacity, at best an attack would be a stopgap measure...
...But its intent is clear enough: "This diplomatic effort must succeed if confrontation is to be avoided," the national security document states...
...This kind of language is reminiscent of Saddam's "mother of all battles...
...First, he had Saddam Hussein, the butcher and the bluffer of Baghdad...
...Bush has a brother in arms in Tehran," says Klare...
...She has called a nuclear-armed Iran a "dire threat," and in January she criticized Bush for not being aggressive enough...
...It would take out another threat to key U.S...
...He doesn't want his civilization destroyed...
...All the more reason why we in the peace movement need to rally, right now, to expose and oppose Bush's plans to bomb Iran, to galvanize opposition to the Iraq War, and to promote the calls for censure and impeachment...
...It called Iran (and Syria) "an enemy of freedom, justice, and peace," and added: "The world must hold those regimes to account...
...Rather than living with an Iran that had the potential to produce nuclear weapons, the U.S...
...citizens, nonviolently to restrain him...
...ally Israel...
...Bush himself called Iran a "grave national security concern" for the United States...
...They are currently putting people into Iraq to do things that are harmful to the future of Iraq," he told a Pentagon news conference...
...What I previously dismissed as posturing I now believe may be a coordinated campaign to prepare for a military strike on Iran," he said in his posting entitled "Fool Me Twice...
...He views himself as the man who stood up to the rogue state WMD threat," Klare says...
...It would project U.S...
...Matthew Rothschild "Many Democrats have been trying to burnish a hawkish image and place themselves to the right of the President on this issue...
...Part of the coordinated campaign against Iran was the unveiling in March of the Administration's new national security strategy...
...If the war evolved into a wider conflict, primarily to preempt or counter Iranian responses, then casualties would eventually be much higher," the report states...
...shop, said Iran would face "tangible and painful consequences" if it went forward with its nuclear plans...
...His sources tell him that senior Bush officials "want to hit Iran hard," he wrote on the website of Foreign Policy magazine on March 27...
...We may look back upon the month of March as the time when the Bush war chefs decided to overheat the rhetoric and bring the conflict with Iran to a boil...
...This is an Administration that discounts the downside and hypes the upside to military action...
...And he echoed Cheney's declaration that the United States won't allow Iran to obtain a nuclear weapon...
...If he doesn't stop Iran from getting nuclear weapons, he'll feel like a failure not only in his own eyes, but in God's eyes, because he thinks he's doing God's work...
...The place of preemption in our national security strategy remains the same," it states...
...The last thing America needs, the last thing the world needs, is for Bush to launch another illegal, aggressive war...
...The hardliners will crush the reformist/democratic movement in Iran...
...The language about Iran in this forty-eight-page document is stark...
...If attacked, Iran would also be in a position to disrupt oil facilities and routes in the Persian Gulf...
...Condoleezza Rice, testifying to the Senate on March 28 It makes demands on Iran that seem unlikely to be met...
...It feels threatened...
...George Bush is a recidivist...
...However badly Iran's nuclear infrastructure was damaged in an attack, an immediate response would be to reconstitute the infrastructure and work rapidly and in secret towards a clear nuclear weapons capability," the Oxford Research Group says...
...It should offer a pledge of nonaggression in return for the cessation of Iran's nuclear enrichment activities, and it should ease up on the hostile rhetoric so as not to entrench the hardliners even further...
...First and foremost, in terms of human life, the toll would be high...
...It's still remotely possible that Ahmadinejad will come to his senses and stop his efforts to enrich uranium...
...Iranians will rally around their government, even though the vast majority of them despise the hardliners and most of the clerics," says Muhammad Sahimi, a professor at the University of Southern California, who recently co-wrote a commentary with Nobel Peace Prize-winner Shirin Ebadi...
...First of all, he notes that Iran is, by most accounts, several years away from being able to make even one nuclear weapon...
...He is an Iranian nationalist first and foremost," Klare says...
...That's a big "only if...
...And now he has Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who denies the Holocaust, threatens to destroy Israel, moves provocatively to enrich uranium, and has his police beat up hundreds of women in Tehran who were rallying on International Women's Day...
...Bush is lucky in his adversaries...
...No country is likely to turn over the means to its own annihilation to an uncontrolled entity...
...Well, Bush can now call their bluff on that...
...Cheney warned of "meaningful consequences" if Iran "stays on its present course...
...Nor is Iran likely to hand off a nuclear weapon to a terrorist for such a nefarious mission, he argues...
...action would almost certainly guarantee an overt nuclear-armed Iran for decades to come or, alternatively further instances of military action...
...What Bush really wants is confrontation...
...It solidifies his domestic base...
...Ahmadinejad knows that if he used nuclear weapons, his country would be annihilated, Klare argues...
...Such an attack would kill up to 10,000 people initially, according to a February report by the Oxford Research Group...
...Karl Rove believes that bombing Iran will get the Republicans through the 2006 election, Klare says...
...During arguments about the Iraq War, some Democrats, like John Kerry and Joe Biden, argued that Saddam Hussein wasn't as big a threat as Iran...
Vol. 70 • May 2006 • No. 5
