Although the Obama administration appears to be currently focused on resisting calls to increase sanctions on Iran while negotiations over its nuclear program are in session, the far more dangerous “military option” is alive and well in Washington despite its many pitfalls.
Senator-elect Tom Cotton (R-Ark) told a group of reporters on Dec. 3 that Congress should be considering the “credible use [of] force,” against Iran, according to the Free Beacon. Cotton, who described the ongoing negotiations with Iran as “a sham,” also said the US should consider arming Israel with bunker-buster bombs that could penetrate Iran’s underground nuclear facilities.
A day later, Dennis Ross, Ray Takeyh and Eric Edelman—all of whom have served in the US government—echoed their previous calls for a greater threat of force against Iran in the Washington Post. “The president would be wise to consult with Congress on the parameters of an acceptable deal and to secure a resolution authorizing him to use force in the event that Iran violates its obligations or seeks a breakout capacity,” they wrote Dec. 4.
While the White House has considerably lowered the volume on its insistence that “all options are on the table,” it has maintained the mantra. “We will not let Iran acquire a nuclear weapon—period,” said Vice President Joe Biden on Dec. 6, according to Reuters. “End of discussion. Not on our watch.”
Of course, President George W. Bush considered the so-called “military option” against Iran’s nuclear infrastructure in 2006, but rejected it. The notion of “surgical” air strikes is also absurd: Bush was told taking out Iran’s nuclear infrastructure would require a massive effort. And despite its repeated threats, Israel does not have the capability with which to launch such an effort (unless it resorted to nuclear weapons). Only the US has a sufficiently robust conventional capability to do so. However, the military challenge is greater now than it was back in 2006.
The Military Option Lives On
Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei declared in June 2014 that the Americans “have renounced the idea of any military actions.” Khamenei was likely reacting to President Obama’s West Point speech a week before. Referring to military action in general, the president said: “Just because we have the best hammer does not mean every problem is a nail.” However, asked for a reaction to Khamenei’s assertion, the White House highlighted another passage in the speech on Iran: “…we reserve all options in order to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.”
Possibly extending the threat into the future, leading Democratic presidential contender for 2016 Hillary Clinton repeated the mantra in March of this year. While arguing that the diplomatic process with Iran should be given enough time to work, she also said she was “Personally skeptical” of Iranian intentions. “[L]et’s be clear, every other option does remain on the table,” she added, according to Haaretz.
Various American pundits (be they hawks or those who are sensitive to Israeli views on the matter) have since labored to keep the military option alive. Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz declared in TV interview on Nov. 24 that if diplomacy fails, the US “should use its military facilities and ability to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons.” Israel also keeps the heat on the US by threatening to strike Iran if Washington fails to do so. Dershowitz, however, noted correctly that an Israeli attack “could only ‘set back’ Iran’s nuclear program for a few years.”
Israeli vs. US Military Action
Aside from using nuclear weapons, Israel does not have an effective military option. The extreme range involved greatly reduces the power of Israel’s military reach. Additionally, finding routes to and from the target is dicey, with most countries certain to oppose use of their airspace.
Flying through Turkey is a leading option, but Ankara would not grant permission, and could try to interfere. Cooperation between Israel and some of the Arab Gulf states (sharing the same dim view of Iran) reportedly has increased. But if a southern corridor were available—even if GCC aerial tankers refueled Israeli aircraft en route—the Israelis could only severely damage a few key targets.
By contrast, with access to the Gulf and the Indian Ocean, plus its bases close to Iran, the US could mount a vastly more powerful effort. Carrier battle groups, other naval assets, and large numbers of US Air Force combat aircraft could be used.
Iranian Military Preparations
Despite its public scoffing, Iran is aware that it could face a robust military assault at some point and has thus been busy since 2006 upgrading its ability to deter or confront an attack.
Iran has upgraded its military radar and missile systems with assistance from sources such as China and Russia, as well as a variety of equipment and expertise secured through less official channels. Iran has also enhanced its large arsenal of MiG-29 fighter aircraft and several formerly Iraqi SU-24 fighter-bombers that were flown to Iran at the outset of the First Gulf War. Iran’s navy has also expanded its inventory of missile-equipped fast-attack vessels to confront a more modern navy with an asymmetric threat: “swarming” enemy vessels (overwhelming them with large number of smaller craft).
