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Kuros
Joined: 27 Apr 2004
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 Posted: Mon Jan 23, 2006 5:40 am Post subject: Why Iran has it coming |
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Why the West will attack Iran
By Spengler
Why did French President Jacques Chirac last week threaten to use non-conventional - that is, nuclear - weapons against terrorist states? And why did Iran announce that it would shift foreign-exchange reserves out of European banks (although it has since retracted this warning)? The answer lies in the nature of Tehran's nuclear ambitions. Iran needs nuclear weapons, I believe, not to attack Israel, but to support imperial expansion by conventional military means.
Iran's oil exports will shrink to zero in 20 years, just at the demographic inflection point when the costs of maintaining an aged population will crush its state finances, as I reported in Demographics and Iran's imperial design (September 13, 2005). Just outside Iran's present frontiers lie the oil resources of Iraq, Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan, and not far away are the oil concentrations of eastern Saudi Arabia. Its neighbors are quite as alarmed as Washington about the prospect of a nuclear-armed Iran, and privately quite happy for Washington to wipe out this capability.
It is remarkable how quickly an international consensus has emerged for the eventual use of force against Iran. Chirac's indirect reference to the French nuclear capability was a warning to Tehran. Mohamed ElBaradei, whose Nobel Peace Prize last year was awarded to rap the knuckles of the United States, told Newsweek that in the extreme case, force might be required to stop Iran's acquiring a nuclear capability. German Defense Minister Franz Josef Jung told the newspaper Bild am Sonntag that the military option could not be abandoned, although diplomatic efforts should be tried first. Bild, Germany's largest-circulation daily, ran Iranian President Mahmud Ahmedinejad's picture next to Adolf Hitler's, with the headline, "Will Iran plunge the world into the abyss?"
The same Europeans who excoriated the United States for invading Iraq with insufficient proof of the presence of weapons of mass destruction already have signed on to a military campaign against Iran, in advance of Iran's gaining WMD. There are a number of reasons for this sudden lack of squeamishness, and all of them lead back to oil.
First, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have the most to lose from a nuclear-equipped Iran. No one can predict when the Saudi kingdom might become unstable, but whenever it does, Iran will stand ready to support its Shi'ite co-religionists, who make up a majority in the kingdom's oil-producing east.
At some point the United States will reduce or eliminate its presence in Iraq, and the result, I believe, will be civil war. Under conditions of chaos Iran will have a pretext to expand its already substantial presence on the ground in Iraq, perhaps even to intervene militarily on behalf of its Shi'ite co-religionists.
What now is Azerbaijan had been for centuries the northern provinces of the Persian Empire, and a nuclear-armed Iran could revive Persian claims on southern Azerbaijan. Iran continues to lay claim to a share of Caspian Sea energy resources under the Iranian-Soviet treaties of 1921 and 1940. [1] For the time being, Azerbaijani-Iranian relations are the most cordial in years, with Iran providing natural gas to pockets of Azerbaijani territory blockaded by Armenia, and Baku defending Iran's nuclear program. As Iran's oil production dwindles over the next two decades, though, its historic claims on the Caspian are likely to re-emerge.
Ahmedinejad's apocalyptic inclinations have inspired considerable comment from Western analysts, who note that he appears to believe in the early return of the Mahdi, the 12th Imam. I do not know whether Ahmedinejad is mad or sane, but even mad people may be sly and calculating. Iran's prospects are grim. Over a generation it faces demographic decay, economic collapse and cultural deracination. When reason fails to provide a solution to an inherently insoluble problem, irrationality well may take hold. Like Hitler, who also was mad but out-bluffed the West for years before overreaching, Ahmedinejad is pursuing a rational if loathsome imperial policy.
Given Israel's possession of a large arsenal of fission weapons as well as thermonuclear capability, it is extremely unlikely that Iran would attack the Jewish state unless pressed to the wall. Faced with encirclement and ruin, the Islamic Republic is fully capable of lashing out in a destructive and suicidal fashion, not only against Israel but against other antagonists. Whatever one may say about Chirac, he is not remotely stupid, and feels it prudent to warn Iran that pursuit of its imperial ambitions may lead to a French nuclear response. French intelligence evidently believes that Iran may express its frustrations through terrorist actions in the West.
