open Democracy News Analysis - Iran: war and surprise, Paul Rogers - Comments

deteodoru on "Iran: war and surprise"

deteodoru — Mon, 05 Nov 2007 20:37:02 +0000

No one ever advocated dong nothing....In the West we have an awful lot we could do...and do it without radical surgery with areal bombardment and blasting guns by intel blind soldiers-- like surgeons who have no idea about human anatomy. Abd worse, we are not in Iraq to exterpate a cancerous evil dictator, but to find and steal the Iraqi goose's golden eggs: IT'S OIL! Petraeus, like Franks will do "his" job as assigned him, retire with four stars and will never look back on whether he was part of a war crime...he was, afterall, "following orders." But those of us who became delirious in our support of Bush have to take blame for what he did and why, no matter what the point at which we supported his taking of the US Presidency. In medicine, rule#1 is: ABOVE ALL DO NO HARM....Can you say that for our "war on terror," Mr. Jones?

polali on "Iran: war and surprise"

polali — Tue, 25 Sep 2007 10:49:26 +0000

If there is a war with Iran, Kosovo won´t be the yardstick. Not politically, morally and definitely not economically. Even multilateral lead engagements as in 1999 can be evaluated as more successful and effective than unilateral ones, four arguments against this thought have been left: The negative impact on the region after bombing strategic points. The strengthening effect after an attack from outside which brings the mass behind the regime. The expansion of repression to maintain control toward a democratic movement to prevent a topple. There will be a freezing climate change between the US-Iran relations, which indeed can´t be more decreasing.

dbaker221 on "Iran: war and surprise"

dbaker221 — Tue, 18 Sep 2007 19:56:19 +0000

After Sen Clinton becomes President I would hope that, if there is a war with Iran, it could be conducted more on the lines of the Kosovo engagement during her husband's administration, i.e., with minimal casualties and virtually all objectives met. No "exit plan" required, as US involvement was overwhelmingly from the air. Simultaneously I would hope we can finally get moving on alternative energy. Perhaps with a Democratic white house and Congress we can move toward that goal. A real commitment, similar to the Manhattan project or the space program of the 60's would be in order.

alfredo.bremont on "Iran: war and surprise"

alfredo.bremont — Mon, 17 Sep 2007 22:58:23 +0000

This is just a viet-nam rerun, Washington will loose the war in fact it already lost the war, however those soldiers that die are not part of the bourgeois elite of the Americas they are the poor the underprivileged the immigrants and the needy. Soldiers that are more in need of money than fame, they are not even patriotic they are just there for the money. In conclusion Washington does not care at all how many Americans will die in Iraq and Iran in the coming future. We the reporters and writers are far away from this holocaust. And now we got the French who have decided is time to kill some of their own citizens, just like napoleon did to his own kind. The foreign French minister has said. Prepare yourself for war while I watch on television how you die. You can be certain that it is not his son who will be on the front line but your own. The result is the US will withdraw from the Middle East, however the economy will be refurbished and the French American partnership established. Pension plans and the new born generations will rebuild the once again battered nation, jobs will be created on the coffins and battered limbs of American citizens, in short Washington does not give a hood about his own people and you have experience that in viet nam and other wars, what Washington wants is profits from the oil resources and complete obedience from the people it oppresses. Liberty and democracy is a realm of the past today we exist on democratic dictatorships. Sad to have such a beautiful species as the human kind being reduce into a barbaric thing.

