lily
02-12-2007, 11:18 PM
Interesting op-ed piece (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17119753/site/newsweek/?rf=nwnewsletter)
Dire Straits
The United States has been to war against Iran before. What we can learn
from the last time around.
Web-Exclusive Commentary
By Christopher Dickey
Newsweek
Updated: 1 hour, 39 minutes ago
Feb. 12, 2007 - During America’s last and largely forgotten war with Iran,
in 1987 and 1988, music meant a lot to those of us in the middle of the
action. American warships had deployed in force to the Persian Gulf and the
Arabian Sea. Ostensibly they were there to protect Kuwaiti oil tankers from
marauding Iranian frigates and speedboats, but in fact they were backing
Saddam Hussein in the seemingly endless Iran-Iraq war. “Somebody’s gonna
hurt someone, before the night is through,” The Eagles had sung in
“Heartache Tonight,” which became a kind of anthem to reporters covering the
war. “Somebody’s gonna come undone, there’s nothin’ we can do.”
Then, as now, there was a vaguely surreal quality to the looming
confrontation. Then, as now, the Americans were looking to reestablish their
credibility in the Middle East after successive blunders and humiliations.
As more frigates and cruisers moved into the area, the Iranians started
laying mines—or letting them float free—up and down the Gulf and around the
Strait of Hormuz. (Journalists, cynics that they are, made up T-shirts for
the DIRE STRAITS GULF TOUR ’87, listing several damaged ships on the back as
GREATEST HITS.)
Then, as now, there were fears Iran could shut down the narrow channel of
water through which some 20 percent of the world’s oil is shipped.
Washington responded by attacking the Iranian navy and Iranian oil
platforms. Then, accidentally, it was said, the Americans shot a regularly
scheduled commercial airliner out of the clear blue sky above the gulf.
There were 290 people on board that Iran Air flight, 66 of them children.
All died. A few weeks later, the Ayatollah Khomeini decided he would end the
war with Iraq at last, drinking from a “chalice of poison,” he said, by
accepting a stalemate truce instead of outright victory over Saddam.
Today, with two and soon three U.S. carrier battle groups due to converge on
the Arabian Sea (the gulf itself being too shallow for them to maneuver),
the sense that somebody’s gonna hurt someone is growing stronger by the
minute. And the Bush administration clearly is orchestrating tensions,
creating a wall of sound that common sense finds increasingly difficult to
penetrate.
Just yesterday an intelligence briefing in Baghdad played up the question of
Iranian arms and training supposedly given to “rogue” Shiite militias no
longer linked to the democratically elected Shiite fundamentalists who run
the Iraqi government with U.S. support. A new generation of roadside bombs
now called “explosively formed penetrators” or EFPs, which may well come
from Iran, have killed more than 170 U.S. soldiers since the summer of 2004,
according to the anonymous briefers in Baghdad. But take note: during that
same period more than 2,000 Americans were killed in Iraq by other groupsusing other weapons and with no apparent connections to Tehran. That’s one
reason the latest National Intelligence Estimate concludes Iran is not “a
major driver of violence” in Iraq.
Theoretically at least, the Bush administration could use the deaths of the
170 as a reason to attack Iran without even looking for U.N. approval. The
war wouldn’t be “preemptive”; it could be portrayed, in essence, as
self-defense. And what sort of war? Even a die-hard hawk like Joshua
Muravchik at the American Enterprise Institute told The Guardian last week,
“I do not think anyone in the U.S. is talking about invasion.” So the most
likely scenario would be a bombing campaign. It would not only punish the
Iranian government—and, of course, the Iranian people—for the actions of
their covert agents inside Iraq, it could also target Iran’s nuclear
program.
Here, though, we run up against a conundrum. If you think that the Iranians
have a secret atomic weapons program that you really haven't been able to
find after years of inspections, surveillance and spying—then how do you
bomb this invisible threat? You can’t, of course. Instead, you attack the
known nuclear program, which Iran insists is peaceful and therefore
completely legal under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. (Iranian
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad made that point once again before enormous
crowds in Tehran just yesterday.)
