Back to Iraq | Being a recounting of my journalistic ventures in Iraq

Are we headed for a shoot­ing war with Iran? These rumors have popped up over and over again (in fact, every time an air­craft car­rier moves into the Ara­bian Gulf) but this speech from Bush at the Amer­i­can Legion’s 89^th annual national con­ven­tion last week caught my eye.

It’s worth quot­ing some sec­tions in depth first, with my empha­sis added:

The other strain of rad­i­cal­ism in the Mid­dle East is Shia extrem­ism, sup­ported and embod­ied by the regime that sits in Tehran. Iran has long been a source of trou­ble in the region. It is the world’s lead­ing state spon­sor of ter­ror­ism. Iran backs Hezbol­lah who are try­ing to under­mine the demo­c­ra­tic gov­ern­ment of Lebanon. Iran funds ter­ror­ist groups like Hamas and the Pales­tin­ian Islamic Jihad, which mur­der the inno­cent, and tar­get Israel, and desta­bi­lize the Pales­tin­ian ter­ri­to­ries. Iran is send­ing arms to the Tal­iban in Afghanistan, which could be used to attack Amer­i­can and NATO troops. Iran has arrested vis­it­ing Amer­i­can schol­ars who have com­mit­ted no crimes and pose no threat to their regime. And Iran’s active pur­suit of tech­nol­ogy that could lead to nuclear weapons threat­ens to put a region already known for insta­bil­ity and vio­lence under the shadow of a nuclear holocaust.

Iran’s actions threaten the secu­rity of nations every­where. And that is why the United States is ral­ly­ing friends and allies around the world to iso­late the regime, to impose eco­nomic sanc­tions. We will con­front this dan­ger before it is too late.

Shia extrem­ists, backed by Iran, are train­ing Iraqis to carry out attacks on our forces and the Iraqi peo­ple. Mem­bers of the Qods Force of Iran’s Islamic Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Guard Corps are sup­ply­ing extrem­ist groups with fund­ing and weapons, includ­ing sophis­ti­cated IEDs. And with the assis­tance of Hezbol­lah, they’ve pro­vided train­ing for these vio­lent forces inside of Iraq. Recently, coali­tion forces seized 240-millimeter rock­ets that had been man­u­fac­tured in Iran this year and that had been pro­vided to Iraqi extrem­ist groups by Iran­ian agents. The attacks on our bases and our troops by Iranian-supplied muni­tions have increased in the last few months  —  despite pledges by Iran to help sta­bi­lize the secu­rity sit­u­a­tion in Iraq.

Some say Iran’s lead­ers are not aware of what mem­bers of their own regime are doing. Oth­ers say Iran’s lead­ers are actively seek­ing to pro­voke the West. Either way, they can­not escape respon­si­bil­ity for aid­ing attacks against coali­tion forces and the mur­der of inno­cent Iraqis. The Iran­ian regime must halt these actions. And until it does, I will take actions nec­es­sary to pro­tect our troops. I have autho­rized our mil­i­tary com­man­ders in Iraq to con­front Tehran’s mur­der­ous activities.

This speech is wor­ry­ing on many lev­els. For one, it’s eerily rem­i­nis­cent of the early speeches given by Bush before the Iraq war in which he warned of an immi­nent threat from Iraq that must be con­fronted because of Sad­dam Hussein’s sup­port for al Qaeda and the threat of WMD.

Admit­tedly, there does seem to be more evi­dence of Iran­ian malfea­sance than there was of Iraq’s. I helped report a story in 2004 for TIME Mag­a­zine lay­ing out Iran­ian involve­ment in Iraq, Iran has openly boasted of its nuclear pro­gram and its aid to Lebanese Hezbol­lah, Hamas and Islamic Jihad is no secret. But is another war in the Mid­dle East the answer?

An attack on Iran before the end of Bush’s term in office would likely not involve ground troop — mainly because they’re just not avail­able. The troops next door have their hands full there and you can’t just roll them across the bor­der on a dime. So if it’s going to hap­pen, it will be a blitz of cruise mis­siles and bomb­ing runs from air­craft in the region. Indeed, the Times of Lon­don reported Sun­day that the Pen­ta­gon has pre­pared a 1,200 tar­get, “three-day blitz” designed not only to take out nuclear instal­la­tions but “the entire Iran­ian mil­i­tary,” said Alexis Debat, direc­tor of ter­ror­ism and national secu­rity at the Nixon Cen­ter.

This would be dis­as­trous. The shock­waves from such an attack would be wide-ranging and unpre­dictable, but some things can be estimated.

