The US, Iran and the End of the International Order
By Jussi Sinnemaa
04/17/06 "ICH" -- -- According to a recent article by Seymour Hersh in the New Yorker, the US military has moved from
contingency to operational planning to prepare for an attack on
Iran. Former US intelligence operative William Arkin has
revealed in the Washington Post that the Bush Administration
actually started preparing for a war against Iran as early as
2002. While the Administration officially claims to be looking
for a diplomatic solution to the crisis, it is feared the
decision to go to war was made a long time ago and will not be
reconsidered. What are the real reasons behind this
belligerence?
As the IAEA has repeatedly acknowledged, Iran is not in
violation of any of her legal obligations as a signatory to the
Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). In fact, Iran has
allowed far more intrusive international inspections of her
nuclear facilities than required by the NPT. Iran remains the
only country to have done so. Iran has repeatedly stated that
she does not wish to develop nuclear weapons, even though many
Western and Israeli analysts, including the leading Israeli
military historian Martin van Creveld, have accepted it would
clearly be in Iran’s strategic interest to possess such weapons
as deterrence. There is, however, simply no evidence whatsoever
that Iran is, or intends to be, developing nuclear weapons.
Iran has repeatedly, at least from the year 2002 onwards,
expressed her willingness to engage in bilateral negotiations
with the US, with the ultimate goal of normalizing the two
countries´ relations. Reportedly Iran could even consider
recognising Israel in exchange for security guarantees from the
US. All such overtures by Iran have hitherto been ignored by the
Bush Administration, although it is noteworthy that senior
Republican senator Richard Lugar recently called for direct
US-Iranian negotiations. Meanwhile the Bush Administration and
the media that support its belligerent stance have made an
effort to demonize Iran and, in particular, President Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad. This sort of demonization is a familiar phenomenon
to all those who followed the countdown to the attack on and
invasion of Iraq. According to this logic, one simply cannot
negotiate with “madmen”, one can only issue one ultimatum after
another and thus show that the “madmen” will not compromise and
therefore must be “taken out”.
While some in the Bush Administration undoubtedly believe Iran’s
nuclear energy programme may ultimately threaten Israel, and
perhaps even the US, it seems clear that, what is really at
stake here is American geopolitical hegemony over the vast oil
and gas reserves of the Middle East. By invading Iraq and
removing the Baathist dictatorship the US actually helped
religious Shi´ite parties, closely allied with Iran, seize power
in Baghdad. In other words, Iran’s regional prestige grew
enormously as a result of the invasion of Iraq. Now Iran has
good relations with practically all her neighbours and can be
considered the most powerful country in the Middle East (perhaps
apart from nuclear-armed Israel). It is remarkable that none of
Iran’s neighbours regard the Iranian nuclear energy programme as
a threat: even Saudi Arabia has said so repeatedly, and
according to recent reports, Saudi representatives have visited
Moscow to plead with the Russian leaders that they do everything
in their power to stop an American attack on Iran.
Ultimately the whole crisis is most likely caused by Peak Oil.
The US wants to use her military superiority, perhaps including
her massive nuclear arsenal, to assert control of the largest
remaining fossil fuel reserves in the world. Iran is such a big
problem because, while the US has – for ideological reasons –
refused to do business with the Islamic Republic, China, Japan,
Russia and India have stepped in and secured lucrative deals
with the Iranians. This is quite worrying: any attack on Iran
can be seen as an indirect attack on China and Russia, among
others. China could conceivably retaliate, for instance, by
collapsing the dollar (her dollar reserves are the largest of
any country), and that would be a serious escalation,
potentially leading to catastrophic consequences. Similarly, any
attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities would probably kill many
Russian engineers and technicians working in them; Russia’s
response could be unpredictable. One must also not forget that
an attack would surely infuriate the whole Muslim world and, in
particular, Iran’s Shi´ite brethren in Iraq, Saudi Arabia,
Bahrain, Pakistan, Lebanon etc. and markedly increase the risk
of Islamic terrorism worldwide.
Should the US attack Iran with nuclear weapons, as reportedly
planned, a 60-year-old taboo against these weapons would be
instantly abolished and all nuclear powers would be ready to use
similar weapons too. Non-nuclear countries would undoubtedly
hasten to produce their own doomsday arsenals, and the
likelihood of an all-out nuclear war would grow significantly.
It is ominous that the semi-official Foreign Affairs recently
published an article which speculated that the US could possibly
take out Russian nuclear arsenal with Russia incapable to
retaliate; reportedly the article was read with extreme alarm in
Moscow.
To conclude, if the US does attack Iran, she will surely be
“crossing the Rubicon”: the established international order will
be gone forever, and the whole Middle East may go up in flames.
It remains to be seen whether a desperate attempt to control the
Middle Eastern oil and gas, by a country on the verge of
bankruptcy, will be considered worthwhile by that country’s
leaders in Washington.
Jussi Sinnemaa, <jussisinnemaa@hotmail.com> is an independent
analyst living in Helsinki, Finland.
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