englishman on "Iran: war and surprise"

englishman — Sat, 15 Sep 2007 11:47:43 +0000

Paul Rogers makes some astute observations here: there is still the neocon grand plan (for that read American Enterprise Institute) to "reorganise" the ME and, despite the setbacks of the less than favourable outcome of the Iraq war, there are influential people who still regard it as only slightly deviated from its original course and far from being dead. These people still have considerable power within the US administration and, as was alluded to by Paul Rogers, this can be seen in the change of emphasis in diverting attention towards the evils of Iran. However, although this plays the neocon game, it also fits in with a policy of claiming an element of success within Iraq and pursuading Congress that "the surge" had a beneficial effect. The effect of General Patreus' speech is exactly to give comfort that the policy was working and, what is more, that this will allow an honorable withdrawal in the future. Nobody really thinks that a significant withdrawal is possible for some years and it is of strategic advantage to have a US presence in Iraq for the foreseeable future. I can't see a Democrat government supporting the neocons, so these people certainly would wish to invoke some move to make their plan the only route available, and setting up a conflict with Iran could be one way. Whether this will occur, and there are plenty of rumours to suggest this is starting and that the political preconditioning is underway, will depend on what legacy Bush wishes to leave. More importantly, there is now a question of how much the Republican party will support him. The pressure on Iran, both directly and from the innuendo, can all be seen as acceptable, and even worthwhile, so nobody is going to oppose this from within the party. The question is really whether this is bluff and bluster, or is it the start of a build up to a military strike.

johnevans7 on "Iran: war and surprise"

johnevans7 — Fri, 14 Sep 2007 13:07:36 +0000

700 words and not a single constructive thought. Glad I am not being treated by you ‘Dr’ Teodoru. Unwilling to operate, yet forbidden to pray. When and how the cancerous Saddam Hussein and Baathist party needed excising can be debated, but whenever that malignancy was removed, a trauma was inevitable. It appears to me, what is now going on Iraq is ethnic cleansing, interspersed with gang warfare. Pretty much what happened in Northern Ireland in the late 20th Century. All the US can now do is to keep a lid on the violence and avoid a repeat of the Balkans conflict when Yugoslavia, another ‘artificial state’ disintegrated, or what happened in Ruanda, where millions died because we all looked the other way. What makes Iraq much more difficult to deal with is the pressure from external sources, particularly Iran’s intellectually challenged President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad with his stooges the Iranian Revolutionary Guards. Perhaps Iran’s (population 70 million) motives are less a fraternal concern for brother Shias, and more a wish to re-establish an Achaemenid empire. Sealing the porous Iranian border, and making it difficult for suicide bombers to get to Syria, should help reduce the bloodshed. As a plus Al-Qaeda’s reliance on imported suicide bombers leads me to believe your average Iraqi is not as dumb as some of his or her, Arab neighbours. “The men who try to do something and fail are infinitely better than those who try to do nothing and succeed.” Lloyd Jones.

deteodoru on "Iran: war and surprise"

