Bush's Future Iran War Speech
Three Charges in the Case for WarBy Michael T.
Klare
12/26/07 "Tomdispatch" -- -- Sometime this spring
or summer, barring an unexpected turnaround by Tehran,
President Bush is likely to go on national television and
announce that he has ordered American ships and aircraft to
strike at military targets inside Iran. We must still sit
through several months of soap opera at the United Nations
in New York and assorted foreign capitals before this comes
to pass, and it is always possible that a diplomatic
breakthrough will occur -- let it be so! -- but I am
convinced that Bush has already decided an attack is his
only option and the rest is a charade he must go through to
satisfy his European allies. The proof of this, I believe,
lies half-hidden in recent public statements of his, which,
if pieced together, provide a casus belli, or formal
list of justifications, for going to war.
Three of his statements, in particular, contained the
essence of this justification: his January 10 televised
speech on his plan for a troop "surge" in Iraq, his State of
the Union Address of January 23, and his first televised
press conference of the year on February 14. None of these
was primarily focused on Iran, but the President used each
of them to warn of the extraordinary dangers that country
poses to the United States and to hint at severe U.S.
reprisals if the Iranians did not desist from "harming U.S.
troops." In each, moreover, he laid out various parts of the
overall argument he will certainly use to justify an attack
on Iran. String these together in one place and you can
almost anticipate what Bush's speechwriters will concoct
before he addresses the American people from the Oval Office
sometime later this year. Think of them as talking points
for the next war.
The first of these revealing statements was Bush's
January 10th
televised address on Iraq. This speech was supposedly
intended to rally public and Congressional support behind
his plan to send 21,500 additional U.S. troops into the
Iraqi capital and al-Anbar Province, the heartland of the
Sunni insurgency. But his presentation that night was so
uninspired, so lacking in conviction, that -- according to
media commentary and polling data -- few, if any, Americans
were persuaded by his arguments. Only once that evening did
Bush visibly come alive: When he spoke about the threat to
Iraq supposedly posed by Iran.
"Succeeding in Iraq also requires defending its
territorial integrity and stabilizing the region in the face
of extremist challenges," he declared, which meant, he
assured his audience, addressing the problem of Iran. That
country, he asserted, "is providing material support for
attacks on American troops." (This support was later
identified as advanced improvised explosive devices -- IEDs
or roadside bombs -- given to anti-American Shiite
militias.) Then followed an unambiguous warning: "We will
disrupt the attacks on our forces... And we will seek out
and destroy the networks providing advanced weaponry and
training to our enemies in Iraq."
Consider this item one in his casus belli: Because
Iran is aiding and abetting our enemies in Iraq, we are
justified in attacking Iran as a matter of self-defense.
Bush put it this way in an interview with
Juan Williams of National Public Radio on January 29:
"If Iran escalates its military action in Iraq to the
detriment of our troops and/or innocent Iraqi people, we
will respond firmly… It makes common sense for the
commander-in-chief to say to our troops and the Iraqi people
-- and the Iraqi government -- that we will help you defend
yourself from people that want to sow discord and harm."
In his January 10 address, the President went on to fill
in a second item in any future casus belli: Iran is
seeking nuclear weapons in order to dominate the Middle East
to the detriment of our friends in the region -- a goal that
it simply cannot be allowed to achieve.
In response to such a possibility, the President
declared, "We're also taking other steps to bolster the
security of Iraq and protect American interests in the
Middle East." These included deploying a second U.S.
aircraft carrier battle group to the Gulf region, consisting
of the USS John C. Stennis and a flotilla of
cruisers, destroyers, and submarines (presumably to provide
additional air and missile assets for strikes on Iran),
along with additional Patriot anti-missile batteries
(presumably to shoot down any Iranian missiles that might be
fired in retaliation for an air attack on the country and
its nuclear facilities). "And," Bush added, "we will work
with others to prevent Iran from gaining nuclear weapons and
dominating the region."
Bush added a third item to the casus belli in his
State of the Union Address on January 23. After years of
describing Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda as the greatest
threats to U.S. interests in the Middle East, he now
introduced a new menace: the resurgent Shia branch of Islam
led by Iran.
Aside from al-Qaeda and other Sunni extremists, he
explained, "it has also become clear that we face an
escalating danger from Shia extremists who are just as
hostile to America, and are also determined to dominate the
Middle East." Many of these extremists, he noted, "are known
to take direction from the regime in Iran," including the
Hezbollah movement in Lebanon.
As if to nail down this point, he offered some
hair-raising imagery right out of the Left Behind
bestselling book series so beloved of Christian evangelicals
and their neoconservative allies: "If American forces step
back [from Iraq] before Baghdad is secure, the Iraqi
government would be overrun by extremists on all sides. We
could expect an epic battle between Shia extremists backed
by Iran, and Sunni extremists backed by Al Qaeda and
supporters of the old regime. A contagion of violence could
spill across the country, and in time the entire region
could be drawn into the conflict. For America, this is a
nightmare scenario. For the enemy, this is the objective."