But such a bombing campaign would quickly change the known into the unknown.
Right now we have abundant details about what is going on in Iran’s declared
facilities, thanks to about 150 U.N. inspectors on the ground. After a U.S.
attack, the inspectors would be gone, and with them whatever window we had
into Iranian operations. This would be such a stupid and self-defeating move
that it’s hard to imagine even this administration embracing it.
So what does Washington actually have in mind? According to repeated
statements from administration officials, we’re looking at a policy of
diplomacy backed by force, with a steady ratcheting up of pressure on the
Iranian regime through carefully designed but limited sanctions. Next week,
the U.N. Security Council will take up the issue of Iran’s nuclear program
once again. Thus far Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice (with considerable
help from Ahmadinejad’s inflammatory diatribes) has been successful in
isolating Tehran. If diplomacy continues (and if the administration is not
lying the way it was before its ineluctable invasion of Iraq), Rice’s
approach can help weaken the crazies in Iran while strengthening those who’ll
eventually cut deals with the West.
The great danger will come if diplomacy stalls, and our ever-impatient
American president feels he’s compelled to use force. But even then, I don’t
think we’re looking at a full-scale conflagration. More likely we’ll see a
repeat of the kind of war waged by the U.S. against Iran in the 1980s: a
collection of skirmishes that constantly risk escalating into something
bigger and more difficult to control—but don’t, or, at least, don’t have to.
"The enemy knows well that any invasion would be followed by a comprehensive
reaction to the invaders and their interests all over the world,” Ayatollah
Ali Khamenei warned last week. But something short of an invasion? Khamenei
didn’t say. Iran’s leaders have lived with American military attacks before,
and shown they have better sense than to be suckered into a final, fatal
fight.
Of course, in 1988 Iran was exhausted from its war with Iraq. This time
around, it’s the United States that’s tiring from its war in Iraq, and with
no end in sight. Who’ll be the more rational player? All that seems sure is
that somebody’s gonna hurt someone, before the night is through.
Dire Straits
The United States has been to war against Iran before. What we can learn
from the last time around.
Web-Exclusive Commentary
By Christopher Dickey
Newsweek
Updated: 1 hour, 39 minutes ago
Feb. 12, 2007 - During America’s last and largely forgotten war with Iran,
in 1987 and 1988, music meant a lot to those of us in the middle of the
action. American warships had deployed in force to the Persian Gulf and the
Arabian Sea. Ostensibly they were there to protect Kuwaiti oil tankers from
marauding Iranian frigates and speedboats, but in fact they were backing
Saddam Hussein in the seemingly endless Iran-Iraq war. “Somebody’s gonna
hurt someone, before the night is through,” The Eagles had sung in
“Heartache Tonight,” which became a kind of anthem to reporters covering the
war. “Somebody’s gonna come undone, there’s nothin’ we can do.”
Then, as now, there was a vaguely surreal quality to the looming
confrontation. Then, as now, the Americans were looking to reestablish their
credibility in the Middle East after successive blunders and humiliations.
As more frigates and cruisers moved into the area, the Iranians started
laying mines—or letting them float free—up and down the Gulf and around the
Strait of Hormuz. (Journalists, cynics that they are, made up T-shirts for
the DIRE STRAITS GULF TOUR ’87, listing several damaged ships on the back as
GREATEST HITS.)
Then, as now, there were fears Iran could shut down the narrow channel of
water through which some 20 percent of the world’s oil is shipped.
Washington responded by attacking the Iranian navy and Iranian oil
platforms. Then, accidentally, it was said, the Americans shot a regularly
scheduled commercial airliner out of the clear blue sky above the gulf.
There were 290 people on board that Iran Air flight, 66 of them children.
All died. A few weeks later, the Ayatollah Khomeini decided he would end the
war with Iraq at last, drinking from a “chalice of poison,” he said, by
accepting a stalemate truce instead of outright victory over Saddam.
