Arms and influence

Bluster, methinks

Armchair Generalist wonders if Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's mush-mouthed mumblings about "drastic measures" if Iran does not remove the Farsi word for nuclear from its vocabulary is just bluster, or something worse. I vote for bluster, in large part because of Olmert's own political problems.

Olmert is under pressure to resign, most immediately because of a corruption scandal, but also because of lingering anger over the failed 2006 mini-war with Hezbollah in southern Lebanon. Back then, Israeli reservists had assembled a petition demanding Olmert's resignation, a sign of how low Olmert's national security credentials had dropped. Olmert's posture as being strong on defense took another beating earlier this year, with the publication of a report highly critical of how Olmert and top IDF commanders misconceived and mismanaged the Lebanon war. At that point, a majority of Israelis polled said that Olmert should resign.

Fortunately for Olmert, he can count on other people's stupidity to buttress his own. First, as the Generalist point out, there are Israel's friends:

SecState Condi Rice talks about extending America's nuclear deterrence "shield" over Israel as a warning to Iran (or any other adversarial nation) not to consider using or threatening to use nuclear weapons against that country. It's not necessary for two reasons. First, the Cold War is over. No one's impressed by the paper tiger of threatened nuclear immolation. Second, Israel's leadership is scary enough with its 150 nuclear devices - they really don't need our "assistance" other than the $2-3 billion we give them, despite their continued disruptive behavior.

Even better, there are the obliging enemies of Israel, such as Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmenidijad, who may have made fewer threatening statements in the direction of Israel, but hasn't exactly shut up completely. So, the verbal exchanges between Tel Aviv and Tehran continue.

Therefore, there's every reason to think that Olmert is more than willing to turn up the volume about Iranian threats to drown out the clamor about his deeply troubled prime ministership. It's unclear how successful this effort will be, however. Not even the White House is happy with Transportation Minister Shaul Mofaz's statement that an Israeli strike on Iran was "unavoidable." Israelis are fimmediately worried about events in Gaza more than Iranian nuclear plans (whatever they really are). In other words, Olmert can't count on everyone's stupidity, all the time.

 

Alone again, naturally

Perhaps the most important feature of the new sanctions against Iran is their solitary nature. Once again, the Bush Administration takes an aggressive, confrontational stance without anyone standing side-by-side with the United States.

Under the circumstances, you'd expect someone--the Europeans, the UN, even some Middle Eastern countries--to be joining the United States in putting more pressure on the Iranian regime. Other nations are within more immediate range of any Iranian missiles; suitcase bombs are more easily smuggled into Greece or Saudi Arabia than the United States.

It's equally surprising to see the Administration willing to stand alone, if President Bush believes that there's any hope that sanctions might work. Unilateral economic punishment makes it harder for some financial institutions to do business with Iran. Other banks will undoubtedly replace them. Many Iranian assets may be ensnared for a while, but unless the Iranian regime was foolish enough to put all its money in Wells Fargo accounts, it's hardly a fatal blow.

These sanctions do have one immediate political effect: they give Khamenei, Ahmenidijad, and their ilk the opportunity to take the tired but effective anti-American rhetoric for yet another ride. That's especially easy to do, given that the United States is the only country implementing these sanctions. In the short term, at least, these sanctions help them more than hurt anyone in Iran who deserves the moniker "enemy of the United States." Average Iranians are sick of Ahmenidijad, whom many consider a clown, and Khamenei, who is the face of the Iran of 1980s, a time Iranians are eager to leave behind. Why then is the Administration, yet again, giving the Khameneis and Ahmenidijads new political capital?

The attempt to separate sanctions against the Revolutionary Guard and the Quds Force sounds, in theory, like the sort of distinction one should make. After all, the target for any potential economic hardship is not the Iranian public, but their execrable leaders. Unfortunately, the reality of economic sanctions is, as we know from past experience with Iraq, a lot messier.

