Month: September 2012

On Friday, Patrick Clawson, the director of research at the pro-Israel think-tank the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, suggested that the US should work covertly and through international means of force to provoke Iran to take the first shot against the US or Israel. Otherwise, he says, starting a war with Iran will be really hard to accomplish.

“Crisis initiation,” he calls it. It’s very hard to do. And therefore “it’s very hard for me to see how the United States President can get us to war with Iran.”

Clawson recites a number of past incidents in history that presidential administrations have been able to use to justify going to war: the attack on Pearl Harbor, the sinking of the Lusitania, the Gulf of Tonkin, the explosion of the USS Maine, the attack on Fort Sumter…

Finally, he advises: “If the Iranians aren’t going to compromise, it would be best if somebody else started the war.”

I don’t think this reveals some evil conspiracy theory, but it does reveal how many hawks in Washington think about foreign policy. As Reza Sanati, a research fellow at the Middle East Studies Center, explained in the National Interest last week:

In the narrative of regime change, the American rationale is not difficult to understand. According to this scenario, Washington would keep pressure on the EU to cut off its oil exports from Iran, place extraterritorial sanctions on Iran’s banking infrastructure that impede international business and put massive pressure on Iran’s existing trade partners. Subsequent damage to the Islamic Republic’s revenues and thus the average Iranian’s quality of life would put intolerable strain upon the regime.

The Iranian government would either cave into U.S. demands, be overthrown by popular uprising or lash out militarily – a move that would legitimize American aggression against Iran. Thus, with this approach, Washington feels that it has Tehran boxed in. Even if Iran capitulates, the United States may not remove any of the sanctions; it could string out relief by claiming human-rights abuses or support for terrorism. If sanctions lead to street demonstrations, the United States may entertain what Vali Nasr has referred to as the Libya scenario: “economic pressure causing political unrest that invites intervention by foreign powers that feel safe enough to interfere in the affairs of a non-nuclear-armed state.” Moreover, as many U.S. hawks have suggested, it would be preferable for Iran’s government, under economic pressure, to lash out at the American behemoth in a rash, uncalculated way, therefore providing a casus belli that puts the United States in a sympathetic light.

The Obama administration does seem to have ruled out an attack on Iran (for a nuclear weapons program it doesn’t have) at least for now, partly because so many in official Washington oppose it. But long term, this is how policymakers think in the Imperial City.

(h/t Scott Horton)

Many in official Washington are expressing outrage over suspicions that Iraq is allowing neighboring Iran to use its airspace to fly military equipment to the Syrian regime. Iraq has denied the allegations and asked the US to provide proof that the flights contain anything other than humanitarian supplies, as Iran claims. The question of whether Iran is actually using Iraqi airspace to send Assad weapons is not really the interesting issue here (who would be surprised if that’s exactly what’s going on?).

More interesting is that the US is pretending to object to other countries violating Iraq’s sovereignty and using Iraqi airspace for nefarious purposes. Indeed, this is precisely what the US has done to Iraq for two decades. In the context of this feigning outrage about violating Iraqi airspace and of providing Iraq with American-made anti-aircraft capabilities because of it, Lt. Gen. Robert L. Caslen told the New York Times that “Iraq recognizes they don’t control their airspace, and they are very sensitive to that.” Each time Turkish fighter jets enter Iraq’s airspace to bomb Kurdish targets, he said, Iraqi officials “see it, they know it and they resent it.” Micah Zenko at the Council on Foreign Relations responds:

As the countries’ occupying power, the United States controlled Iraqi airspace from April 2003 until the last sector was transferred in October 2011 to Iraq. As part of that role, the United States leveraged access to Iraqi airbases to launch surveillance drone missions over Iran. At the same time, several of Iran’s more capable spy drones like the Ababil III were easily tracked and shot down by U.S. fighter jets over Iraq.

Prior to the U.S. invasion in March 2003, the United States played the predominant role in enforcing the Iraqi southern and northern no-fly zones (NFZs)—encompassing sixty percent of Iraq—for twelve years. Altogether, the United States has had excellent situational awareness of Iraqi airspace for nearly twenty years, until handing over control to Baghdad in October 2011.

What makes Caslen’s comments disturbing is that between April 2003 and October 2011, Turkish F-16s routinely entered Iraqi airspace to attack Kurdish targets—suspected members of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).  These attacks were not only permitted by the United States, but U.S. manned and unmanned systems provided targeting information about suspected PKK camps to Turkey. This arrangement was cemented in November 2007 when the United States and Turkey established a joint combined intelligence fusion cell in Ankara to process all incoming intelligence on the PKK.