By far the biggest loser in an Iranian confrontation with the West will be China, the fastest-growing among the world's large economies, but also the least efficient in energy use. Higher oil prices will harm China's economy more than any other, and Beijing's reluctance to back Western efforts to encircle Iran are understandable in this context. It is unclear how China will proceed if the rest of the international community confronts Iran; in the great scheme of things it really does not matter.
Washington will initiate military action against Iran only with extreme reluctance, but it will do so nonetheless, except in the extremely unlikely event that Ahmedinejad were to stand down. Rather than a legacy of prosperity and democracy in the Middle East, the administration of US President George W Bush will exit with an economy weakened by higher oil prices and chaos on the ground in Iraq and elsewhere. But it really has no other options, except to let a nuclear-armed spoiler loose in the oil corridor. We have begun the third act of the tragedy that started on September 11, 2001, and I see no way to prevent it from proceeding.
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The West definitely would like to attack Iran. But will they? |
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Bulsajo
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Mon Jan 23, 2006 9:44 am Post subject: |
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The following is subscription material sent to me via PM by someone who I believe would like to remain anonymous.
Note that it pre-dates OBL's latest press release as well as France's "we'll go nuclear on all your asses, terrorist states!" declaration
(highlights are mine):
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Iran's Redefined Strategy
January 17, 2006 22 35 GMT
By George Friedman
The Iranians have broken the International Atomic Energy Agency seals on some of their nuclear facilities. They did this very deliberately and publicly to make certain that everyone knew that Tehran was proceeding with its nuclear program. Prior to this, and in parallel, the Iranians began to -- among other things -- systematically bait the Israelis, threatening to wipe them from the face of the earth.
The question, of course, is what exactly the Iranians are up to. They do not yet have nuclear weapons. The Israelis do. The Iranians have now hinted that (a) they plan to build nuclear weapons and have implied, as clearly as possible without saying it, that (b) they plan to use them against Israel. On the surface, these statements appear to be begging for a pre-emptive strike by Israel. There are many things one might hope for, but a surprise visit from the Israeli air force is not usually one of them. Nevertheless, that is exactly what the Iranians seem to be doing, so we need to sort this out.
There are four possibilities:
1. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian president, is insane and wants to be attacked because of a bad childhood.
2. The Iranians are engaged in a complex diplomatic maneuver, and this is part of it.
3. The Iranians think they can get nuclear weapons -- and a deterrent to Israel -- before the Israelis attack.
4. The Iranians, actually and rationally, would welcome an Israeli -- or for that matter, American -- air strike.
Let's begin with the insanity issue, just to get it out of the way. One of the ways to avoid thinking seriously about foreign policy is to dismiss as a nutcase anyone who does not behave as you yourself would. As such, he is unpredictable and, while scary, cannot be controlled. You are therefore relieved of the burden of doing anything about him. In foreign policy, it is sometimes useful to appear to be insane, as it is in poker: The less predictable you are, the more power you have -- and insanity is a great tool of unpredictability. Some leaders cultivate an aura of insanity.
However, people who climb to the leadership of nations containing many millions of people must be highly disciplined, with insight into others and the ability to plan carefully. Lunatics rarely have those characteristics. Certainly, there have been sociopaths -- like Hitler -- but at the same time, he was a very able, insightful, meticulous man. He might have been crazy, but dismissing him because he was crazy -- as many did -- was a massive mistake. Moreover, leaders do not rise alone. They are surrounded by other ambitious people. In the case of Ahmadinejad, he is answerable to others above him (in this case, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei), alongside him and below him. He did not get to where he is by being nuts -- and even if we think what he says is insane, it clearly doesn't strike the rest of his audience as insane. Thinking of him as insane is neither helpful nor clarifying.
The Three-Player Game
So what is happening?
First, the Iranians obviously are responding to the Americans. Tehran's position in Iraq is not what the Iranians had hoped it would be. U.S. maneuvers with the Sunnis in Iraq and the behavior of Iraqi Shiite leaders clearly have created a situation in which the outcome will not be the creation of an Iranian satellite state. At best, Iraq will be influenced by Iran or neutral. At worst, it will drift back into opposition to Iran -- which has been Iraq's traditional geopolitical position. This is not satisfactory. Iran's Iraq policy has not failed, but it is not the outcome Tehran dreamt of in 2003.