Diplomats may have learned how to avoid the mistakes of the Iraqi sanctions, but that doesn't mean new techniques will be surgically precise. After all, the Revolutionary Guard is involved in many enterprises in Iraq, which in tun employ or serve a lot of people.

But maybe these sanctions aren't serious, so we don't have to dissect them carefully. Perhaps they're the result of an Administration who is frustrated with Iran, to the point where people close to the President feel that they have to support some action.

However, this is exactly the wrong time to be underscoring the isolation of the United States. Over 30 years ago, our allies stood on the sidelines as the United States struggled to extricate itself from "America's War" in Southeast Asia. While the US lost prestige and influence because of the Vietnam War, it slowly regained it. Other issues of joint concern, such as the Soviet threat and trouble in the Middle East, quickly occupied the US and its allies. Most of the bridges burned were rebuilt.

Today, we have another "America's War" in Iraq. In contrast, rather than build bridges, the Bush Administration continues to show how its ready to plunge into dangerous waters with little idea how to reach the other side.

More importantly, in the 1970s, the US only lost credibility because of the Vietnam misadventure. There were no great economic stakes, and none of the regional powers in Southeast Asia on the cusp of gaining nuclear weapons. Unfortunately, Iran is wholly unlike North Vietnam in those regards.

What exactly is the Iran strategy?

The Yorkshire Ranter puts the matter succinctly, with a minimum of ranting:

So, yes - Mottaki is quite right. Enough for the description of things as they are, though; what about things as they should be? Daniel Levy, writing in Ha'aretz, is sensible. He points out that the US and Israeli strategy towards Iran is hopelessly confused; the aim is left open between regime change and nonproliferation. The chief motivation for investing in nuclear technology is to prevent regime change, but no-one is willing to offer the regime security in return for nonproliferation; so why would they stop proliferatin'? And if they don't stop, where is your regime change then?

We faced a similar problem during the Cold War, on a much larger scale. We hated Soviet totalitarianism, and we were scared to death of nuclear war. Therefore, even the most bellicose Cold Warriors, such as John Foster Dulles, backed off the idea of "regime change" in Eastern Europe until the Soviet empire collapsed under the weight of its own corruption and stupidity. Better to have a sane, stable, albeit evil regime in Moscow than a bunch of frightened apparatchiks convinced that the apocalyptic confrontation between communism and capitalism was about to occur.

However, the Bush Administration isn't exactly trying to reach a detente with the mullahcracy, unless there's some very sub rosa diplomacy happening behind the scenes. So what exactly is the strategy here?

The Ranter also points out, as other national security bloggers have, that the United States hasn't deployed enough firepower to the Persian Gulf to make even a minimally credible military threat. So what's the point of the saber-rattling, exactly, if the scabbard is empty? Do top Administration officials think that the Iranian government isn't paying attention? Do they want the public confrontation to help cement the regime in place?

MERLIN was no wizard

"Outing" a CIA agent is definitely bad, arguably treasonous. But let's not forget how dangerously goofy Operation MERLIN was. The flawed nuclear plans the CIA passed to the Iranian government weren't flawed enough: the Russian scientist who posed as the source of the plans took a few minutes to correct them before tossing them over the transom into the Iranian consulate.

Treaties and obligations

Before the 9/11 attacks, the Bush Administration already felt unduly constrained by treaties and international law. Fancying themselves 21st-century Bismarcks, the members of Bush's team with real clout were eager to pursue a kind of vulgar Realpolitik. For them, it wasn't even worth pretending to have respect for the United Nations, the International Court of Justice, the Non-Proliferation Treaty, the Geneva Conventions, or other constraints on the full, muscular sovereignty of the world's only superpower. The 9/11 attacks only deepened this antipathy.

Now, the White House is feeling the backlash from this approach. In Iraq, the "coalition of the willing" proved far less enduring than, say, the NATO campaign in Afghanistan. The backlash is also undermining the Administration's Iran policies.

