DEBORCHGRAVE: A three-front war?
by
on July 14, 2010 11:10 AM in Politics
Strikes on Iran becoming more likely
There is no better illustration of the futility of the $1 trillion Iraq war than news photos of a long line of gasoline tankers lined up bumper to bumper as they leaveIraq to enter Iran.
The U.N. Security Council decision to strengthen economic measures against Iran, and President Obama‘s signing into law draconian new legislative sanctions against Iran‘s nuclear weapons ambitions leave Iraq‘s defeated government unable to act.
The Iraq Study Group co-chaired by Lee H. Hamilton, the prominent Democrat who heads the Woodrow Wilson International Center, and James A. Baker III, whose Institute for Public Policy is at Houston’s Rice University, warned in 2006 that Iran, now rid of erstwhile enemy Saddam Hussein, was already wielding more influence in Iraq than the U.S.
The only sanction that would seriously undermine the mullahs’ military regime would be a severe shortage of gasoline. Iran is awash in oil but lacks refining capacity and has to import 60 percent of its gasoline. A lack of governance in Baghdad has enabled Iran to strike a sub rosa deal for gasoline imports.
Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki‘s coalition government narrowly lost last March’s national elections (89 to 91 seats, both rivals short of the 163 seats needed to govern alone). Endless palavers since then have failed to produce a new coalition. With suicide bombers trying to reignite a bloody trail of sectarian violence, Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. flew into Baghdad over the 4th of July weekend for his fifth visit since becoming vice president. He urged Iraq‘s political leaders to form an all-party coalition ASAP.
On his first night, sirens wailed, and over an extensive loudspeaker system a voice shouted, “Duck and cover.” Five mortar rounds exploded in the Green Zone, a large maximum-security area in the heart of Baghdad that houses the $700 million, 100-acre U.S. Embassy, the world’s largest.
There was a time when the late dictator Saddam Hussein (executed Dec. 30, 2006) was the most effective barrier to Iran‘s regional ambitions. In 1980, he launched an invasion of Iran that led to a Mexican standoff that lasted 8 years and cost 1 million dead on both sides. Iranian teenagers were pressed into service as “suicide volunteers” with a golden key around their necks – for the gates of paradise that would allow them to meet up with 72 virgins.
Until now, those advocating military action against Iran‘s nuclear installations were found mostly in Israel and among the neoconservative lobby in Congress and its sympathizers in think tanks and the media. In recent weeks, the ranks of those who concede the inevitability of a military showdown with Iran‘s theocracy-cum-military-regime have widened to include normally less bellicose politicians and their military friends.
Three former U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) commanders have said on different occasions that we should learn to live with an Iranian bomb, much the way the U.S. adjusted to Stalin breaking America’s atomic and then nuclear monopoly. Later, China’s Mao Zedong boasted that in a nuclear war, hundreds of millions of people would die, and China would emerge victorious, as it would still have several hundred million survivors. That was just as much of an existential threat for theU.S. as Iran is to Israel.
Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, also expressed reservations from time to time. The Joint Chiefs and former CENTCOM commanders know better than most experts that Iran has formidable asymmetrical retaliatory capabilities, from the narrow Strait of Hormuz, which still handles 25 percent of the world’s oil traffic; to Bahrain (U.S. 5th Fleet headquarters, where the population is two-thirds Shia and the royal family Sunni); to Dubai, where about 400,000 Iranians reside, many of them “sleeper agents” or favorable to Tehran; to Qatar, now the world’s richest country, with per capita income at $78,000, which supplies the U.S. with the world’s longest runway and subheadquarters for CENTCOM, and whose liquified natural gas facilities are within short missile range of Iran‘s coastal batteries; to Saudi Arabia’s Ras Tanura, the world’s largest oil terminal, and Abqaiq, nerve center of Saudi’s eastern oil fields – all are vulnerable to Iranian sabotage and/or hundreds of Iranian missiles on the eastern side of the Gulf, from southern Iraq down to the Strait of Hormuz.
Officially, all the Arab rulers of the Gulf and other Arab leaders are strenuously opposed to any Israeli and/or U.S. air strikes against Iran‘s nuclear facilities. But that opposition is eroding rapidly.
Speaking at the Aspen Institute in Colorado last week, the United Arab Emirates Ambassador to the U.S. Yousef al-Otaiba said publicly – before denying it – “I think despite the large amount of trade we do with Iran, which is close to $12 billion, there will be consequences, there will be a backlash, and there will be problems with people protesting and rioting and very unhappy that there is an outside force attacking a Muslim country; that is going to happen no matter what.”
And he added, “If you are asking me, ‘Am I willing to live with that, versus living with a nuclear Iran, my answer is still the same – ‘We cannot live with a nuclearIran.'” A former Arab leader, in close touch with current leaders, speaking privately and not for attribution, told this reporter July 6, “All the Middle Eastern and Gulf leaders now want Iran taken out of the nuclear arms business, and they all know sanctions won’t work.”
In a joint op-ed column, former Sen. Chuck Robb and Gen. Charles F. Wald, the air commander in the opening stages of Operation Enduring Freedom in Oct. 2001, say the time is now to prepare credibly for a U.S. military strike. “Sanctions can be effective only if coupled with open preparation for the military option as a last resort … publicly playing down potential military options has weakened our leverage with Tehran, making a peaceful resolution less likely.”
The temptation for President Obama to double down on Iran will grow rapidly as he concludes that Afghanistan will remain a festering sore as far as anyone can peer into a murky future, hardly a recipe for success at the polls in November. With a war in Afghanistan, which is bound to get worse, and a military theater in Iraqreplete with sectarian violence, the bombing of Iran may give Mr. Obama a three-front war – and a chance to retain both houses of Congress.
Arnaud de Borchgrave is editor-at-large of The Washington Times and of United Press International
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