open Democracy News Analysis - Iraq task, Iran risk, Paul Rogers - Comments

Not logged in on "Iraq task, Iran risk"

Not logged in — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 21:15:07 +0000

To justify their stay in Iraq, Iran is an artificial issue created by US current regime . since no other justification, previously advocated, seems to be working for them. So a defiant Iran & exaggerated threat level looks like a perfect idea.

Not logged in on "Iraq task, Iran risk"

Not logged in — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 19:51:27 +0000

In July 2006 the US Government supplied Israel with 500+ guided weapons reported to include 100 GBU-28 2 ton bunker busters. These were far more than needed or used in Lebanon. They provided a strategic strike reserve for possible use against Natanz and other strategic targets in Iran or Syria. In 2006 a strike against Iran was expected after Hizbollah had been subdued - not achieved.

Radiation readings 20x normal, plus soil and water samples from two IAF bomb craters in southern Lebanon, and airborne dust and urine samples from bombed locations in South Beirut, showed contamination from undepleted and low enriched uranium warheads. (www.llrc.org ).

Most large guided bombs used by Israel were supplied from the USA and suspected of using uranium components for deep penetration, and enhanced blast and incendiary effects.

These weapons were probably used in the Sept 2007 strike on a 'suspected nuclear facility' in Syria and will be the main weapons for similar targets in Iran. I expect the IAEA report from Syria to report evidence of low enriched uranium (0.9% U235). This is as likely to come from the weapons used by the IAF as from the target.

Unfortunately a combined IAF/US strike on Iran targets is likelt to use several hundred large uranium warheads - from 500 to 2000 kg and possibly the latest 15000 kg penetrator warhead.

The low level radiation fallout will cover Iran, Iraq and Afghanistan within 2-3 days depending on conditions - even if there is no metallic uranium in the Iran targets. Metallic uranium targets will add to the now familiar fireballs of the new uranium warheads.

In this scenario radiation clouds may be reported as evidence of Iran's advanced nuclear facilities and possibly as small, nuclear devices (similar to the Korean test).

A range of contamination scenarios are needed to project health effects in the region. Uranium dust contamination is hard to detect so in some scenarios it may not be reported.

Health scenarios can be draw on reports from Afganistan 2001/2, Iraq 2003 and Lebanon 2006. Expect epidemics of flu, diahorrea, measles and other skin irritation, whooping cough, nosebleeds etc. Strike planning may select winds that will take fallout east or north.

The continuing western media blackout on the use of large uranium weapons means that UK forces in Iraq and Afghanistan will be at risk as well as obvious short and long term health impacts on civilians throughout Iran and neighbouring countries.

I explained the risk of a non-nuclear uranium weapons strike against Iran in a letter to Prime Minister Blair in July 2006 when he approved transit of US guided weapons to Israel via UK airports.
( www.eoslifework.co.uk/pdfs/u26leb30aug.pdf ).

One update on this assessment is the report today of Iran's medium range missile test. If Iran has already processed uranium it could produce similar non-nuclear uranium warheads to those developed in the US and/or Israel. These just might create a sub-nuclear stand-off deterrant that could have similar RDD (dirty bomb) consequences as IAF strikes in Lebanon - risking longer term genetic effects as in southern Iraq.

I have only researched the enhanced weapon systems used in recent conflicts. Other analysts may wish to consider how these new weapons and their longer term health effects may affect the decisions of governments and military planners.

Dai Williams
Eos, Surrey, UK
eosuk@btinternet.com

Bendara on "Iraq task, Iran risk"

Bendara — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 12:17:26 +0000

Could the current US Administration be so callous as to launch a military strike against Iran with only four months left in office? If the Israelis attacked instead they would almost certainly have Bush's backing and military support. Such an act would have a profound affect on future foreign policy of a Republican or Democrat president.

An Obama presidency would find negotiation far more difficult and may well be drawn into increasing rather than withdrawing troops from the Middle East. This would provide Republican critics with plenty of ammunition to attack an inexperienced Obama.

A McCain presidency would probably continue with Bush's foreign policy by default, even if it really wanted to scale down the presence of American troops.

A war with Iran would dominate the entire four year term of both candidates and shape America's international reputation along the same lines of the last eight years . The ghost of Bush could hover menacingly over the White House for many years to come.

Not logged in on "Iraq task, Iran risk"

Not logged in — Sun, 06 Jul 2008 07:15:12 +0000

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7486338.stm
Call it naivete, but I just don't think an attack with Iran is on the books. Surely the Pentagon has the battle plans laid out and all the different scenarios have been examined, but to suggest that these are anything beyond contingency plans is to imply that the American military is completely unaware of it's own limitations, particularly while we are already clearly streched so thin. Yes, we are locked in a power struggle with Iran for influence in the Middle East, from Lebanon to Iraq, but the political costs to anyone seeking to resolve this through force is enormous right now (barring Iran actually getting close to manufacturing a weapon). Israel, however, is another matter...