The most significant upgrade to Iran’s air defense was to have been the potent Russian S-300 anti-aircraft/ missile system. However, in response to a greatly tightened UN arms embargo in 2010, Moscow suspended the deal.
The Iranians claim to be developing their own version of the S-300 (the “Bavar-373”). They also claim to have produced their own models of a host of other foreign air, air defense and naval systems.
Many of these claims are dubious, but as with its own impressive Shahab series surface-to-surface ballistic missile program, Iran has developed quite impressive technical military-related capabilities. Some upgrades and even a few of these indigenous systems probably have been successfully fielded. I observed impressive Iranian improvisation while covering the Iraq-Iran War from inside the US Intelligence Community. For example, the Iranians kept advanced US F-14 fighters in the air far beyond all Pentagon estimates, even producing a large number of parts needed for basic maintenance and minor overhauls.
The Military Option Means War
Veteran investigative journalist Seymour Hersh consulted me regarding his April 2006 New Yorker article about Bush administration deliberations concerning the military option against Iran. My intelligence credentials told me that Hersh had assembled, effectively, a surprising amount of information on the military planning presented to President Bush.
Hersh revealed that one military option included the use of tactical nuclear weapons to destroy vast underground facilities such as the Natanz enrichment complex. Hersh felt, as I do, that as a part of such planning, extreme options are provided, but such an option was highly unlikely to be part of any realistic plan.
Nonetheless, even conventional US military action to destroy or cripple all known Iranian sites, would, as envisaged in 2006, involve a massive effort. The Pentagon anticipated as many as 2,000 military combat flights and a possible duration of a week. Why? In order to reach Iran’s array of nuclear sites, US combat planes would have to smash Iranian defenses leading to and around the targets.
Although unclear back then, it is also possible once the US had decided to go that far, it would also hit Iran’s ballistic missile inventory, manufacturing, and test sites. This would target what many US officials (and the Israelis) consider a potentially nuclear-related sector of Iran’s military-industrial complex: a formidable delivery capability.
Iran would hardly remain passive while all this unfolded. Therefore, the US would have to anticipate attempts by Iran’s large air force to intercept incoming US aircraft, as well as sea- and air-borne attacks against US naval vessels. Finally, dozens of Iranian anti-ship missile sites flanking the Strait of Hormuz would have to be taken out. Given Iran’s post-2006 military upgrades, US aerial combat missions and the length of the assault would have to be increased. Slugging it out with Iran’s anti-aircraft defenses, confronting its air force, fending off its navy, and striking nuclear targets would effectively add up to war.
Among the many adverse consequences, perhaps the greatest concern would be radioactive contamination stemming from attacking sites near large Iranian civilian populations. The Arak reactor complex and a number of other nuclear-associated sites are close to or practically within Isfahan. The Natanz enrichment facility is less than 30 miles from the smaller city of Kashan. And the Fordow nuclear enrichment complex is situated near over a million people who call the holy city of Qom their home. International outcry over radiation leaks, civilian casualties, and other collateral damage could exceed that resulting from the assault itself.
With so many aircraft missions involved, another is the possibility that a few would be damaged or experience in-flight failures, with aircrew falling into Iranian hands. US diplomatic efforts to secure the return of downed flyers would be inevitable (for which Iran would surely exact a high price).
A particularly ominous result could be the very real possibility of an Iranian break with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in order to pursue—with lots of expertise and perhaps more residual nuclear capabilities than thought—a nuclear weapon, although probably defensive (precisely what such an attack would try to forestall).
Once hostilities are initiated, Iran might also not end them definitively. While Iran might do very little (or nothing) to sustain the military confrontation, the US could be saddled with the seemingly endless task of keeping large air and naval forces in the Gulf as a precaution against potential retaliation, particularly against frightened Arab Gulf states (several of which could have aided the US effort). Such an open-ended commitment and prolonged instability in the Gulf could become a nightmare for Washington—and plenty of other countries around the globe.