On occasion, such Turkish attacks have been devastating to Kurdish civilians living in northern Iraq. Every single State Department Human Rights report—2007, 2008, 2009, and 2010—since the U.S.-Turkey cell opened warned of civilians casualties in counterterrorism operations where the PKK was the intended target. On December 28, 2011, a U.S. Predator drone provided video imagery of a caravan of suspected PKK militants near the Turkish border. After Turkish officers directed the drone to fly elsewhere, Turkish aircraft attacked the caravan with four sorties and killed thirty-four civilians. To this day, the United States provides targeting intelligence to the Turkish Air Force.

General Caslen’s comments exemplify how blind official Washington is to how US policy might be perceived by those living under the boot of American imperialism. He says Iraq resents Turkish overflights. And when Sen. Joseph Lieberman visited Iraq earlier this month to bully Baghdad into stopping Iranian flights to Syria over Iraq, he claimed it was intrusive to Iraq’s sovereignty. Neither of these imperialists can see that Iraq might have resented the decade-long no-fly-zone the US imposed on Iraq in the 1990s. Or, say, the complete control of Iraqi airspace following an unprovoked invasion in 2003. Or even US cooperation with Turkey as it violates Iraqi airspace and even bombs the Kurdish region. They are blind.

Even as the US is pressuring Baghdad to stop being complicit in alleged arming of the Assad regime, Washington continues to be complicit in sending arms into Syria as well – except to the criminal rebel militias instead of the regime.

What gives the US and its allies the right to send aid and weapons to the Syrian opposition, while such actions are prohibited for Iraq or Iran, is not clear. The same hypocrisy holds in almost every case of international relations. What is acceptable and just for America, is cruel and nefarious for its enemies.

Nobel Laureate Shirin Ebadi, according to a piece by Nazila Fathi at Foreign Policy, has been perpetually harassed by the Iranian regime, which hates her political activism and dissent. She now lives a life in exile, still fighting to expose Tehran’s human rights abuses. But now she says a more troubling problem has arisen:

War with Israel, she says, may rescue the Iranian regime at a time when it is extremely unpopular at home and is clinging to power with an iron fist. “It is the only thing that can save the regime,” she said. “A war will stir nationalistic feelings and rally the people behind the government to defend the country. It will be catastrophic for the [Iranian] people, the country, and the region, but it will save Iran’s rulers.”

Official sources in Washington have repeatedly cited this as just one reason, among many, to refrain from bombing Iran for a nuclear weapons program it doesn’t have. Demonstrated in part by what went on during the 1980s Iran-Iraq war, US officials (most of them, believe it or not, oppose military attack on Iran) note that however unhappy the Iranian populace is with the regime in Tehran, an attack from the outside would rally Iranian behind their government. Like the lies we heard about being greeted as liberators in Iraq, Iranians would not lie back and capitulate. They would retaliate.

A recent report by former government officials, national security experts and retired military officers released earlier this month found that “US and/or Israeli strikes are more likely to unify the population behind the government than to generate resistance,” as the neoconservatives believe they can generate. The assessment also found that to achieve anything more than a temporary setback in Iran’s nuclear program would require a full scale military invasion, occupation, and regime change. And “given Iran’s large size and population, and the strength of Iranian nationalism, we estimate that the occupation of Iran would require a commitment of resources and personnel greater than what the US has expended over the last 10 years in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars combined.”

The report’s warnings didn’t end there. A US and/or Israeli strike – which the Obama administration as virtually ruled out but which could very well occur in a Romney administration – would also trigger an uncontrollable region wide war fought with both conventional means and unconventional, guerrilla warfare retaliation throughout the region, prompting huge increases in the recruitment capabilities of terrorist groups like al-Qaeda. Finally, such an attack would incentivize Iran to kick out international inspectors and to reconstitute their defunct nuclear weapons program.

A new report from the Stanford and NYU schools of law has found that the US drone war in Pakistan is “counterproductive” and “terrorizes” the civilian population. Read the report here. See this video below accompanying the release of the report.

Update: The Independent has posted testimonies from Pakistani locals suffering from the drone war:

“The villagers brought us the news.”

Khairullah Jan, whose brother was killed in a drone attack.

“I was … going to my house. That’s when I heard a drone strike and I felt something in my heart. I thought something had happened, but we didn’t get to know until the next day. That’s when all the villagers came and brought us news that [my brother] had been [killed]… I was drinking tea when I found out. [My] entire family was there.”

“My father’s body was scattered in pieces.”

Waleed Shiraz, who was studying for a BA before he was injured by a strike.

“My father was asleep … and I was studying near by … [When we got hit], [my] father’s body was scattered in pieces and he died immediately, but I was unconscious for three to four days … [Since then], I am disabled. My legs have become so weak and skinny that I am not able to walk.”

“Children, women, they are all affected.”

Firoz Ali Khan, a shopkeeper in the town of Miranshah.

“I have been seeing drones since the first one appeared about four to five years ago … [We see drones] hovering [24 hours a day but] we don’t know when they will strike … People are afraid of dying … Children, women, they are all psychologically affected. They look at the sky to see if there are drones… [They] make such a noise that everyone is scared.”