deteodoru — Fri, 14 Sep 2007 04:41:14 +0000

Quite a week! First we had Gen. Petraeus testifying before Congress and the press, sounding like an oncologist trying to obtain "informed consent" from a patient with lung cancer for a torturous cis-platen treatment, insisting that IF YOU DO NOTHING YOU WILL DIE. Though he knows it does little against solid tumors, it's the only chemo left in his armamentarium, but of course, he can't tell you that. Along with him we had Amb. Crocker sounding like the encouraging nurse pep-talking us in self-contradictory terms switching from hype to down side equivocation in order to encouraging, as the burning pain rages through the veins, without overstepping the doctor's attempted making the best of a grim prognosis; well, that's a nurse's (or an ambassador's) job. And finally we had "Decider" President George sounding like a Faith Healer incanting his wordsmiths' trite lines as if ancient biblical texts. His message was simple: stay in Iraq and PRAY, you live; PRAY FOREVER, you live forever...therefore, we're going to be in Iraq praying forever as in Korea-- just like poor Tony Snow, "turning the [Iraq] cancer from a fatal disease to a chronic disease." But the actual tumor is the Bush Administration, so foreign to the American body politic, and the oil interests it serves. Bush has turned the Iraq physiology into a pathology. He has turned Sunnis against Shias with sectarian policies ever since Bremer's first day in 2003 as colonial master of Iraq. Then, contrary to all advice to postpone elections because Iraq is not ready, Bush imposed elections that put the Shia in power; then he sent our troops to assassinate Shia militias and their leaders; Iran inevitably offered sanctuary and supplies to the Shias. In the meantime, Bush massacred Sunnis in Anbar with air and firepower until they turned against alQaeda. A study done by a military expert shows that all intended PERMANENT American bases planned for Iraq are in Anbar, not in the Kurdish territories. Now, all Iraqis hear him call for permanent presence in Iraq, as in Korea, enraging the same anti-occupation Sunnis in Anbar that he claims are on our side. So now he insists that the Shia government in Baghdad will eventually come our way. Actually, the prize is Shia South Iraq's very "sweet" (high energy) oil that only costs $1 to fill a barrel, one tenth of the cost in any other countries. But the British called it quits because they didn't want to go to war with Iran; the Shia there are in intra-Shia civil war. So there you have it: all we can do is PRAY, not for a cure, but to keep going...pray forever to keep going forever. Might I point out that the British tried that in the 1920s and lost? Bush's whole political life is based on Rove's obsessive belief in the infamous Barnaby saying: THERE'S A SUCKER BORN EVERYDAY, even though he had to get rid of Rove because Rove got caught, as did Gonzales. And so, let us pray...forever, so that God will enable us to stay in Iraq forever...and in case we lose faith, let's remember that Dr. Petraeus said that if we do nothing (as in pulling out our troops) the cancer will kill us. So read Bush's "RETURN ON SUCCESS" to really means pray so we can stay...forever. Why not? Don't all Americans believe in praying...forever? Meanwhile, that OTHER cancer in Afghanistan is metastasizing to Pakistan and beyond; but pray, Americans, pray, for Petaeus told you that if you do nothing you will die. Daniel E. Teodoru

Iran: war and surprise, Paul Rogers

Thu, 13 Sep 2007 18:14:24 +0000

The fallout of the war in Iraq has helped to make the George W Bush administration one of the least popular in US political history. The domestic political repercussions are a matter of intense debate and speculation as the campaign for the presidential and congressional elections in November 2008 gets underway.

It is likely that the outcome of the elections will be greatly affected by the progress of United States efforts in Iraq and the experience of its military forces. The most recent of a number of assessments of the US's current predicament - the reports, and testimony before Congress, of General David Petraeus (the US military commander in Iraq) and Ryan Crocker (the US ambassador there) - have drawn intense media coverage in this respect.

There is a danger here, however: too narrow a focus on the domestic political implications of the Iraq imbroglio creates a tendency to ignore the fact that Iraq (and the US story there) is only one element in a broader regional picture (see Volker Perthes, "Iraq in 2012: four scenarios", 11 September 2007). If the accumulated US effort in Iraq is seen in this light, a deeper logic might be discerned in which not Iraq, but Iran, is coming to play a central role in United States calculations.

A grand narrative

This underlying shift is apparent in five recent developments, which can be regarded as components in a reassembling "narrative" designed to direct public attention from Baghdad towards Tehran. The fact that several of the story's elements are in tension with each other does not prevent it from acquiring great potency for its architects (see "Baghdad spin, Tehran war", 6 September 2007).

The first component is the transformation of a complex insurgency in Iraq into a simplistic war against al-Qaida. President Bush and others have repeatedly identified the insurgency within Iraq as being al-Qaida-inspired; this means that the activity role of a wide range of other Sunni groups opposed to the US occupation, and the even larger role of Shi'a militias.

Paul Rogers is professor of peace studies at Bradford University, northern England. He has been writing a weekly column on global security on openDemocracy since 26 September 2001

The second part of the narrative is the highlighting of the military "surge" strategy, the deployment since February 2007 of six successive contingents of additional US forces on a monthly basis. The surge was the Bush administration's answer to the two main proposals of the James A Baker / Lee H Hamilton report of December 2006: regional diplomatic engagement (including with Iran) and progressive troop withdrawals. The repudiation of the defeatist outlook of Baker/Hamilton (whose report, it is easy to forget, was anticipated as much as that of General Petraeus) was for the White House and its supporters the forceful and correct response to a continuing threat to America.