]]>by Chas Freeman
An acquaintance who, like me, used to work on foreign affairs in the U.S. government, told me the other day that he thought that, in going after Bashar al-Assad, President Barak Obama had decided on an approach more akin to Bush 41 (carefully building a consensus) than Bush 43 [...]]]>
by Chas Freeman
An acquaintance who, like me, used to work on foreign affairs in the U.S. government, told me the other day that he thought that, in going after Bashar al-Assad, President Barak Obama had decided on an approach more akin to Bush 41 (carefully building a consensus) than Bush 43 (you are either with us or against us). He added that, to make a success of bombing Syria as Bush 41 made of bombing Iraq in the first Gulf War, the president didn’t just need the support of the Congress and the public but also of NATO, the Arab League, and a coalition of the willing. But the obstacles Obama faces are much greater than those George H. W. Bush did and I don’t think the analogy to the first Gulf War really holds.
The circumstances today are totally different than in 1990, when strong impulses to rally behind the United States borne of the Cold War continued to animate allied decisions. There is no longer a common external threat to draw other countries into formation behind us. Two decades of perceived American indifference to allied and friendly views on a wide range of issues have taken their toll, especially in the Middle East and Europe. The Syrian issue, although greatly complicated by foreign players within the region and beyond it, has no global context of Manichean struggle to channel reactions to it.
In 1990-1991, as the USSR collapsed, the Russians ceased to be a significant factor in the Middle East, erasing the bipolar order of the past and freeing Saddam wrongly to assume that he could act on his own and with impunity against Kuwait. In 2013, the region is driven by regional rather than global dynamics but, thanks to events in Egypt and Saudi disillusionment with the U.S. policies of the past thirteen years, Russia is on the make and poised for a comeback as a strategic player in the Middle East.
In 1990, the world’s Muslims were solidly anti-communist and mostly well-disposed to the United States. Anti-communism is now an irrelevancy. The fallout from 9/11, the failed American pacification campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan, and U.S. identification with Israel’s attacks on Lebanon and Gaza have replaced Muslim goodwill with animosity. The appeal of American values has been tarnished by numerous abuses, and the worldwide credibility of U.S. intelligence is low. The British defection from the enterprise leaves our pretensions to speak and act for the “international community” in tatters. (The poodle has left the American lap and walked off the job. The French are halfheartedly applying for the position. They aren’t house-trained and will want too much to get it.)
Major actors in the international community, such as it is, value the institutions that embody it, the U.N., the U.N. Charter, and international law, to none of which the U.S. has deferred, except highly selectively, since our Kosovo intervention with NATO in October 1998. Fifteen years of selective adherence to treaties and laws greatly detract from the credibility of our claim now to be acting to enforce the Geneva Convention of 1929 in Syria, especially when the “international community” as well as the Arab League and our own allies have declined to authorize us to do so. Abroad, we are not seen as righteous vigilantes on behalf of humanitarian principles but as proponents of the theses that military might confers right, that military actions trump diplomacy (which is mostly just for show), and that political solutions are for wimps. There will be no international rally behind an essentially unilateral U.S. attack on Syria. On the contrary, if we carry out such an attack, it will further diminish our international standing and leadership. Illegal actions to enforce legality are the very definition of cynicism.
When Saddam invaded Kuwait in 1990, it was a clear and abrupt challenge to the rule of law in the post-Cold War era, not to mention an obvious threat by a single, very selfish state to monopolize the world’s major sources of energy. From the outset, the U.S. and Saudi Arabia sought and received U.N. authorization to “form a posse” to deal with these challenges. The atrocities in Syria are the product of a civil war, not of a violation of any other country’s sovereignty. The situation in Syria is also an unfolding humanitarian catastrophe that has been allowed to fester for over two years, with respect to which the U.N. has been marginalized and is now ignored by us and some other players. Whatever happens, it is highly unlikely that we will accede to the desire of other great powers that we defer to the U.N. and hence to their interest in international norms of behavior. For this reason, President Obama is likely to take a drubbing from allies, friends, and adversaries alike at the upcoming G-20 meeting in St. Petersburg, where he must make the case for what he has unilaterally decided but Congress has yet to approve.
