US Military Options to the Iranian Proliferation Challenge

On Saturday, I posted “Iran – Stalling For Time“:


“Chief Iranian Nuclear Affairs Negotiator Hosein Musavian: The Negotiations with Europe Bought Us Time to Complete the Esfahan UCF Project and the Work on the Centrifuges in Natanz.” MEMRI


In this interview the chief Iranian Negotiator in the matter of their nuclear program explains that the protracted process of dealing with the IAEA and the European powers was worthwhile because it enabled Iran to procrastinate in dealing with the West long enough to complete major installation essential to the nuclear program.


Musavian makes it clear that the Iranian government’s negotiating strategy was motivated entirely by the tactical necessities required by the determination of the Iranian government to drive the program forward as rapidly as possible.


This interview should largely answer the uncertainty on the part of some people as to whether or not the Iranians could be lured into giving up their nuclear ambitions. – Pat Lang


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Next, from my friend, retired Marine Lt. Col. Dale Davis, who is director of international programs and teaches Arabic at Virginia Military Institute, his assessment — from a military standpoint — of the U.S. miliary’s options.

Dale — with whom I have appeared on PBS’s Newshour — posted “US Military Options to the Iranian Proliferation” at my blog, Sic Semper Tyrannis:


Despite the awesome power of the US armed forces, President Bush will find his military options for dealing with Iran tightly constrained by both political and military realities. What will be absolutely impossible to achieve is regime change Iraq – style via invasion and occupation. Even if the bulk of US ground forces were not already committed in Iraq and Afghanistan such an effort would be extremely challenging and without the support of popular forces certain to be violently rejected by the Iranian people.


CONTINUED BELOW:

A limited air campaign would be militarily simple to execute. Iranian air defenses would be easily destroyed. Targets would be designated and struck with precision and force but to what end? The Iranians have had decades to prepare for this most likely of scenarios and have no doubt dispersed, duplicated, and hardened their critical facilities. No air campaign in recent history has ever achieved anything near what the proponents of airpower have claimed. Unless the US is willing to carry out sustained strikes and re-strikes for months and maybe even years there is likely to be little serious damage done to Iran’s nuclear weapons program.

And for the Jacobins in the audience forget the use of airpower as a tool for regime change. Iran is not Kosovo. Even a sustained air campaign would be unlikely to dislodge the Mullahs from power. Any speculation that a popular revolt can be triggered on the “Wings of Eagles” would be seriously mis-informed. The second bombs fall on Isphahan every Iranian will rally to the call of “Allahu Akbar Khomeni Rahbar.” Persian nationalism will trump the forces of democracy every time.


Sea-power might be the most effective of the limited tools available. A naval blockade of oil exports could be easily undertaken. Destoying the Iranian tanker fleet and liberating the three islands of Abu Musa and the Greater and Lesser Tunbs along with their associated oil and gas fields would place tremendous economic pressure on the regime.


Regardless of which option is selected, Iran will retaliate by unleashing its tremendous influence amongst its Shi’a proxies in Lebanon, Iraq and Afghanistan. Doesn’t any remember the Spring 04 Shi’a uprisings in Najaf and Kerbala? Imagine it on a much more intense and wide scale.


Dale R. Davis

Menage a Trois (The US, Iran and their Iraqis)

"The Iranian penetration of Iraq was a long time in planning” (Michael Ware, Time, Aug. 14, 2005)

On Sept. 9, 2002, with U.S. bases being readied in Kuwait, Supreme Leader Ayatullah Ali Khamenei summoned his war council in Tehran. According to Iranian sources, the Supreme National Security Council concluded, "It is necessary to adopt an active policy in order to prevent long-term and short-term dangers to Iran." Iran’s security services had supported the armed wings of several Iraqi groups they had sheltered in Iran from Saddam.

Iranian intelligence sources say that the various groups were organized under the command of Brigadier General Qassim Sullaimani, an adviser to Khamenei on both Afghanistan and Iraq and a top officer in the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps."  Ware

"Brigadier General Sullaimani ordained in a meeting of his militia proxies in the spring of last year that "any move that would wear out the U.S. forces in Iraq should be done. Every possible means should be used to keep the U.S. forces engaged in Iraq.""  Ware

"Secret British military-intelligence documents show that British forces are tracking several paramilitary outfits in Southern Iraq that are backed by the Revolutionary Guard. Coalition and Iraqi intelligence agencies track Iranian officers’ visits to Iraq on inspection tours akin to those of their American counterparts."  Ware

Michael Ware is the best of the reporters working now in Iraq.  His "reach" into the world of the coalition forces as well as that of the insurgents is impressive. 

MORE BELOW:

There has been a kind of coalition of silence in the world of the American media with regard to the obvious and growing influence of Iran in the Iraq of today. Most of the media are holed up in hotels in Baghdad afraid for their lives and happily collecting their hazardous duty bonuses while they wait for their "tour of duty" to end.  Their principal sources of information have been coalition forces and embassy PR officals.  These officials inevitably project the viewpoint of the US Government at the moment of discussion.

Until recently it has been the "received wisdom" of the US Government that Iraqi Shia are Iraqis first and always, and Shia in the same way that Americans are Presbyterians or Baptists.  In other words, the US establishment, taking its clue from the US Government has maintained that Iraqi Shia would never let themselves be dominated by Iran because the Iranians are Persians and the Iraqi Shia are Arabs and never the two shall identify with each other.  It has also been maintained that Iraqi Shia (and Sunnis) are so universally secular that they would "never" accept a theocratic state in Iraq, and most especially one aligned with Tehran.