There is a much larger issue. The United States has managed its position in Iraq -- to the extent that it has been managed -- by manipulating the Sunni-Shiite fault line in the Muslim world. In the same way that Richard Nixon manipulated the Sino-Soviet split, the fundamental fault line in the Communist world, to keep the Soviets contained and off-balance late in the Vietnam War, so the Bush administration has used the primordial fault line in the Islamic world, the Sunni-Shiite split, to manipulate the situation in Iraq.
Washington did this on a broader scale as well. Having enticed Iran with new opportunities -- both for Iran as a nation and as the leading Shiite power in a post-Saddam world -- the administration turned to Sunni countries like Saudi Arabia and enticed them into accommodation with the United States by allowing them to consider the consequences of an ascended Iran under canopy of a relationship with the United States. Washington used that vision of Iran to gain leverage in Saudi Arabia. The United States has been moving back and forth between Sunnis and Shia since the invasion of Afghanistan, when it obtained Iranian support for operations in Afghanistan's Shiite regions. Each side was using the other. The United States, however, attained the strategic goal of any three-player game: It became the swing player between Sunnis and Shia.
This was not what the Iranians had hoped for.
Reclaiming the Banner
There is yet another dimension to this. In 1979, when the Ayatollah Ruholla Khomeini deposed the Shah of Iran, Iran was the center of revolutionary Islamism. It both stood against the United States and positioned itself as the standard-bearer for radical Islamist youth. It was Iran, through its creation, Hezbollah, that pioneered suicide bombings. It championed the principle of revolutionary Islamism against both collaborationist states like Saudi Arabia and secular revolutionaries like Yasser Arafat. It positioned Shi'ism as the protector of the faith and the hope of the future.
In having to defend against Saddam Hussein's Iraq in the 1980s, and the resulting containment battle, Iran became ensnared in a range of necessary but compromising relationships. Recall, if you will, that the Iran-Contra affair revealed not only that the United States used Israel to send weapons to Iran, but also that Iran accepted weapons from Israel. Iran did what it had to in order to survive, but the complexity of its operations led to serious compromises. By the late 1990s, Iran had lost any pretense of revolutionary primacy in the Islamic world. It had been flanked by the Sunni Wahhabi movement, al Qaeda.
The Iranians always saw al Qaeda as an outgrowth of Saudi Arabia and Pakistan and therefore, through Shiite and Iranian eyes, never trusted it. Iran certainly didn't want al Qaeda to usurp the position of primary challenger to the West. Under any circumstances, it did not want al Qaeda to flourish. It was caught in a challenge. First, it had to reduce al Qaeda's influence, or concede that the Sunnis had taken the banner from Khomeini's revolution. Second, Iran had to reclaim its place. Third, it had to do this without undermining its geopolitical interests.
Tehran spent the time from 2003 through 2005 maximizing what it could from the Iraq situation. It also quietly participated in the reduction of al Qaeda's network and global reach. In doing so, it appeared to much of the Islamic world as clever and capable, but not particularly principled. Tehran's clear willingness to collaborate on some level with the United States in Afghanistan, in Iraq and in the war on al Qaeda made it appear as collaborationist as it had accused the Kuwaitis or Saudis of being in the past. By the end of 2005, Iran had secured its western frontier as well as it could, had achieved what influence it could in Baghdad, had seen al Qaeda weakened. It was time for the next phase. It had to reclaim its position as the leader of the Islamic revolutionary movement for itself and for Shi'ism.
Thus, the selection of the new president was, in retrospect, carefully engineered. After President Mohammed Khatami's term, all moderates were excluded from the electoral process by decree, and the election came down to a struggle between former President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani -- an heir to Khomeini's tradition, but also an heir to the tactical pragmatism of the 1980s and 1990s -- and Ahmadinejad, the clearest descendent of the Khomeini revolution that there was in Iran, and someone who in many ways had avoided the worst taints of compromise.