Today, with two and soon three U.S. carrier battle groups due to converge on
the Arabian Sea (the gulf itself being too shallow for them to maneuver),
the sense that somebody’s gonna hurt someone is growing stronger by the
minute. And the Bush administration clearly is orchestrating tensions,
creating a wall of sound that common sense finds increasingly difficult to
penetrate.
Just yesterday an intelligence briefing in Baghdad played up the question of
Iranian arms and training supposedly given to “rogue” Shiite militias no
longer linked to the democratically elected Shiite fundamentalists who run
the Iraqi government with U.S. support. A new generation of roadside bombs
now called “explosively formed penetrators” or EFPs, which may well come
from Iran, have killed more than 170 U.S. soldiers since the summer of 2004,
according to the anonymous briefers in Baghdad. But take note: during that
same period more than 2,000 Americans were killed in Iraq by other groupsusing other weapons and with no apparent connections to Tehran. That’s one
reason the latest National Intelligence Estimate concludes Iran is not “a
major driver of violence” in Iraq.
Theoretically at least, the Bush administration could use the deaths of the
170 as a reason to attack Iran without even looking for U.N. approval. The
war wouldn’t be “preemptive”; it could be portrayed, in essence, as
self-defense. And what sort of war? Even a die-hard hawk like Joshua
Muravchik at the American Enterprise Institute told The Guardian last week,
“I do not think anyone in the U.S. is talking about invasion.” So the most
likely scenario would be a bombing campaign. It would not only punish the
Iranian government—and, of course, the Iranian people—for the actions of
their covert agents inside Iraq, it could also target Iran’s nuclear
program.
Here, though, we run up against a conundrum. If you think that the Iranians
have a secret atomic weapons program that you really haven't been able to
find after years of inspections, surveillance and spying—then how do you
bomb this invisible threat? You can’t, of course. Instead, you attack the
known nuclear program, which Iran insists is peaceful and therefore
completely legal under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. (Iranian
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad made that point once again before enormous
crowds in Tehran just yesterday.)
But such a bombing campaign would quickly change the known into the unknown.
Right now we have abundant details about what is going on in Iran’s declared
facilities, thanks to about 150 U.N. inspectors on the ground. After a U.S.
attack, the inspectors would be gone, and with them whatever window we had
into Iranian operations. This would be such a stupid and self-defeating move
that it’s hard to imagine even this administration embracing it.
So what does Washington actually have in mind? According to repeated
statements from administration officials, we’re looking at a policy of
diplomacy backed by force, with a steady ratcheting up of pressure on the
Iranian regime through carefully designed but limited sanctions. Next week,
the U.N. Security Council will take up the issue of Iran’s nuclear program
once again. Thus far Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice (with considerable
help from Ahmadinejad’s inflammatory diatribes) has been successful in
isolating Tehran. If diplomacy continues (and if the administration is not
lying the way it was before its ineluctable invasion of Iraq), Rice’s
approach can help weaken the crazies in Iran while strengthening those who’ll
eventually cut deals with the West.
The great danger will come if diplomacy stalls, and our ever-impatient
American president feels he’s compelled to use force. But even then, I don’t
think we’re looking at a full-scale conflagration. More likely we’ll see a
repeat of the kind of war waged by the U.S. against Iran in the 1980s: a
collection of skirmishes that constantly risk escalating into something
bigger and more difficult to control—but don’t, or, at least, don’t have to.
"The enemy knows well that any invasion would be followed by a comprehensive
reaction to the invaders and their interests all over the world,” Ayatollah
Ali Khamenei warned last week. But something short of an invasion? Khamenei
didn’t say. Iran’s leaders have lived with American military attacks before,
and shown they have better sense than to be suckered into a final, fatal
fight.
Of course, in 1988 Iran was exhausted from its war with Iraq. This time
around, it’s the United States that’s tiring from its war in Iraq, and with
no end in sight. Who’ll be the more rational player? All that seems sure is
that somebody’s gonna hurt someone, before the night is through.