To my mind, the most interesting and significant aspect of what has just happened — the issuance of an order to attack, followed by its sudden suspension until Congress can review it — is the domestic rediscovery of the fact that wars cannot be successfully mounted or sustained without a measure of domestic political backing. (In tactical terms, this is an attempt to share the political blame and pin the charge of vacillation and weakness on the Republican House.) There is a chance that, in the course of debating the order to attack Syria, someone will actually read our Constitution (Article I, Section 8, Clause 11) on how wars are to be legally authorized. I note that, in his statement Saturday, the president claimed inherent authority to make war. I hope that this concept, like the divine right of kings in its pedigree, is appropriately challenged in the debate. Unfortunately, the divine right of legislatures, an equal problem in the breakdown of the separation of powers and hence the operation of our system of government, will not be challenged.
Getting our country, our government, and the president’s authority in foreign affairs into the multiple conundrums in which they now find themselves was the work of many administrations and Congresses, not just poor Mr. Obama (as the venerable Israeli peace activist, Uri Avnery aptly termed him in a recent column). I don’t think anyone could envy the position our president is now in domestically or internationally. He was dealt a bad hand. He has not played the game in such a way to pick up better cards since. Now his bluff has been called.
– Chas Freeman served as U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia during the war to liberate Kuwait and as Assistant Secretary of Defense from 1993-1994. Since 1995, he has chaired Projects International, Inc., a Washington-based firm that creates businesses across borders for its American and foreign clients. He was the editor of the Encyclopedia Britannica entry on “diplomacy” and is the author of five books, including “America’s Misadventures in the Middle East” and “Interesting Times: China, America, and the Shifting Balance of Prestige.”
President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney go into a Texas bar. Over a couple of beers they plan the invasion of Iraq, taking [...]]]>
President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney go into a Texas bar. Over a couple of beers they plan the invasion of Iraq, taking out Saddam Hussein and taking control of Iraq’s vast oil reserves. The big question, though, is how Americans might react to their starting another war, with victory still elusive in Afghanistan. They decide to do an impromptu sampling of public opinion, and invite an average, all-American looking guy standing at the bar to join them for a friendly drink.
“What would you think of us invading Iraq and taking over their oil fields, if you knew that 30,000 Iraqis and one American bicycle mechanic would be killed if we do it?” Bush asks.
The fellow slowly sips his beer, his brow furrowed. He mulls the question and looks troubled. Finally he asks, “Why should an American bicycle mechanic have to die?”
Cheney slaps the table and grins triumphantly at Bush. “I told you no one would give a damn about the 30,000 Iraqis!”
A decade later, no one seems to give a damn about Iranian lives either.
The U.S. legacy in Iraq
As we now know, far more than 30,000 Iraqis and one American have died since the US invasion of Iraq on March 19, 2003. The number of documented Iraqi civilian deaths from violence since the onset of the “Second Iraq War” now totals between 105,000-115,000, according to the continuously updated Iraq Body Count database. It also notes that according to the WikiLeaks Iraq war logs, the figure may be 13,750 higher still. Official Department of Defense statistics as of mid-December, as compiled by Margaret Griffis at Antiwar.com, reveal that 4484 members of the US military deaths and 1487 private military contractors have lost their lives since the war began, as well as 319 “Coalition” troops, 348 journalists and 448 academics. Estimates of the number of Americans wounded range from an official count of 33,000 to estimates of over 100,000.
Iraqi physicians are seeing an upsurge in cancers and birth defects, which they blame on the usage of depleted uranium in the shells and bombs used by US and British forces in the 1991 Iraq war and the 2003 invasion. An estimated 300 tons of depleted uranium were used to attack Iraq in the First Gulf War. Abdulhaq Al-Ani, co-author of Uranium in Iraq: The Poisonous Legacy of the Iraq Wars, has been researching the health effects of depleted uranium weaponry on Iraq’s civilian population since 1991 and explained in an interview with Al Jazeera that the effects of depleted uranium on the human body don’t even begin to manifest until 5-6 years after exposure. Al-Ani points to a spike in Iraqi cancer rates in Iraq in 1996-1997 and 2008-2009.
