| Is Iran
the next target?
Now that Iraq has been conquered, hard-line American Jews,
supporters of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, are urging
the United States to overthrow the Islamic government in Iran.
A systematic campaign of accusations, lies, propaganda and
disinformation, very similar to the one which preceded the
attack on Iraq, is now being mounted against Iran by a cabal
of neoconservatives in Washington.
As in the case of Iraq,
the real reasons for the campaign against Iran remain
uncertain and ambivalent. Is the goal to spread “democracy” in
the Middle East so as to make the United States safe from
“terrorism?” Or is it to destroy any regional challenge to
Israel? The most likely explanation is that it is a
combination of both. The neoconservatives, who now dictate the
pace and direction of US foreign policy, consider that
American and Israeli interests are identical and cannot be
separated.
To understand the way American opinion is
shaped, one needs to read and listen to what is being said in
the American press and in Washington’s numerous right-wing
think tanks. The Weekly Standard is a leading organ of neocon
opinion. Its editor, William Kristol, one of the most strident
voices in favor of the Iraq war, has now turned his bellicose
attention to Iran. In a lead editorial on 12 May he wrote:
“The liberation of Iraq was the first great battle for the
future of the Middle East. The creation of a free Iraq is now
of fundamental importance. We are already in a death struggle
with Iran over the future of Iraq. The theocrats ruling Iran
understand that the stakes are now double or nothing as
success in Iraq sounds the death knell for the Iranian
revolution.
“So we must help our friends and allies in
Iraq block Iranian-backed subversion. And we must also take
the fight to Iran, with measures ranging from public diplomacy
to covert operations. Iran is the tipping point in the war on
proliferation, the war on terror, and the effort to reshape
the Middle East. If Iran goes pro-Western and anti-terror,
positive changes in Syria and Saudi Arabia will follow much
more easily. And the chances for an Israeli-Palestinian
settlement will greatly improve.
“On the outcome of the
confrontation with Tehran, more than any other, rests the
future of the Bush Doctrine and, quite possibly, the
Bush presidency and prospects for a safer world.”
I
have quoted Kristol’s editorial at length because it is a
clear expression of the neocon’s determination to pressure,
even blackmail, President George W. Bush into using American
power to “reshape” the Middle East in Israel’s interest.
At a conference at the Saban Center in Washington on May
14, Kristol enlarged on his views by remarking that a US
strike against Iran might possibly take place before the
November 2004 American presidential elections.
Another
leading neocon guru, Michael Ledeen, who throughout the 1990s
called for an attack against Iraq, is now pressing as
persistently for an attack on Iran. The new “Center for
Democracy in Iran,” an American group calling for regime
change in Tehran, is largely his creation. The flavor of his
approach may be grasped from a speech he delivered at the
Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs in Washington
on April 30, entitled “Time to focus on Iran The Mother
of Modern Terrorism.”
In it, he declared: “The time for
diplomacy is at an end; it is time for a free Iran, free Syria
and free Lebanon.” A week later, on May 6, at a conference at
the American Enterprise Institute, another leading neocon
think tank, Ledeen repeated his call for a US attack on Iran,
in which he was supported by Uri Lubrani, a long-time adviser
to Israel’s Defense Ministry and architect of Israel’s
disastrous “security zone” in Lebanon, which was only wound up
when Israeli forces were finally driven out of south Lebanon
in 2000.
In their campaign against Iran, neocons and
pro-Israeli lobbyists are joined by exiled Iranian
monarchists, active among the large Iranian community in
California, who pin their hopes on Reza Pahlavi, son of the
late pro-Israeli Shah. In a recent interview with the Italian
newspaper La Stampa, Reza Pahlavi declared: “The fall of the
current regime would not only liberate the forces of a great
nation, it would free the world of an imminent atomic risk and
the biggest terrorist network in existence.”
Inflammatory
accusations leveled against Iran by US officials, by friends
of Israel, right-wing ideologues and others are given wide
prominence on American television and in the mainstream
American press. They usually include the following: that
Iran’s nuclear program has reached such an advanced stage that
it might soon test a nuclear weapon; that it is developing
biological weapons and is seeking foreign help in developing
chemical weapons; that it supports such “terrorist”
organizations as Hizbullah in Lebanon as well as militant
Shiite groups in Iraq and Afghanistan; and, most recently and
sensationally, that the suicide bombings against residential
compounds in Riyadh were planned by top Al-Qaeda commanders
sheltering in Iran,
According to the American TV program
Nightline, Al-Qaeda leaders in Iran include Seif al-Adel,
wanted in connection with the 1998 bombings of two American
embassies in East Africa. Needless to say, no firm evidence in
support of these serious allegations is ever produced. It is
noteworthy, however, that the charge of Iranian-Al Qaeda
complicity strongly resembles the accusation of links between
Iraq and Al-Qaeda made repeatedly against Baghdad in the
run-up to the war but of course never documented or
proven.
In spite of the clamor from the neocons, few
experts predict an early American military assault on Iran.
For one thing, fear of a new wave of terrorist attacks,
following the bombings in Riyadh and Casablanca, has captured
America’s attention, almost to the exclusion of other foreign
policy worries. For another, the United States has its hands
full in Iraq, where resistance is mounting to the American
occupation and where the task of putting the country back on
its feet is proving far more difficult than Washington had
anticipated.
For all these reasons, some experts believe
that a military strike against Iran by either the US or Israel
or by both together would only become a
possibility if there were convincing proof that Iran was about
to test a nuclear weapon or that an Al-Qaeda cell located in
Iran had attacked US or Israeli targets in the past or was
about to do so in the immediate future.
Rather than risk a
major military assault, these experts believe that, if the
United States and Israel wanted to send a strong message to
Iran, they were more likely to use special forces against
Iranian proxies in Iraq or Lebanon, or seek to undermine the
Tehran regime by encouraging separatist tendencies among
Iran’s Azeri and Baluchi communities, in an effort to
destabilize the country.
The truth would seem to be that
policy-makers and opinion formers in the United States are
divided over what to do about Iran. Some follow the
president’s lead in characterizing the Islamic Republic as the
leading member of the “Axis of Evil.” They identify political
Shiism backed by Iran as one of America’s most dangerous
enemies and they fear that Iraq can never be stabilized unless
Iran and its Shiite supporters in Iraq are neutralized a
totally impossible task unless the Shiite community is
slaughtered en masse!
A radically different point of view,
however, is that America’s most fearsome opponent is not
Shiiism but fundamentalist Sunni Islam, as preached and
practiced by Osama bin Laden and other Islamic extremists.
According to this view, the United States should forge an
alliance with Shiite Iran and encourage the emergence in Iraq
of a Shiite-dominated government, thereby creating a
“friendly” counterweight to the Sunni-ruled oil states of the
Gulf. There have been repeated references in the American
press to discreet meetings of US and Iranian representatives
in Geneva, suggesting that some sort of dialogue is, in fact,
in progress.
The policy debate in Washington has rarely
been sharper. Following the swift military victory in Iraq,
the neocons imagined they had gained in influence and routed
their critics. Now, however, with Iraq in chaos, terrorism
rampant, Sharon unrestrained, and the dollar and the American
economy heading lower, the tide is turning once again. The
strategic wisdom of the neocons is being questioned.
The
sensible opinion would seem to be that America will need to
show some success in rebuilding Iraq and resolving the
Arab-Israeli conflict before it turns its attention to the
mullahs in Tehran.
Patrick Seale, a veteran Middle East analyst,
wrote this commentary for The Daily Star
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