Ahmadinejad was set loose to reclaim Iran's position in the Muslim world. Since Iran had collaborated with Israel during the 1980s, and since Iranian money in Lebanon had mingled with Israeli money, the first thing he had to do was to reassert Iran's anti-Zionist credentials. He did that by threatening Israel's existence and denying the Holocaust. Whether he believed what he was saying is immaterial. Ahmadinejad used the Holocaust issue to do two things: First, he established himself as intellectually both anti-Israeli and anti-Jewish, taking the far flank among Islamic leaders; and second, he signaled a massive breach with Khatami's approach.
Khatami was focused on splitting the Western world by dividing the Americans from the Europeans. In carrying out this policy, he had to manipulate the Europeans. The Europeans were always open to the claim that the Americans were being rigid and were delighted to serve the role of sophisticated mediator. Khatami used the Europeans' vanity brilliantly, sucking them into endless discussions and turning the Iran situation into a problem the Europeans were having with the United States.
But Tehran paid a price for this in the Muslim world. In drawing close to the Europeans, the Iranians simply appeared to be up to their old game of unprincipled realpolitik with people -- Europeans -- who were no better than the Americans. The Europeans were simply Americans who were weaker. Ahmadinejad could not carry out his strategy of flanking the Wahhabis and still continue the minuet with Europe. So he ended Khatami's game with a bang, with a massive diatribe on the Holocaust and by arguing that if there had been one, the Europeans bore the blame. That froze Germany out of any further dealings with Tehran, and even the French had to back off. Iran's stock in the Islamic world started to rise.
The Nuclear Gambit
The second phase was for Iran to very publicly resume -- or very publicly claim to be resuming -- development of a nuclear weapon. This signaled three things:
1. Iran's policy of accommodation with the West was over.
2. Iran intended to get a nuclear weapon in order to become the only real challenge to Israel and, not incidentally, a regional power that Sunni states would have to deal with.
3. Iran was prepared to take risks that no other Muslim actor was prepared to take. Al Qaeda was a piker.
The fundamental fact is that Ahmadinejad knows that, except in the case of extreme luck, Iran will not be able to get nuclear weapons. First, building a nuclear device is not the same thing as building a nuclear weapon. A nuclear weapon must be sufficiently small, robust and reliable to deliver to a target. A nuclear device has to sit there and go boom. The key technologies here are not the ones that build a device but the ones that turn a device into a weapon -- and then there is the delivery system to worry about: range, reliability, payload, accuracy. Iran has a way to go.
A lot of countries don't want an Iranian bomb. Israel is one. The United States is another. Throw Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and most of the 'Stans into this, and there are not a lot of supporters for an Iranian bomb. However, there are only two countries that can do something about it. The Israelis don't want to get the grief, but they are the ones who cannot avoid action because they are the most vulnerable if Iran should develop a weapon. The United States doesn't want Israel to strike at Iran, as that would massively complicate the U.S. situation in the region, but it doesn't want to carry out the strike itself either.
This, by the way, is a good place to pause and explain to readers who will write in wondering why the United States will tolerate an Israeli nuclear force but not an Iranian one. The answer is simple. Israel will probably not blow up New York. That's why the United States doesn't mind Israel having nukes and does mind Iran having them. Is that fair? This is power politics, not sharing time in preschool. End of digression.
Intra-Islamic Diplomacy
If the Iranians are seen as getting too close to a weapon, either the United States or Israel will take them out, and there is an outside chance that the facilities could not be taken out with a high degree of assurance unless nukes are used. In the past, our view was that the Iranians would move carefully in using the nukes to gain leverage against the United States. That is no longer clear. Their focus now seems to be not on their traditional diplomacy, but on a more radical, intra-Islamic diplomacy. That means that they might welcome a (survivable) attack by Israel or the United States. It would burnish Iran's credentials as the true martyr and fighter of Islam.
Meanwhile, the Iranians appear to be reaching out to the Sunnis on a number of levels. Muqtada al-Sadr, the leader of a radical Shiite group in Iraq with ties to Iran, visited Saudi Arabia recently. There are contacts between radical Shia and Sunnis in Lebanon as well. The Iranians appear to be engaged in an attempt to create the kind of coalition in the Muslim world that al Qaeda failed to create. From Tehran's point of view, if they get a deliverable nuclear device, that's great -- but if they are attacked by Israel or the United States, that's not a bad outcome either.