Dr. Ahmad Hardan, who has served as a special scientific adviser to the World Health Organization, the United Nations and the Iraqi Health Ministry, has been monitoring the effects of depleted uranium exposure on adults and children, which include multiple cancers and serious birth defects. He told reporter Lawrence Smallman that “Depleted uranium has a half life of 4.7 billion years and that means thousands upon thousands of Iraqi children will suffer for tens of thousands of years to come.” Leukemia has become the third most common cancer throughout Iraq, with children under 15 especially vulnerable. “This is what I call terrorism,” he said.
The BBC reports that babies born in Fallujah now have 13 times the rate of congenital heart deformities than European-born infants. While visiting Iraq, World Affairs editor John Simpson was told many times that women in Fallujah have been advised not to bear children. The director of the Afghan Depleted Uranium and Recovery Fund, Dr. Daud Miraki, has found that increasing numbers of infants in eastern and southeastern Afghanistan are being born without eyes or limbs, and have tumors protruding from their mouths and eyes. The Pentagon denies any connection with the US military’s use of depleted uranium, even though (or perhaps because) these same effects are endangering veterans returning to the US from Iraq and Afghanistan.
Nevertheless, whether from the right, left or the center, the potential “consequences” of military strikes (a euphemism for war) against Iran are being assessed almost exclusively on the basis of the potential impact on Israel, the US and Europe: a spike in the price of oil wreaking havoc in the global economy–Hezbollah launching missile strikes from Lebanon into Israel and carrying out acts of terrorism against “soft western targets”–rather than the disastrous consequences for Iran, its neighbors and the global ecosystem.
One exception is a 114 page “Study on a Possible Israeli Strike on Iran’s Nuclear Development Facilities,” produced in 2009 for the Center for International and Strategic Studies. It devotes all of two pages (90-91) to the human and environmental human catastrophe that would result just from an attack on the Iranian nuclear power plant in Bushehr:
Any strike on the Bushehr Nuclear Reactor will cause the immediate death of thousands of people living in or adjacent to the site, and thousands of subsequent cancer deaths or even up to hundreds of thousands depending on the population density along the contamination plume.
The authors also warn that “Bahrain, Qatar and the UAE will be heavily affected by the radionuclides.” (Are the Arab states of the Gulf who supposedly are so eager for Israel to contain Iran’s regional ambitions aware of this?)
The ever-smirking Israeli Minister of Defense, Ehud Barak, has calculated that the casualties of a war with Iran could be limited to fewer than 500. “There won’t be 100,000 dead, not 10,000 dead nor 1,000 dead. Israel will not be destroyed,” Barak said reassuringly during a November radio interview quoted by the Washington Post. “If everyone just goes into their houses, there won’t be 500 dead, either,” he said.
Barak means Israelis. As for Iranians, who’s counting? Who cares?
The human cost of attacking Iran
No one is talking about the harm that “surgical air strikes” against “suspected Iranian nuclear facilities” with GBU-28 “bunker-buster” bombs, which derive their ability to penetrate concrete and earth from depleted uranium, would inflict on 74 million Iranians, nearly a quarter of whom are under the age of 14 and under and half of whom are under the age of 30. (Where are those self-designated “pro-life” voices that should be expressing outrage? Or does “the right to life” evaporate as soon as a fetus exits the womb?)
No worries are being expressed about the release of radioactive materials into the biosphere of Central Asia (and by eventual extension, the entire earth). If the depleted uranium in the bombs comes into contact with radioactive nuclear materials present in the targeted nuclear research sites–nearly all of which operate under International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) supervision–the potential for disaster would be magnified exponentially.
Israeli Military Intelligence Chief Major General Aviv Kochavi grimly told the hawkish Herziliya Conference recently that Iran possesses more than 4 tons of low-grade enriched uranium as well as almost 100 kilograms of uranium enriched at 20%. If true, is it really a good idea to send these radioactive materials spewing into the air and water of Central Asia and beyond? Is it any wonder that Russia, China and India–all whom are much closer geographically to Iran, as well as downwind of the direction in which radiation and toxin-tainted winds would initially blow–are the UN Security Council members most opposed to attacking Iran?