Via Micah Zenko, the Washington Post last week reminded us of official US policy regarding cyber-warfare:

Cyberattacks can amount to armed attacks triggering the right of self-defense and are subject to international laws of war, the State Department’s top lawyer said Tuesday.

Spelling out the U.S. government’s position on the rules governing cyberwarfare, Harold Koh, the department’s legal adviser, said a cyber-operation that results in death, injury or significant destruction would probably be seen as a use of force in violation of international law.

Unless, of course, America is the one who is waging the cyber-warfare. Followed logically, the State Department’s legal view here would mean that when the US attempted to destroy Iran’s centrifuges with a cyber attack in the form of a virus called Stuxnet, Iran would have been within its legal rights to bomb the United States. But US legal views are not absolute; they depend on who wields power.

The Obama administration’s decision to remove the Iranian cult Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK) from the State Department’s list of officially designated terrorist groups was a long time coming. But no single act by the administration so crystalizes the hypocrisy and recklessness of US postures towards Iran.

The MEK has a long history of terrorist activity going back to the 1970s and has the goal of overthrowing the Iranian government. Because of this goal, there has been a big money push by many influential people in Washington to get the group de-listed, presumably to make it eligible for US funding to act against the Iranian regime.

Please ignore the fact that these political elites that received payments from the MEK in order to advocate on their behalf appear to be in violation of laws prohibiting material support for “terrorists.” Also ignore the fact that  George W. Bush included Saddam Hussein’s support for terrorists like MEK in his propaganda justifying the invasion of Iraq in 2003. “Iraq shelters terrorist groups including the Mujahedin-e-Khalq Organization,” reads a document in the archives of the White House’s website, “which has used terrorist violence against Iran and in the 1970s was responsible for killing several US military personnel and US civilians.” As recently as 2007, a State Department report warned that the MEK, retains “the capacity and will” to attack “Europe, the Middle East, the United States, Canada, and beyond.”

As Glenn Greenwald pointed out yesterday, whether the MEK is still an officially designated “terrorist” group has exactly zero to do with whether or not they carry out terrorism:

The history of the US list of designated terrorist organizations, and its close cousin list of state sponsors of terrorism, is simple: a country or group goes on the list when they use violence to impede US interests, and they are then taken off the list when they start to use exactly the same violence to advance US interests. The terrorist list is not a list of terrorists; it’s a list of states and groups which use their power to defy US dictates rather than adhere to them.

This was also exemplified earlier this month when the Obama administration decided to officially designate the Haqqani network a terrorist organization. The Haqqanis are a branch of the Taliban that launches attacks on occupying forces in Afghanistan. The Reagan administration funneled money and weapons to Islamic fighters in Afghanistan against the Soviets in 1980s. Back then, the Haqqani network were freedom fighters. Now the US says they’re officially terrorists.

And as Greenwald explains, “Saddam was put on it when he allied with the Soviets in the early 1980s, then was taken off when the US wanted to arm and fund him against Iran in the mid-1980s, then he was put back on in the early 1990s when the US wanted to attack him.”

Aside from the clear-as-day hypocrisy of this list, the decision to de-list MEK will have deleterious effects for US policy towards Iran. The Obama administration has stubbornly refused to reciprocate to Iranian concessions in the international negotiations over their nuclear program and has imposed harsh economic sanctions. The two things the administration had going for it was the fact that it was pretty clear to the world that they were blocking an immediate Israeli strike and also that negotiations are continuing, probably in an attempt to deal with it more freely after the US presidential elections. But now that the US has de-listed MEK and opened up the potential for more direct support of the group, which argues for the overthrow of the Iranian regime, how can the administration claim its policy is one of engagement and negotiations as opposed to subversion and aggression?

As Paul Pillar wrote yesterday:

The regime in Tehran will tacitly welcome this move (while publicly denouncing it) because it helps to discredit the political opposition in Iran—a fact not lost on members of the Green Movement, who want nothing to do with the MEK. The MEK certainly is not a credible vehicle for regime change in Iran because it has almost no public support there. Meanwhile, the Iranian regime will read the move as another indication that the United States intends only to use subversion and violence against it rather than reaching any deals with it.

So why de-list the MEK? The only credible answer is that the US aims to undermine the Iranian regime. And even though MEK has virtually zero support in Iran, and despite the embarrassing history the US has of aiding dissident groups in rival countries, Washington seems to view the MEK as instrumental in undermining Tehran. Furthermore, according to US officials, Israel has supported and is supporting the MEK to carry out terrorism in Iran and targeting Iranian nuclear scientists for assassination. Pillar says it might have been nice to mention this when the State Department was de-listing MEK, “But that, of course, would have required the politically inconvenient act of publicly addressing Israeli terrorism.” Better to just de-list MEK than to have Israel supporting an officially designated terrorist group.

MEK’s de-listing very well might come along with increased Israeli support for them…and increased US support.