The new strategy has been confronted with severe problems on the ground in Iraq, making its authoritative justification a vital political requirement. The third element of the narrative enters here: the Petraeus report and congressional hearings (the Crocker testimony is more problematic for the administration, given its bleaker conclusions on the Iraqi government's political progress).

The evidence presented in Petraeus's digest of US experience in Iraq is remarkably selective in its reference-points. Moreover, it tends to ignore the evidence (revealed, for example, in an ABC/BBC poll in Iraq reported on 10 September that records a marked increase in Iraqis' sense of domestic insecurity. True, there has been some decrease in violence in Baghdad and in Anbar province; but violence has increased elsewhere, especially in Diyala province where US troops were withdrawn in 2006 to be replaced by Iraqi security forces. In the south, British forces have given up on Basra city, and even in Baghdad itself the security situation remains dire.

The Institute of War and Peace Reporting (IWPR) is one of the few organisations providing detailed, local assessments of Iraq to western audiences. In a recent report, IWPR describes the chaotic situation in Baghdad schools: hundreds of teachers have been murdered in the past year and there have been numerous kidnappings of students (see Iraq Crisis Report 231, 30 August 2007). Many of the city's 21,000 schools lack water and sanitation facilities, are crumbling through disrepair, and have to be regularly closed. A Unicef programme to reconstruct a schooling system that was once one of the best in the region has had to be put aside in order for resources to be focused on the growing numbers of displaced people.

The fourth part of the narrative highlights the prospect of a withdrawal of some United States forces by 2008 as a further indication of military progress. Any such move is unlikely to be substantive; Petraeus himself anticipates a US military presence in Iraq for up to a decade, and expects that - even allowing for such a withdrawal - there will be no decrease in the troop numbers that were in the country prior to the surge.

In any case, the aim of a staged return of some US troops to the homeland in 2008 is dependent on a marked improvement in the performance of the Iraqi security forces. This remains deeply problematic. The US head of the Iraq Assistance Group, Brigadier-General Dana Pittard, is only one of those warning against any early termination of the surge, partly on the grounds that it would take years for Iraqi forces to be able to take over (see Ann Scott Tyson, "General: Iraqi Forces Far From Self-Sufficiency", Washington Post, 26 June 2007).

The reality, then, is that there is unlikely to be any major redeployment of US forces away from Iraq. But that is not the point. The relevant factor is the need to create an impression of some success in Iraq, which can be made to carry a convenient double implication: stay the course, and troop reductions are in sight.

The fifth component of the overall story makes an effective entrance at this point. What difficulties remain in Iraq are very largely the responsibility of Iran. Thus, in US administration statements and interviews, and editorial pieces by the White House's strongest supporters, it is notable that the putative role of Iran in fomenting unrest and violence is being greatly elevated.

Indeed, by some strange alchemy Iran is now integrated into the al-Qaida phenomenon, thereby unifying America's two great enemies in the region - the historic and persistent threat posed by revolutionary Iran and the more recent al-Qaida challenge. It has not yet come to the point of blaming Iran for the 9/11 atrocities, but that could yet happen.

All points east

The increasingly tense relationship with Iran was reflected in the testimony given to the US Congress on 10-11 September 2007 by both the general and the ambassador. David Petraeus went so far as to talk of a "proxy war" with Iran, and Ryan Crocker accused the Iranian government of "providing lethal capabilities to the enemies of the Iraqi state". Behind them, a neo-conservative media chorus, whose voices include experts from the American Enterprise Institute and the ever-reliable Weekly Standard, have poured even more anathemas than usual on Tehran and its works.