Nor is anyone questioning the wisdom of dropping unprecedented numbers of 5000 lb. “bunker busters” capable of penetrating 100 feet of earth or 20 feet of concrete into the bowels of an already earthquake-prone region. No one seems to care about the irreparable and uncontainable environmental damage that could be done to miles of Iranian coastline: the adjacent Caspian Sea to the north, the Arabian Sea to the south, and the Persian Gulf to the west. What about the permanent damage to the underground aquifers of Central Asia, where water is already scarce? If fracking for natural gas can render US drinking water flammable, imagine what pounding some of the most plentiful natural gas fields with bombs could do.
The unforeseeable consequences
Prognosticating the full extent of the damage that could and would be inflicted upon Iran and upon Iranians is difficult to impossible. No one outside of top security circles can even guess the number of targets of an Israeli and/or US attack (the BBC suggests five in addition to Bushehr). Other variables include the quantity or capacity of the weaponry that would be employed, whether Israel plans on using nuclear weapons, whether so-called “precision surgical strikes” reached or missed their intended targets, all of which would affect the scale of “collateral damage” to human beings, infrastructure, homes and apartments, schools, mosques and World Heritage sites as a consequence of “bomb-bomb-bombing” Iran’s suspected nuclear research facilities.
Almost assuredly an attack on facilities buried deep within the earth would utilize “bunker busting” guided bomb units (GBUs) that gain their power to penetrate from depleted uranium. The cost in lives, injuries, and long-term dangers to the health of civilians, including genetic damage to unborn future generations from toxins and radioactive materials in the depleted uranium bombs dropped and nuclear materials leaked is also incalculable.
Is war worth it?
Contrary to misleading media reports, there is no evidence that Iran is presently attempting or even planning to build a bomb. But even if there were, an Israeli and/or US attack would merely postpone its development for a few years, and perhaps even spur and speed up nuclear weapons research for deterrence.
Returning to public opinion polling, a recent Pew Research Center telephone survey (Feb. 8-12) asked a sampling of 1500 adults in all 50 states, “How much, if anything, have you read or heard about the dispute over Iran’s nuclear program?”
38% said “A lot”
39% said “A little”
23% said “Nothing at all”
Yet asked whether it was more important “to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons, even if it means taking military action” or “to avoid a military conflict with Iran even if it means they may develop nuclear weapons,” 30% of respondents prioritized avoiding a military conflict, while 58% said military action might be necessary (20% more than the number who had said they “knew a lot” about the dispute over Iran’s nuclear program). This isn’t a fluke: the same Pew survey asking the same question of different respondents Sept. 30-Oct. 4, 2009 found that only 41% said they “knew a lot” while 61% would approve of military action–the same 20% differential.
(In the most recent survey, respondents were also asked whether the US should support or oppose an attack on Iran by Israel “to stop its nuclear weapons program.” 39% said the US should support Israeli military action, 5% said the US should oppose Israeli military action, and just over half (51%) said the US should “stay neutral.”)
But what if the questions were framed differently? What if the pollster were to ask, “Would you approve or disapprove of Israel or the US delaying progress in Iranian nuclear research (not necessarily in pursuit of a nuclear weapon) by 3-5 years at most, by dropping spent uranium bunker-busting bombs on a country of 74 million people, a quarter of them younger than 14, if tens or even hundreds of thousands might die and perhaps millions more might suffer from genetic damage causing birth defects and cancers for generations to come?
And what if the follow-up question was, “If depleted uranium bunker busters were unable to penetrate Iranian underground facilities where nuclear research was allegedly taking place, much of it under the supervision of the IAEA, would you approve of Israel using nuclear weapons that would magnify death and destruction a hundredfold and result in what some might call ‘a holocaust’”?
Frankly, I have no idea what the pro and con percentages would be to questions asked in this way. But it’s time for the pollsters gauging public opinion to speak more forthrightly about what the real options–and the real consequences–of attacking Iran are. They can start by shedding the sanitized references to “military action” and “surgical strikes” and calling them what they are–acts of war that will inflict death and destruction on tens of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands, of Iranians. Iranians like the characters in the Oscar-winning film “A Separation,” who love their children and want the best for them, who worry about their aging parents, who struggle to make ends meet in the face of high unemployment and economic stress. As the film’s director Asghar Farhadi stated in his acceptance speech for 2011′s Best Foreign Language Film:
At a time of talk of war, intimidation and aggression is exchanged between politicians, the name of their county, Iran, is spoken here through her glorious culture, a rich and ancient culture that has been hidden under the heavy dust of politics.