In short, the diplomacy that Iran practiced from the beginning of the Iraq-Iran war until after the U.S. invasion of Iraq appears to be ended. Iran is making a play for ownership of revolutionary Islamism on behalf of itself and the Shia. Thus, Tehran will continue to make provocative moves, while hoping to avoid counterstrikes. On the other hand, if there are counterstrikes, the Iranians will probably be able to live with that as well.
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Nowhere Man
Joined: 08 Feb 2004
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| Posted: Tue Jan 24, 2006 3:51 am Post subject: |
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| Iran's oil exports will shrink to zero in 20 years, just at the demographic inflection point when the costs of maintaining an aged population will crush its state finances, as I reported in Demographics and Iran's imperial design (September 13, 2005). Just outside Iran's present frontiers lie the oil resources of Iraq, Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan, and not far away are the oil concentrations of eastern Saudi Arabia. Its neighbors are quite as alarmed as Washington about the prospect of a nuclear-armed Iran, and privately quite happy for Washington to wipe out this capability. |
http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0872964.html
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Rank Country Proved reserves
(billion barrels)
1. Saudi Arabia 261.9
2. Canada 178.81 1. Includes 174.5 billion barrels of oil sands reserves.
3. Iran 125.8
4. Iraq 115.0
5. Kuwait 101.5
6. United Arab Emirates 97.8
7. Venezuela 77.2
8. Russia 60.0
9. Libya 39.0
10. Nigeria 35.3 |
Kuros,
Nice article of fear-mongering crap.
How about this:
Insert [United States] into those statements about [Iran] militarism.
I believe it explains a lot.
It does seem that Iran has it coming.
http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0411-21.htm |
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Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee
Joined: 25 May 2003
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| Posted: Tue Jan 24, 2006 4:37 am Post subject: |
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Can you tell us why it is fear mongering?
by the way Iran would have no problems if they just stopped threatening other nations and gave up their agenda to control the gulf. |
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Nowhere Man
Joined: 08 Feb 2004
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| Posted: Tue Jan 24, 2006 5:04 am Post subject: ... |
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| Can you tell us why it is fear mongering? |
Well, we could look at your following statement:
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| by the way Iran would have no problems if they just stopped threatening other nations and gave up their agenda to control the gulf. |
And just peacefully made a nuke? 
What, pray tell, is the Bush agenda?
I fear Joo is back on the block. Please crap your pants now!
Oh no!
Iran!
War!
Oh no!
Iran!
War!
If you, on the other hand, can reconcile why the country with the 3rd largest oil reserves in the world is going to attack Iraq and a smorgasboard of other countries with oil deposits that don't even rank because it has run out of the oil it has more of than Iraq and a smorgasboard of other countries that don't even rank in the top 10, then you are askng for war, and it wouldn't be the first time you have, would it?
You are a chickencrap numbskull. We've always known it. Now Kuros is edging in on your territory.
Sad. |
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Kuros
Joined: 27 Apr 2004
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| Posted: Tue Jan 24, 2006 5:07 am Post subject: |
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Yeah, I'm fearmongering, just like the governments of France, Germany, Great Britain, the United States, and even Russia are (who admitted their position is very close to Europe's).
Nowhere Man, just because you oppose Bush doesn't mean you have to hold moronic political positions. |
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Nowhere Man
Joined: 08 Feb 2004
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| Posted: Tue Jan 24, 2006 5:13 am Post subject: ... |
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Right, sensei, did you support the last war that you now don't?
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| just because you oppose Bush doesn't mean you have to hold moronic political positions. |
That's the exact pap I heard before the last war.
Let's forget the word fear. You're warmongering, aren't you? |
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Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee
Joined: 25 May 2003
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| Posted: Tue Jan 24, 2006 5:16 am Post subject: Re: ... |
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And just peacefully made a nuke?
What, pray tell, is the Bush agenda? |
Why does Iran want a nuke?
I fear Joo is back on the block. Please crap your pants now!
Oh no!
Iran!
War!
Oh no!
Iran!
War!
Yawn
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| If you, on the other hand, can reconcile why the country with the 3rd largest oil reserves in the world is going to attack Iraq and a smorgasboard of other countries with oil deposits that don't even rank because it has run out of the oil it has more of than Iraq and a smorgasboard of other countries that don't even rank in the top 10, then |
you are askng for war, and it wouldn't be the first time you have, would it?