Case in point: several Central Asian countries, including Russia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, and and Turkmenistan, are now defending Iran's nuclear program. While no diplomatic pronouncement from Turkmenistan is likely to stop a US military strike against Iran, the unwillingness to base American forces, or grant overflight permission, is a kink in any serious military campaign against Iran:

No Caspian Sea country should let its territory be used by other countries "for aggressive or military operations against another Caspian state," said Putin, who is attending a meeting in Tehran of the leaders of the five countries that border the inland sea.

The leaders jointly made a similar statement, signaling the opposition of Iran's neighbors to any military action by the United States or its allies.

Imagine now an alternate history in which the United States had used the 9/11 attacks not to dismantle its treaty obligations, but to strengthen them; in which it did not go out of its way to insult the UN, but tried to make it easier for the UN to respond to threats like the Iranian nuclear program. This announcement might never have happened, or it may have stopped at expressing sympathy for Iran. ("You're on your own" would have been the obvious subtext, in that case.)

Now, having said that, I'll tell you that I don't get dewy-eyed over international law. I've known people whose earnestness about the UN and international law has blinded them to the realities of international politics. These true believers (you meet quite a few of them in academia, by the way) didn't notice that, at some point, they crossed the border from pragmatism into idealism. Now, they argue for policies that make perfect sense in a world that does not exist.

My favorite example of this sort  of true believer: the presentation I attended around 1990, in which the speaker argued that the reason why the Israelis had a nuclear weapons program was the US government's lack of enthusiasm for the Test Ban Treaty. Huh? I thought the reason the Israelis wanted nuclear weapons had something to do with the Arab-Israeli wars, not the bad example the United States might be setting.

Still, treaties and obligations have a constructive purpose. Your allies can always bail out of a collective endeavor, such as the first Iraq war, but only at a much higher political cost. Military agreements, such as NATO, give the allies a great deal of experience working with one another, and also increase the understanding about their respective security concerns. And so on.

On the same day that the Central Asian countries made their announcement, our European allies--the Administration's foils before the 2003 invasion of Iraq--are still debating how to deal with Iran. Even though any Iranian nuclear weapon will have a far easier time reaching Berlin or Paris than New York or Washington, the Europeans don't see the threat quite the same way as the Bush Administration does:

Britain and France, which initiated the call for joint European action, back tough new multilateral sanctions outside the U.N. Security Council. But other countries, notably Italy and Austria, want significantly less serious steps. Germany fell somewhere in between, said European and U.S. officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the debate is not public.

The US government can't even get the Europeans to back any sanctions on Iran's meddling in Iraq:

But there are already cracks across the Atlantic. While the United States is considering a package of actions that will effectively punish Iran for its intervention in Iraq as well as for its suspected nuclear program, the Europeans do not want to "confuse" the two issues, said a well-placed European official familiar with the debate.

Bush administration officials, for example, want to designate Iran's elite Quds Force as a supporter of terrorism under a presidential executive order. But in European eyes, the Quds Force is linked mainly to arming, training and funding militant factions in Iraq and elsewhere in the Middle East. "We want to keep our eyes on the nuclear file," said a second European official.

It's easy to understand the Europeans' position. While the sanctions might have merit, they also might bolster the US case for military action. In other words, they don't want 2007 to be a repeat of 2003.

Our wannabe Bismarcks should study the Iron Chancellor a bit more carefully. True, Bismarck did say, "All treaties between great states cease to be binding when they come in conflict with the struggle for existence." He also said, "Anyone who has ever looked into the glazed eyes of a soldier dying on the battlefield will think hard before starting a war." Another quotable quote has special relevance for the Bush Administration's problems rallying support: "When a man says he approves of something in principle, it means he hasn't the slightest intention of carrying it out in practice."

A bold new idea?

I'm sure that I'm not the only person who read the news of a new covert action program against Iran and thought, "Hmmm, what happened to the one we should already have?"

