[Mb-civic] The Bush Who Cried Wolf

[Linda Hassler]

from Linda Hassler

The Bush Who Cried Wolf
      By Robert Dreyfuss
      TomPaine.com

    Thursday 12 January 2006

    The deteriorating international crisis over Iran is a direct result 
of the Bush's administration's ham-handed and mendacious Iraq policy.

    Under normal circumstances - that is, under any previous US 
administration - the battle over Iran's pugnacious effort in pursuit of 
nuclear technology would be amenable to a diplomatic solution. But, by 
insisting on a national security strategy of pre-emptive war, by 
illegally and unilaterally invading Iraq on false pretenses, and by 
hinting that the White House would tolerate an Israeli strike on Iran's 
nuclear plants, President Bush and Vice President Cheney have made a 
successful diplomatic resolution of the Iran crisis nearly impossible.

    Speaking yesterday at the Council for National Policy, Larry 
Wilkerson - the former top aide to Secretary of State Colin Powell who 
caused a stir last fall when he accused Cheney and Secretary of Defense 
Rumsfeld of operating a "cabal" - said that it is likely that Pentagon 
officials are polishing contingency plans for a strike against Iran. 
Iran, said Wilkerson, is the "principal winner" from the war in Iraq. 
As a result of the power of the Shiite religious forces in Iraq, he 
said, the Iranians "own the south" of Iraq. Wilkerson insisted that the 
United States ought to "talk to the people who really matter in Iran" - 
i.e., to the ayatollahs. But he said that US policy has failed so 
utterly that the door to negotiations with Iran is virtually closed. 
"When you close the door to diplomacy, you have no other option but to 
rely on military power," he said. "I hope to hell we don't have to use 
it."

    Without diplomatic tools, the looming showdown with Iran is 
potentially even more dangerous than the Iraq war. Iran is a far larger 
and more complex country, with the capability of retaliating against a 
US/Israeli attack by fomenting civil war in Iraq, by creating regional 
chaos in the Gulf, and by mobilizing its significant international 
terrorist capability against Western targets.

    As it did in the run-up to the Iraq war, the Bush administration - 
along with Israel - is content to exaggerate the threat from Iran. The 
ayatollahs appear to be at least five years or more away from a serious 
nuclear capacity, according to US intelligence reports. Iran's recent 
decision to restart one part of its nuclear research is indeed a 
serious threat to diplomatic talks aimed at resolving the matter 
peacefully. But the issue is nowhere near an end-game stage. There is 
plenty of time, years in fact, for a back-and-forth effort to secure 
Iran's compliance with International Atomic Energy Agency safeguards.

    By crying wolf over Iraq, through claiming that Saddam Hussein's 
regime had an active nuclear arms program, the United States lacks 
credibility when it now asserts that Iran is trying to develop nuclear 
weapons. And by its illegal, unilateral invasion of Iraq, without 
allowing the UN and the IAEA to proceed with inspections there, the 
United States has made other countries extremely wary of taking Iran to 
the UN Security Council, out of fear that it might give the United 
States or Israel a pretext to attack Iran unilaterally.

    But the international community's justified fear that the United 
States is controlled by a war party seeking to attack Iran makes other 
states' diplomacy even harder. Normally, the five UN Security Council 
powers would take up the matter with some urgency, adopt a resolution 
demanding Iran compliance, and threaten political and economic 
sanctions against Iran for non-compliance. But Moscow, Beijing and 
Paris remember what happened in Iraq. That matter was taken to the 
UNSC, a resolution passed - and then Washington declared unilaterally 
that Iraq had violated it, and went to war. So the world's capitals may 
be forgiven for being reluctant to drag Iran into the UNSC in 2006.

    The fact that John Bolton, the belligerent, war-mongering 
neoconservative who serves as US ambassador to the UN, takes over as 
president of the Security Council in February doesn't help.

    Bolton, Cheney and their allies are pushing for a showdown in the 
UNSC, even though it is highly unlikely that either Russia or China 
would support anti-Iran sanctions. India, the Arab League and other 
countries would strongly oppose such measures. And even Western Europe, 
furious over Iran for its latest effrontery, doesn't view sanctions on 
Iran as a happy outcome. Their resistance to anti-Iran measures comes 
despite a string of outrageous provocations from Iranian President 
Ahmadinejad, from demanding that Israel be "wiped off the map" to 
pooh-poohing the Holocaust to haughtily restarting Iran's nuclear 
research.

    It is impossible to deny that Iran is a dangerous, out-of-control 
regime - yes, a "rogue" regime. But, had the Bush administration 
maintained a consistent policy of seeking a dialogue with Iran, had the 
neocons refrained from demanding regime change and military action, had 
President Bush not referred to Iran as part of a mythical "axis of 
evil," and had the United States not immensely strengthened Iran's 
position by handing it Iraq on a silver platter, diplomacy would stand 
a better chance. A package deal, giving Iran political acceptance and 
economic incentives, combined with a regulated nuclear technology 
regime, in exchange for Iran's backing down from its hard-line stance, 
could likely have been reached over time. It may still, but it seems 
highly unlikely now.

    So we are left with persistent reports that both the United States 
and Israel are planning to strike Iran, and soon. Not only would such 
an attack result in a vastly wider conflict in Iran, Iraq and the Gulf, 
but it would also probably push oil prices well over $100 a barrel, 
making $5-a-gallon gas a reality. Perhaps, because the international 
community wants to avoid such a catastrophe, and because the United 
States is exerting enormous pressure on Russia, China and other world 
powers, first the IAEA and then the UNSC might vote to sanction Iran. 
If so, Iran will certainly not back down. And as a result, the United 
States will have the pretext it seeks to go to war once again.

    Some Democrats - and even a fair number of moderate and libertarian 
Republicans - expect the November 2006 elections to take place against 
the backdrop of a failed occupation of Iraq. Instead, those same 
elections might take place in the midst of yet another crisis 
manufactured by the Bush administration.

    Robert Dreyfuss is the author of Devil's Game: How the United 
States Helped Unleash Fundamentalist Islam (Henry Holt/Metropolitan 
Books, 2005). Dreyfuss is a freelance writer based in Alexandria, Va., 
who specializes in politics and national security issues. He is a 
contributing editor at The Nation, a contributing writer at Mother 
Jones, a senior correspondent for The American Prospect, and a frequent 
contributor to Rolling Stone. He can be reached through his website.

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