From a mil­i­tary stand­point, it might wreck dev­as­ta­tion on Iran and its mil­i­tary, but Iran’s strength doesn’t lie in a con­ven­tional mil­i­tary response or deter­rence but from an uncon­ven­tional response. Furi­ous Shi’ites, goosed by Iran­ian Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Guard Corps provo­ca­teurs in Iran would imme­di­ately place the 130,000 to 160,000 Amer­i­can troops in jeop­ardy from mas­sive IED attacks and sui­cide bomb­ings. Entire for­ward oper­at­ing bases could be over­run. The surge would imme­di­ately become a defen­sive oper­a­tion pro­tect­ing troops rather than an offen­sive one pro­vid­ing secu­rity for Iraqis. The civil war there between Sunni and Shi’ites, and Shi’ites and Shi’ites, would likely esca­late. And that’s just in Iraq.

The Amer­i­can 5^th Fleet is based in Bahrain, which has an oppressed but sympathetic-to-Iran Shi’ite major­ity pop­u­la­tion that can make life dif­fi­cult for the U.S. Navy. And in the Gulf, Iran has tested new tor­pe­dos and is per­fect­ing tech­niques for swarm­ing sui­cide speed­boats that con­ceiv­ably could take down a few naval ves­sels. (Remem­ber the U.S.S Cole?)

In Saudi Ara­bia, Iran has another poten­tial asset. The rich­est oil fields are under­neath a Shi’ite pop­u­la­tion, which is also oppressed by the Saudi gov­ern­ment and Wahabi cler­i­cal estab­lish­ment. A few sab­o­tage attacks to the oil pro­duc­tion infra­struc­ture there and say hello to sky­rock­et­ing oil prices on top of gen­eral mar­ket panic from a regional war in the Mid­dle East.

Far­ther from home, Iran has already shown it can attack tar­gets across the Atlantic Ocean, with its 1994 attack against the Argen­tine Israelite Mutual Asso­ci­a­tion in Buenos Aires. And don’t for­get about Lebanese Hezbol­lah, which has also shown it can stage impres­sive rocket attacks against Israel. Any such attack on Israel would pro­voke a response from the Jew­ish state, which might bring Syria — an Iran­ian ally — into the con­flict. Just today as I wrote this col­umn, Israel jets vio­lated Syr­ian air space as a show of strength.

Then there’s the pos­si­bil­ity of attacks in the United States itself. There are report­edly Hezbol­lah and Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Guard cells oper­at­ing there that could stage sui­cide attacks.

In short, attack­ing Iran in such a way would be madness.

And that’s exactly what the Bush admin­is­tra­tion could be bank­ing on. We already know the White House has taken its obses­sion with secrecy and expand­ing pres­i­den­tial power to Nixon­ian lev­els. What if it’s also tak­ing a book from Nixon’s for­eign pol­icy man­ual and apply­ing the “Mad­man Theory”?

“I want the North Viet­namese to believe,” Nixon told H.R. Halde­man, “that I’ve reached the point that I might do any­thing to stop the war. We’ll just slip the word to them that for God’s sake, you know Nixon is obsessed about com­mu­nism. We can’t restrain him when he’s angry, and he has his hand on the nuclear but­ton, and Ho Chi Minh him­self will be in Paris in two days beg­ging for peace.”

Nixon was so crazy that at one point he put the whole U.S. mil­i­tary on global war readi­ness and flew nuclear-armed bombers near the Soviet Union’s bor­ders for three days to freak them out — right at the time that war ten­sions were sim­mer­ing between Bei­jing and Moscow. It was a dan­ger­ous, crazy gam­ble, and per­haps Bush is doing the same with Iran. After all, Henry Kis­sen­ger is an advi­sor to Bush, too.

Bush’s plan could be an attempt to get the Ira­ni­ans to back off in Iraq, of course, but it could also be an attempt to scare Rus­sia and China into back­ing strong sanc­tions against Iraq on the Secu­rity Coun­cil. No one wants to see a regional war in the Mid­dle East involv­ing a wounded, enraged superpower.

If this is the plan, it’s as dan­ger­ous as Nixon’s Octo­ber 1969 gam­bit was. In the end, the Soviet Union didn’t take the bait and pres­sure North Viet­nam to sue for peace. Will a sim­i­lar plan work on the mul­lahs of Tehran? Can we trust the Bush admin­is­tra­tion to pull off such a sub­tle com­bi­na­tion of blus­ter and diplomacy?

I don’t. Bush is play­ing poker and bluff­ing. But the Ira­ni­ans are play­ing chess, and they invented the game.

This post orig­i­nally appeared on Spot​-on​.com