Well, it's something

It's a happy day when you wake up in the morning, the sun is shining, the coffee tastes good, and a possible discussion between the US Secretary of State and the Iranian Foreign Minister is considered to be unremarkable. The forum is yet another Middle East summit, in which the appearance of diplomacy is more important than what actually gets accomplished. (However, these forums always provide a mechanism for private discussions, beyond what the representatives are saying in public.)

We can only hope that Condoleeza Rice has more to discuss with Iran's government than just Iraq--or even just Iraq and Iran's nuclear program. Any discussion that focuses purely on one or both of these issues omits other Iranian interests, such as its energy projects with India, Russia, and other countries. In other words, while security issues top the list, compartmentalizing them removes what little leverage the US government has with Iran. In that case, private diplomacy will look much like public diplomacy at the Sharm al-Sheikh summit, a statement of positions.

[If the name Sharm al-Sheikh sounds familiar, the resort is the location of terrorist attacks in 2005, and an ugly incident in 1985, when an Egyptian soldier killed several Israeli tourists.]

A hostage here, a hostage there...

This analysis of Iran's strategy in holding British soldiers hostage is a bit misconceived:

What should truly worry Washington is that if this plan is successful, US soldiers are likely to be next in line for capture by Iran – and a manipulation of American public opinion just before the 2008 elections which would damage a Republican candidate supporting Bush’s stance would be perfect timing.

This is a plan that is already becoming more popular inside Iranian military circles, especially those belonging to the ultra-conservative Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). After the capture of four of the group’s operatives by US forces in northern Iraq, many IRGC members are eagerly waiting to settle scores with the US.

It is all too possible that the capture of the British soldiers can be seen as a trial run.

[You can practically here the creepy incidental music: Dunh-dunh-daaaaaaaah!]

We don't know exactly what happened in this incident, so it's a bit early to jump to conclusions. Iran's  normal MO is to encourage its allies, such as Hezbollah, to take Western hostages, rather than engage in that dirty business directly. The capture of the British troops is a notable break in that pattern, which makes one wonder about what's really happening here.

There are a lot of possible scenarios, many involving chance more than calculation. If factions in the Iranian regime do have a devious plan, I suspect it has more to do with convincing the chief American ally in the Iraq war, Great Britain, to withdraw earlier rather than later.

The skeptical eye

Just when you thought it was safe to trust National Intelligence Estimates again, ArmsControlWonk dissects the problems with recent NIEs about Iran's nuclear program. Fortunately, the more skeptical view arrives at a happier conclusion:

Recent public statements suggest that a new forthcoming NIE on Iran’s nuclear program will not significantly alter this estimate.  This is not to say that Iran is not making progress toward mastering enrichment, but merely that time remains for diplomacy.

In a similar vein, the Wonkster also takes a second look at the Tarhuna "weapons facility." In the 1990s, US officials warned that it was probably a Libyan chemical weapons facility. Er, um, wrong. There may have been good reasons to be suspicious, but US intelligence professionals seem to have lacked the hard evidence about Tarhuna that they had about its "sister" facility at Rabta.

I think we're turning Japanese

IN THE NEWS
As the Bush Administration tries to turn the national security bureaucracy and public opinion increasingly against Iran, the natural question is, How serious is the risk of war? With the American position in Iraq continuing to disintegrate, how could any sane person in the US government contemplate expanding the war? With memories of the mendacious PR campaign to invade Iraq, followed by the horribly botched occupation, still fresh, who would listen to the same pitchmen making the same pitch about Iran?

I’m sure that many people hope these questions are rhetorical. American military over-extension, which is doing grievous damage to the US Army and Marines, should be reason enough to take an attack on Iran off the table. (Since there’s little chance that air and sea power alone could eliminate the Iranian nuclear program, or change the Iranian government’s policies, ground attack must be considered as part of any campaign.)

Unfortunately, expanding the war into Iran is not inconceivable. If you think that rational human beings, given these circumstances, could only conclude one way, think again.