What a crock!!  First of all, the idea that you would accept as true the unverified statements of a group about themselves, (any group) is ludicrous.  People lie about such matters to outsiders with great dependability.  They are especially prone to lying about themselves when they perceive that they are talking to the gullible (us).  Secondly, anyone who knows anything about the pre-war Shia population of Iraq knows that they were deeply divided between those who were secular and felt themselves primarily Iraqi (many of these were members of the Baath) and those who were always primarily Shia in loyalty and who resisted the influence of Iraqi nationalism.  Many of these people went into exile in Iran and actually fought against Iraq in the Iran-Iraq War.

NOW.  They’re Back!!!

Why did the US propagate the patent untruth of Iraqi Shia independence of spirit?  Ask the Jacobins.  It suited their purposes.  Now this tissue of delusion and falsehood is collapsing. 

Who will pay the price?

Pat Lang

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My blog: Sic Semper Tyrannis 2005 || Bio


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Jacobins, not Jacobites


I am asked what “Jacobins” might be —


“In the context of the French Revolution, a Jacobin originally meant a member of the Jacobin Club (1789-1794). But even while the Club still existed, the name of Jacobins had been popularly applied to all promulgators of extreme revolutionary opinions; “Jacobin democracy” for example is synonymous with totalitarian democracy. In contemporary France this term refers to a centralistic conception of Republic, with a lot of power vested in the national government, at the expense of local governments.” Wikepedia – The Free Encyclopedia


In the present context, I think, (as do others) that this is a more accurate description of the group of people who are variously called; “neocons,” “Vulcans,” “neo-imperialists,” etc.


These people do not want anyone to think of them as a group, much less describe them as a group. They react with hostility to the term, “neocon,” often playing the “anti-semite” card as Eliot Cohen did with me once, saying that this was code for “foreign policy Jew.”


Nevertheless, I think the Jacobin tag is useful in understanding them because they are not, in fact, conservative as John Adams or Margaret Thatcher would have understood the term. Rather, they are radical revolutionaries descended more or less directly from the thinking of the radicals of the French Revolution through European influence in the 20th century. They strongly believe in the use of force and cunning in forging a dominant role for the US in world affairs. They believe in strong central government at the expense of the states and are not terribly concerned with citizen rights if they think such rights interfere with their “larger” goals. They have a simplistic belief in the universal curative powers of “pure” democracy which the framers of our constitution never entertained. It is for that reason that our constitution is carefully constructed to prevent the attainment of more than indirect power by the “masses.”


They are foreign policy oriented. Domestic conservative issues largely bore them unless the political “backblast” from failure to attain the goals of heartland conservatives is thought politically “dangerous.”


The best possible reason for not calling them “neocons” is that there is nothing conservative about them. The closest that one could get on that “tack” would be to call them radical right wing revolutionaries. pl

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My blog: Sic Semper Tyrannis 2005 || Bio

Sloppy Thinking. Sloppy Writing

[I’d like to welcome Patrick Lang to the front-page of Booman Tribune. He is one of our country’s foremost experts on the Middle East and intelligence matters. And my father is a big fan of Pat’s from watching him on McNeil/Lehrer. Here is Pat’s Bio.] -Boo

I have decided to continue my commentary on the decline
of the quality of the editorial page of the Washington Post and its
leadership.  This is today’s
leading editorial
in the WashPost.

"WITH THAT statement, which
appeared on an al Qaeda Web site Thursday, Iraq’s al Qaeda network at
last made explicit the goals of the Iraqi insurgency: to prevent a
freely elected, constitutional government from taking power and to
promulgate a totalitarian Islamic republic instead." 
WashPost

It is the US government’s position that the insurgencies in Iraq have several
components; sorehead Baathists, criminal mercenaries, disaffected
tribals and, in a special category, international Jihadis (AQ Iraq)
under the command of Abu Musaab Al-Zarqawi.  If you read Mr.
Hiatt’s editorial as quoted above, you will see that he says that a
statement made on an AQ web site speaks for all the components of the
insurgencies.  What’s the evidence for that, or is this yet another
example of the WashPost editorial page distributing  "talking
points?"  pl

"Shortly after meeting with Iraq’s
most important Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, another
Shiite Muslim leader, Abdul Aziz Hakim, told a crowd in the holy city of
Najaf to support the constitution in order to unify the country.
"We should not let this chance of accomplishing this goal to go
away," he said."

Who are the "we" in this
speech by Hakim?  What is the "goal?"  Is the goal
of this Shia activist to unify Iraq on the basis of inter-communal
equality, the rights of minorities (like women), and the civil rights we
think were given to mankind by "nature’s God" as
"inalienable."  Is that what he means?  Or does he
mean that this is the great chance to consolidate Shia power in the
pursuit of a Godly morality and unity of effort and purpose?

The Post does not even consider the
latter possibility.  I should not complain too much about the
Post.  It has been "subdued" like much of the
media.

That’s all right.  The blogosphere
and media forms yet unconceived are coming to put the old media out of
their misery.  Pat Lang

Pat Lang’s blog: Sic Semper
Tyrannis
|| Bio