Should that heavy dust be poisoned with toxic radioactive contaminants from depleted uranium and perhaps even nuclear fallout? War on Iran is no joke.
]]>Today in the [...]]]>
Today in the New York Times, WINEP fellow Martin Kramer is quoted warning against the dangers of the reemergence of Tunisia’s Islamist party, Al-Nahda, widely regarded as one of the most progressive versions of Islamism on the planet:
Martin Kramer, a researcher at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy who had long criticized Mr. Ghannouchi of Al-Nahda, argued that the party’s professions of pluralism could not be trusted. “Islamists become the more moderate and tolerant of pluralism the further away from power they are,” he said.
For Kramer, this is little more than the latest campaign in a decades-long crusade against Islamism. After Sept. 11, 2001, he went so far as to say that all Islamism breeds terrorism, holding up Lebanon as an example where democratic inclusion has wrought stumbling blocks, but also citing problems with radical Islamism in U.S.-backed dictatorships like Kuwait and Saudi Arabia.
Kramer has been denouncing the Tunisian Islamist movement since the early 1990s, when the main party’s now-exiled founder called for attacking U.S. interests in response to the first Gulf War. But those sorts of views have been moderated in the ensuing two decades. In the Times profile of Al-Nahda’s leader inside Tunisia, he says women should choose to wear veils (and called for political quotas “until they get their voices”), and doesn’t even have a problem with bikinis and sipping wine.
But Kramer doesn’t care for these subtleties, espousing that Islam can play no role in politics at all, ever. Naturally, Kramer is an unflinching supporter of an ethnocratic Israel, though, to be fair, Kramer is consistent — he has flirted openly, elsewhere in the Middle East, with anti-democratic “minority rule”:
In Iraq’s Sunni triangle, they like their tribes and they might want a tough-minded sheikh to keep order among them; in the Shi’ite south, they might wish to venerate a white-bearded recluse in a turban, and have him resolve all their disputes; and so on. What they crave is not democracy, but sub-national self-determination…
(Tell them what they want, Dr. Kramer…)
America cannot revive the Ottoman empire, but it might take a lesson from its legacy: that empire is most effective when it is invisible, that there are things worse than minority rule.
I don’t know what Kramer thinks of Iraq today, but I do know what Rubin thinks of it. It’s Bush’s gift that keeps on giving! Here’s her description of the Iraqi state, emphasized by me:
The left blogosphere seems to have wigged out over the suggestion that George W. Bush and the successful emergence of a secular, democratic Iraq has anything to do with all this.
(While Kramer opposes some Middle East autocrats, he doesn’t note that fervent Islamism, as in Iran’s 1979 revolution and establishment of an Islamic Republic, is often a reaction to U.S. support for these autocrats, as with the CIA toppling of a secular, democratic coup to re-install the Shah in 1953.)
Yet, in a world where Kramer and Rubin warn and warn and warn about Islamism — even in moderated forms — here are the first words of the constitution (PDF) of this “secular, democratic Iraq”:
The Preamble
In the name of God, the Most merciful, the Most compassionate
The document continues in Section One:
Article 2:
First: Islam is the official religion of the State and is a foundation source of legislation:
A. No law may be enacted that contradicts the established provisions of Islam.
B. No law may be enacted that contradicts the principles of democracy.
C. No law may be enacted that contradicts the rights and basic freedoms stipulated in this Constitution.
Second: This Constitution guarantees the Islamic identity of the majority of the Iraqi people and guarantees the full religious rights to freedom of religious belief and practice of all individuals such as Christians, Yazidis, and Mandean Sabeans.
Article 3:
Iraq is a country of multiple nationalities, religions, and sects. It is a founding and active member in the Arab League and is committed to its charter, and it is part of the Islamic world.
Iraq is not so secular, after all.
Will Kramer denounce the government of Islamic Iraq? Will Rubin admit that, since she holds up the example of Islamic democracy in Iraq (not secular, though with minority protections), perhaps her “real concern” for any “specific sign of an Islamist presence” may not be so sound?
I doubt it. Neocons like Rubin will simply go on ignoring the Islamic character of Iraq when it is convenient to use the country as example of what can be accomplished by going to war.