No Iran has plenty of oil, but Khomeni followers have always wanted to rule the gulf and more.
but If you want to know I don't think the US ought to bomb Iran , that would unite the populations behind the mullahs.
Instead the US should hit Iran at the UN on its human rights record, embarass the regime and do what it can to make it even more unpopular than it already is all the cause and make contact with progressive Iranians.
Better would be to let Iran have the nukes but get rid of the mullahs.
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| You are a chickencrap numbskull. We've always known it. Now Kuros is edging in on your territory. |
Yawn
You know what is even more sad - that usually your facts are bad and you hold the opinions you do cause for the most part you don't know what you are talking about. |
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rapier
Joined: 16 Feb 2003
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| Posted: Tue Jan 24, 2006 5:25 am Post subject: |
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I was saying they would invade Iran way back in september- on this and on other threads..to much derision of course.
http://www.eslcafe.com/forums/korea/viewtopic.php?t=44431&highlight=Prophecy
its like when the US invaded Iraq i posted a thread "Iraq-another Vietnam". Of course it was derided but a year later everyone was posting similar threads.
We must all learn to listen to rapier more...   |
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Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee
Joined: 25 May 2003
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| Posted: Tue Jan 24, 2006 5:36 am Post subject: Re: ... |
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| Nowhere Man wrote: |
Right, sensei, did you support the last war that you now don't?
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| just because you oppose Bush doesn't mean you have to hold moronic political positions. |
That's the exact pap I heard before the last war.
Let's forget the word fear. You're warmongering, aren't you? |
can you warmonger against a nation that has been at war with you? |
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Nowhere Man
Joined: 08 Feb 2004
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| Posted: Tue Jan 24, 2006 6:14 am Post subject: ... |
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| can you warmonger against a nation that has been at war with you? |
Right, I forgot about that. Excellent point. My heart cries out for all those lost in our on-going war with Iran. All the troops the evil Iranians have killed. I see. I see. They are clearly unwarmongerable if they were already at war with us.
But, good point. Let's not be warmongerin' them if they are indeed unwarmongerable. I like dinner dates and dog biscuits.
I have many other ways of seeing at my disposal.
I have a garbage disposal... |
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laogaiguk
Joined: 06 Dec 2005
Location: somewhere in Korea
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| Posted: Tue Jan 24, 2006 6:36 am Post subject: |
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| Who cares? America can't support another war, that is for sure. Unless the UN completely backs it (which would make it a legal war) and it gets other countries to go too, this is completely a moot point. America going in would be pure stupidity and would probably lose them both Iraq and Iran. |
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bucheon bum
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Tue Jan 24, 2006 6:46 am Post subject: |
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Nowhere Man, I think you're being naive about Iran.
Iran has attacked US interests before (beirut being prime example #1). It has a history of aggression against western interests. Iraq? No.
While I don't think we can or should invade Iran, I think a quick strike would be a nice wake-up call to the present Iranian administration. |
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Nowhere Man
Joined: 08 Feb 2004
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| Posted: Tue Jan 24, 2006 7:08 am Post subject: ... |
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Nowhere Man, I think you're being naive about Iran.
Iran has attacked US interests before (beirut being prime example #1). It has a history of aggression against western interests. Iraq? No. |
Kuwait?
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| While I don't think we can or should invade Iran, I think a quick strike would be a nice wake-up call to the present Iranian administration. |
OK. While we haven't discussed it, I think a "quick strike" is now a bit of past vocabulary.
But that's interesting.
Anything to say about Iran militarizing against a bunch of countries who have a fraction of their oil when "their exports run out"?
Did you read that OP article? |
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Bulsajo
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Tue Jan 24, 2006 7:27 am Post subject: Re: ... |
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Rapier, anyone who talks of "invading" Iran is an utter moron.
It shouldn't even be necessary to explain why, but I expect you'll be the exception that proves the rule.
And for the article in the OP, if and when Iran- with one of the largest oil reserves in the world- dries up, then I suspect we will all have a whole bunch of major worries other than Iran's regional designs towards its neighbours. |
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