As refined by Bush speechwriters, this, then, is the
third item in his casus belli for attacking Iran: to
prevent a "nightmare scenario" in which the Shia leaders of
Iran might emerge as the grandmasters of regional
instability, using proxies like Hezbollah to imperil Israel
and pro-American regimes in Jordan, Bahrain, and Saudi
Arabia -- with potentially catastrophic consequences for the
safety of Middle Eastern oil supplies. You can be sure of
what Bush will say to this in his future address: No
American president would ever allow such a scenario to come
to pass.
Many of these themes were reiterated in the president's
White House
Valentine's Day press conference. Once again, Iraq was
meant to be the main story, but Iran captured all the
headlines.
Bush's most widely cited comments on Iran focused on
claims of Iranian involvement in the delivery of
sophisticated versions of the roadside IEDs that have been
responsible for many of the U.S. casualties in recent
months. Just a few days earlier, unidentified American
military officials in Baghdad had declared that elements of
the Iranian military -- specifically, the Quds Force of the
Iranian Revolutionary Guards -- were supplying the deadly
devices to Shiite militias in Iraq, and that high-ranking
Iranian government officials were aware of the deliveries.
These claims were contested by other U.S. officials and
members of Congress who expressed doubt about the
reliability of the evidence and the intelligence work behind
it, but Bush evinced no such uncertainty:
"What we do know is that the Quds force was instrumental
in providing these deadly IEDs to networks inside of
Iraq. We know that. And we also know that the Quds force
is a part of the Iranian government. That's a known."
What is not known, he continued, is just how high
up in the Iranian government went the decision-making that
led such IEDs to be delivered to the Shia militias in Iraq.
But that doesn't matter, he explained. "What matters is, is
that they're there... [W]e know they're there, and we're
going to protect our troops." As Commander-in-Chief, he
insisted, he would "do what is necessary to protect our
soldiers in harm's way."
He then went on to indicate that "the biggest problem I
see is the Iranians' desire to have a nuclear weapon." He
expressed his wish that this problem can be "dealt with" in
a peaceful way -- by the Iranians voluntarily agreeing to
cease their program to enrich uranium to weapons-grade
levels. But he also made it clear that the onus was purely
on Tehran to take the necessary action to avoid unspecified
harm: "I would like to be at the -- have been given a chance
for us to explain that we have no desire to harm the Iranian
people."
No reporters at the press conference asked him to explain
this odd twist of phrase, delivered in the past tense, about
his regret that he was unable to explain to the Iranian
people why he had meant them no harm -- presumably after the
fact. However, if you view this as the Bush version of a
Freudian slip, one obvious conclusion can be drawn: that the
President has already made the decision to begin the
countdown for an attack on Iran, and only total capitulation
by the Iranians could possibly bring the process to a halt.
Further evidence for this conclusion is provided by
Bush's repeated reference to
Chapter 7
of the UN Charter. On three separate occasions during the
press conference he praised Russia, China, and the "EU3" --
Britain, France, and Germany -- for framing the December 23
Security Council
resolution condemning Iran's nuclear activities and
imposing economic sanctions on Iran in the context of
Chapter 7 -- that is, of "Action with Respect to Threats to
the Peace, Breaches of the Peace, and Acts of Aggression."
This sets the stage for the international community,
under UN leadership, to take such steps as may be deemed
necessary "to maintain or restore international peace and
stability," ranging from mild economic sanctions to
full-scale war (steps that are described in Articles 39 to
51). But the December 23 resolution was specifically framed
under Article 41, which entails "measures not involving
the use of armed force," a stipulation demanded by China
and Russia, which have categorically ruled out the use of
military force to resolve the nuclear dispute with Iran.
One suspects that President Bush has Chapter 7 on the
brain because he now intends to ask for a new resolution
under Article 42, which allows the use of military force to
restore international peace and stability. But it is nearly
inconceivable that Russia and China would approve such a
resolution. Such approval would also be tantamount to
acknowledging American hegemony worldwide, and this is
something they are simply unwilling to do.
So we can expect several months of fruitless diplomacy at
the United Nations in which the United States may achieve
slightly more severe economic sanctions under Chapter 41 but
not approval for military action under Chapter 42. Bush
knows that this is the inevitable outcome, and so I am
convinced that, in his various speeches and meetings with
reporters, he is already preparing the way for a future
address to the nation. In it, he will speak somberly of a
tireless American effort to secure a meaningful resolution
from the United Nations on Iran with real teeth in it and
his deep disappointment that no such resolution has been not
forthcoming. He will also point out that, despite the heroic
efforts of American diplomats as well as military commanders
in Iraq, Iran continues to pose a vital and unchecked threat
to American security in Iraq, in the region, and even -- via
its nuclear program -- in the wider world.
Further diplomacy, he will insist, appears futile and yet
Iran must be stopped. Hence, he will say, "I have made the
unavoidable decision to eliminate this vital threat through
direct military action," and will announce -- in language
eerily reminiscent of his address to the nation on March 19,
2003 -- that a massive air offensive against Iran has
already been underway for several hours.
Michael T. Klare is a professor of peace and world
security studies at Hampshire College and the defense
correspondent of the Nation magazine. He is the author, most
recently, of
Blood and Oil: The Dangers and Consequences of America's
Growing Dependence on Imported Petroleum (Owl Books).