Take, for example, Iran’s Green Movement, which Rubin and her ideological comrades like Reuel Marc Gerecht claim to support (all the while calling for an attack on Iran that will likely blunt the movement’s chances of success).
Undoubtedly, the Green Movement has an element that pushes for the end of the Islamic Republic, but this is not a monolithic view among the movement’s supporters. Many of its adherents want a reformed Islamic Republic, as with the opposition leadership inside Iran. If one prefers to think of the Green Movement as leaderless, he still cannot deny that figures like Mir Hossein Moussavi and his wife, Mohammad Khatami, and Mehdi Karroubi, do not constitute an important place within the movement.
Neocons, nonetheless, unabashedly call for regime change by any means in Iran, ignoring the fact that the only viable opposition movement there is divided on the issue of maintaining the Islamic Republic.
The notion that moderate, democratic strains of Islamism exist — as with most ideologies — and should be allowed to enter political discourse is blasphemy to these rigid ideologues. (Neoconservatism, for its part, seems not to have a moderate strain.) Kramer insists that his call for blanket exclusion of Islamism “has nothing to do with Islam per se”– but one has to wonder.
]]>But are there more instructive lessons to take away from the experience of the 1990s and early 2000s, when Iraq was under blockade with the ostensible aim of keeping weapons out of Saddam Hussien’s hands? (Does this sound familiar yet?) Andrew Cockburn’s essay in the July 22 London Review of Books is a good place to start.
Some of the facts throughout his review of Joy Gordon’s book, “Invisible War: The United States and the Iraq Sanctions,” will be new to many people. For instance, Yemen, which had a seat on the security council, had all their U.S. aid cut three days after casting a ‘no’ vote to UN sanctions. And some reatlities from the 1990s are so startling that Cockburn only serves to remind: Infant mortality in Iraq rising from 1 in 30, in 1990, to 1 in 8, in 1997.
The U.S. initially imposed sanctions on Iraq while Saddam’s army was still exploring Kuwait. At the time, writes Cockburn:
Iraqi sanctions were popular at first among the liberal-minded because they appeared to offer an alternative to war. As the Bush administration’s determination to go to war became clearer, allowing sanctions ‘time to work’ became a rallying cry for the peace party.
Sanctions, however, didn’t work in the early 1990s, and Iraq was invaded. Saddam was pushed back to his own border with Kuwait, and no farther. Neocons, riding high at the “end of history,” pushed for a full invasion, but lost out to realists in the George H.W. Bush administration.
But Bush continued sanctions against Iraq, officially waiting to confirm that Saddam didn’t have those elusive “weapons of mass destruction.” In short order, however, Bush established that sanctions were aimed at regime change. Cockburn digs up a quote from then-deputy national security adviser and now-Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, which confirmed Bush’s shift:
“Saddam is discredited and cannot be redeemed. His leadership will never be accepted by the world community. Therefore,” Gates continued, “Iraqis will pay the price while he remains in power. All possible sanctions will be maintained until he is gone.”
Within a few years, everything from salt, to paint, to kids bikes were banned from entering Iraq. A humanitarian crisis unfolded, and there was Saddam Hussein, still on top. As Cockburn notes:
If the aim of such a comprehensive embargo had indeed been the dictator’s overthrow, its perpetrators might have pondered the fact that it was having the opposite effect. Saddam, whose invasion of Kuwait had led to the disaster, was now able to point to the outside powers as the source of Iraqis’ suffering.
Now, here’s an important point: The set-up for the second Gulf War came out of a Democratic presidency, where soon-to-be Secretary of State Madeline Albright said that the death of Iraqi children was “worth it,” a quote Cockburn usurps for the title of his essay. It was Albright who, at that top diplomatic post a year later, announced that the U.S. opposed weapons inspectors who wanted to declare Iraq in compliance with International demands on its weapons programs.
Take it away, Cockburn:
]]>This provoked an escalating series of confrontations between the UNSCOM team and Iraqi security officials, ending in the expulsion of the inspectors, claims that Saddam was “refusing to disarm,” and, ultimately, war.
…[T]he West should think carefully before once again deploying the ‘perfect instrument’ of a blockade.