More than rhetoric is involved. The Iranians have again insisted that they will not halt their efforts to enrich uranium for (they claim) civil nuclear-power use. In response, the Bush administration plans to return to the United Nations Security Council to demand tougher sanctions (see Robin Wright, "U.S. Starts a Push for Tighter Sanctions on Iran", Washington Post, 13 September 2007). Russian and Chinese opposition will mean that little progress will be made in this direction. But the effort will have symbolic value to the administration, and in any case will not detract from the White House's notable efforts to forge a link between Tehran's "interference" in Iraq and its nuclear plans.

The US intends to build a number of fortified checkpoints on highways linking Iran and Iraq; it also plans by November to construct a new base on the frontier, with living quarters for 200 US troops, as close as six kilometres to Iranian territory (see "Pentagon planning base near Iraq-Iran border", Reuters, 10 September 2007). In a separate move, up to 350 British troops are being assigned to border patrols along stretches of the border from which they were withdrawn some months ago (see Kim Sengupta, "The ‘proxy war'", Independent, 12 September 2007).

The Iranian telescope

In addition to his weekly openDemocracy column, Paul Rogers writes an international security monthly briefing for the Oxford Research Group; for details, click here

Paul Rogers's latest book is Global Security and the War on Terror: Elite Power and the Illusion of Control (Routledge, July 2007). This is a collection of papers and essays written over the last twenty years, with two new essays on the current global predicament

These developments, also part of the change in the emphasis of the whole conflict, provide support to the case of those analysts who believe that conflict between the United States and Iran is highly likely before mid-2008.

There are, equally, many arguments against this - not least a recognition among the more thoughtful sections of the American military that once a war with Iran starts, it will (like the war in Iraq - even if the wars will have a very different character) continue for years.

The evaluation of these different perspectives needs to take account of what is happening on the Iranian side. There exists, for example, a danger that military escalation in the Persian Gulf region could be deliberate provoked. This could come from the American side, but the greater likelihood at present is that elements within the Pasdaran-e Inqilab (Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps) will take such a step. This need not have the approval of the Mahmoud Ahmadinejad regime, though its probable effect would be to unify Iranian opinion behind the Islamic Republic's leadership.

Since the end of the war with Iraq in 1988, the Revolutionary Guard has acted as an "army within an army", with its own barracks, recruitment and logistical organisation; it also runs its own businesses. Many Iranians regard the organisation (even in a muted and cautious way) as demonstrating a particular brand of corruption. This is registered within and around the Revolutionary Guards as a sense that the force has "gone soft" since the revolution's early, heroic days and the war with Iraq, and lost much of its support and status as a result.

The conclusion reached by some is that the guard badly needs a new cause: something that will return put it centre-stage once more, encourage renewed recruitment and, above all, regain national status by demonstrating its role in safeguarding the revolution. A possible, attractive option would be to engineer a confrontation with the United States. This could be achieved through overt cross-border operations, or (more likely) through some kind of operation in the crowded waters around the Straits of Hormuz.

The seizure of the fifteen British sailors and marines in March-April 2007 may - although it took place at the other end of the Gulf - be a model for an operation that could be conducted against the US navy (see Sanam Vakil, "Iran's hostage politics", 2 April 2007). Another possibility is that a claim of US aggression into Iranian territorial waters could be met by a Revolutionary Guards' speedboat operation against a US warship or even a supply vessel. In the context of the vehement anti-Tehran atmosphere that the Bush administration and its cheerleaders have been cultivating, Washington would have no choice but to respond to such provocation. Indeed, many of those in or around the White House, particularly those close to vice-president Dick Cheney, would welcome such a development.

The logic of the United States's reassembled narrative about the situation in Iraq and its own role there is increasingly to depict Iran not simply as a problem in relation to Iraq, but as a problem in its own right. This may indeed appear to have a certain political convenience as the elections of 2008 approach. In other respects, the period ahead is starting to look ominous.

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