The more I think about it, the more convinced I become that Bush will start a war in Iran this year in order to escape from the bunker.
That the US has a range of plans for a war in Iran is hardly a surprise – armies always plan for war against likely opponents. That the US is deployed more troops and a second aircraft carrier to the Gulf is also not a surprise – after all there is a war going on there right now, and at the moment, it is the only one they have on, so it is only natural to have more firepower on hand.
The real issue is political – to make progress in the region, Bush has two choices. One if the admit he was wrong so far, and make a radical U-turn in policy towards the region. Such a U-turn would lack credibility in the region, and is very unlikely given the hard-headedness of the neo-cons. They have been been pushing their world view for over 20 years now. Neo-con hawks have been arguing for radical transformation in the Middle East since the Reagan years. Perle has publicly published papers at least as long ago as ’96 arguing for a series of wars in the region to effect a transition to democracy. The neo-con camp have a worldview based on a simplisitic perception of the region and it is unlikely they can conceive of any other reality. The Neo-Cons are in the bunker, and the only way for them is out.
Since the election is in 2008, any attack on Iran needs to happen early enough not only to be saleable to the US electorate in Nov ’08, but also to the Republicans in the primaries. For the Bush White House, all of their failures in Iraq can be conveniently blamed on Syria and mostly on Iran – which has been ‘the enemy’ since the fall of the Shah. They can easily convince themselves that if they can whip Iran, the situation in Iraq will improve radically by early 2008. They thought that once they removed Saddam Hussein, Iraq would magically become a pro-western democracy. By the same token they probably expect that if they can remove or damage the credibility of the Ahmadinejad government, Iran will fall into their camp – after all, the opposition is liberal, and Ahmadinejad’s election victory came as a surprise to the West.
For the neo-con camp in Washington therefore, it is easy to see that the road to victory lies through Tehran – or at least through the bunkers of the Iranian nuclear programme. And for the neo-con’s, the best part of it is that they don’t even have to do the dirty work themselves – the Israeli Air Force will be happy to attack Iran’s nuclear sites if Washington lets them off the leash. Iran might take that on the chin and accept the lose of face, and Washington can deny responsibility for that attack. The neo-cons probably expect and hope Iran will retaliate, attacking US ships and bases in the Gulf. In their eyes, that would justify US airstrikes to destroy Iran’s military capabilities. They probably hope to ‘take out’ a significant proportion of the the conservative leadership cadres during those attacks. In their preferred scenario, the conservatives, with their confrontational policies, would lose face and resources, and the liberals would return to power in a more friendly Iran.
Unfortunately for the neo-cons, their view does not conform to reality; their dream date with Iran will turn out to be a nightmare. Any plan to shift the blame by having Israel carry out the first strike will be seen for what it is – a put up job. When Britain and France tried that over the Suez Canal in ’56, the whole world saw it for what it was and it marked the end of British and French power in the Middle East. A ‘war’ on Iran in ’07 could be the final nail in the coffin of US power in the region. The idea that they can win in Iran with airpower alone also defies reality – no state has ever been defeated only by airpower, the US has never succeeded in bombing a country to democracy and the normal response to air strikes is to rally the people behind the regime rather than turning them against it. The US can certainly sink the tiny Iranian navy, ground their airforce, scrap every armoured vehicle Iran has and destroy their nuclear programme; but none of those actually matter to the war in Iraq. Iran will still have thousands of Pasdaran who will be more willing to hike over to Iraq with rifles and grenades to feed the civil war there.
The military reality isn’t really the problem – the real problem is with the distorted view of the world that blinds the neo-cons in Washington. Bush and the people around him still think and talk in terms of winning in Iraq. For them, the only reason they have not yet won is because of Iranian interference; like a man struggling up a mountain, they think the summit is just over the next ridge and then it’ll be downhill all the way to the apres-ski.
There are many lessons from history to show the errors of the neo-con view but in spite of those lessons, I think Bush will have a go at Iran, probably in the next 3-6 months, simply because he and his advisors cannot see any other reality; and even if they could, no one would believe them anyway.
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