In August 1945, the Pacific War was in its final stages. The Imperial Japanese Navy had been smashed to bits, incapable even of assembling its few remaining ships into a fleet. Counterattacks had devolved into suicidal assaults against American ships, planes, or soldiers. The nation had a fraction of the oil needed to continue the war effort. Women and old men were being armed with sharpened wooden spears and drilled to defend the Japanese home islands. American bombers had dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and American firebombing attacks had inflicted even greater death and destruction.

Still, the same factions that had driven Japan into conflict with China, the USSR, Britain, and most disastrously, the United States, believed that Japan should continue to fight on. Four years earlier, these same generals and admirals had argued that the only way to solve the deadlock in China was a surprise attack on the United States. By 1945, victory may not be in their grasp, but these leaders believed that preserving national honor was more important than preventing continued, pointless losses. (Of course, having conflated themselves with the national interest, protecting their own careers was, by extension, protecting the nation.)

Had the Emperor not made an uncharacteristically direct, firm, and unambiguous decision to unconditionally surrender, Japan would have fought on. Earlier, the Emperor worried that the militarists might remove him in a coup, if he had made just such a decision. Now, he risked his throne, and possibly even his life, in ordering Japan to end the war.

Emperor Hirohito’s recorded announcement was recorded within the Imperial palace on August 14, to be played on the radio to the nation the following day. A junior officer, Major Kenji Hatanaka, learned of the decision and tried to stop it. Leading his unit of the Imperial Guard, he broke into the palace (a capital offense), searched the grounds for the recordings. Hatanaka threatened Chamberlain Yoshihiro Tokugawa and other members of the Imperial household, and it’s unclear what would have happened if he had confronted the Emperor. Fortunately, Hatanaka never found the recordings, even when he burst into a radio station that was to play the announcement. When the commander of the Imperial Guard, General Giishi Tanaka, learned of the attempted coup and regained control, Hatanaka committed suicide.

Before you object to the comparison, let’s get the obvious dissimilarities out of the way. No, the United States in 2007 is not exactly like Japan in 1945. For example, the US military is obedient to civilian authorities; officers in the Imperial Japanese Army regularly ignored orders from Tokyo, starting and running wars on their own. As awful as American policies on torture and renditioning have been, they do not match the pain and death inflicted by the Japanese military during the Pacific War.

However, if you look at Japan then, and the United States now, you might see some familiar faces. A determined faction of aggrieved nationalists, having gambled the nation’s fortunes on high-risk ventures (the invasion of China or Iraq), now see the expansion of the war as the only way out of the current deadlock. Rather than question the whole enterprise, or the way it is being fought—in other words, to accept criticism—these men would rather find a “solution” through the elimination of foreign support for their enemies (Chinese guerrillas or Iraqi insurgents).

These sorts of men go farther than history should allow if they are propelled by larger, transcendental concerns. In the 1930s and 1940s, many Japanese felt that their government, led by the divine person of the Emperor, should assert its role as a great power. Since 2001, a faction of unilateralists, supported by Christian fundamentalists who believe in a God-sanctioned mission for the United States, have used the 9/11 attacks as the starting point for an effort to re-shape the region of the world most troublesome for US power.

As the failures mount, the transcendental ingredients of this political brew immunize leaders from their own mistakes. Setbacks become a test of faith, not a rebuttal of the original strategy. Normal rules of conduct, such as the Geneva Conventions, become intolerable restraints. Internal dissent becomes a treasonous attack on national will. To hell with what the rest of the world thinks, as long as the government can continue the pattern of lies and apologies, for as long as it keeps foreign leaders stammering in frustration. The worse things get, the more faith has to outshine everything else—diplomacy, democracy, treaties, international law, even mundane tactical questions—for fear that Providence will turn its face away permanently. As nations, Japan in 1945 and the United States in 2007 are very different. As wars, Japan’s conflict in the Pacific is not the same as the US occupation of Iraq. However, many of the stock characters in these two dramas are the same. When these familiar members of the dramatis personae start talking about new enemies, we should take what they say very seriously. They certainly do.