Not logged in on "Iraq task, Iran risk"

Not logged in — Sat, 05 Jul 2008 20:14:46 +0000

We thought the war was on "terror". It seems that it is on controling the Mildle East oil resources. Of course it is not difficlut to find execuses. Sadam had weapons of mass destruction, Ahmadi Nedjad wants to "Obliterate" Israel. It does not matter that Israel confiscates Arab lands (of course we all know it is a prart of Promised Land) and Ahmadi Nedjad presidency is soon over. What matters is that Homo Sapience has mastered politics and the art of mass killing and he (sorry, now we have to say He) uses them.

Not logged in on "Iraq task, Iran risk"

Not logged in — Sat, 05 Jul 2008 12:31:56 +0000

you make assertions with no justification. as well you totally ignore the plight those within iran, and iranians in exile and how they are oppressed by the current regime -- not only the large percentage of the population that are not from the majority group i.e.bahais, kurds, sunnis, etc. but anyone want simply to better their lives. ask this, if iran's president was not calling for the destruction of a neighboring country, and it the same time seeking technology of mass destruction, and at the same time, working against stability in iraq, would we be having this discussion? if iran with all its oil actually sought to create a fair and productive economy, and stop chasing phantom "prestige" projects, would not the iranian people, including the minority groups living within iran's borders be better off?

Not logged in on "Iraq task, Iran risk"

Not logged in — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 18:31:01 +0000

Too much writing on Iran, including this one, is within the false frame that Iran is the threat.
Iran is the victim of verbal and physical aggression from the US and Israel. These countries are demonising Iran as a prelude to stealing her sovereignty and her resources. This is the frame that this issue should be discussed within.
Will the US and Israel steal Iran's sovereignty and resources by stealth, by fraud, or through violence? Time will tell, but the bottom line is that there is a theft in progress, and all those who use the false frame that the victim is the problem are accomplices to it.

Not logged in on "Iraq task, Iran risk"

Not logged in — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 02:43:51 +0000

A very good article as usual from Paul Rogers, but I was waiting for a discussion of choices for the US as the title led me to believe, how an Iraq task of security balances against an Iran attack?

Not logged in on "Iraq task, Iran risk"

Not logged in — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 01:25:06 +0000

The Iranian nuclear push has been an off and on proposition. That is largely due to internal politics.
Emphasis should be placed on President Aminijhad
renunciating his vows to destroy Israel rather than
the nuclear issue as such. The Iranians outside of the
militant guard have no interest in another war, with the memories of the 1980's. But a nuclear power plant is a matter of prestige. The allies of Iran such as Russia and China should be encouraged to see that materials
only for recycling grade Plutonium and not weapons grade Plutonium are used along the line. This is a matter of masterful working along with the inspectors and sophisticated mass spectographs should be readily available and employed. The potential of a more open and liberal regime should not be negated
by the use of military adventurism.

blameislam on "Iraq task, Iran risk"

blameislam — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 18:15:56 +0000

Is the Bush Administration Encouraging Israel to Attack Iran?

While the U.S. National Intelligence Estimate (NIE)
says Iran has either stopped or slowed down development of a nuclear
weapon, Bush Administration is adamant that Iran is developing one.
Apparently no lessons have been learnt from the "Weapons of Mass
Destruction" fiasco, when Bush Administration hurriedly started the war
preempting UN inspectors report which would have contradicted such a
claim.

The recent and very visible exercises by Israeli air
force have been described by some eager Pentagon officials as
preparation for an attack on Iran. To many Middle East watchers this is
probably just saber rattling and may in fact be to pressurize European
allies to get on with it in Iran or else!

Has the White House or
the Pentagon seriously considered consequences of an Israeli attack on
Iran? Iran is neither Iraq or Syria and the fanatical Ahmedinajad regime will respond with everything he has got. Iran will retaliate by launching missiles on Tel Aviv
(probably devastating the city) and close the Straits Of Hormuz sending
crude oil price to $250 a barrel or higher causing massive problems for
many economies of the world. An instant casualty will probably be the
Iraqi Government as Moqtada Al-Sadr (supported by Iran) will bring the pro US Government down and cause chaos in Iraq.

The
Israelis are not that stupid to launch another war. Their attack on
Lebanese cities was watched in horror by the world. Instead of
recovering two kidnapped soldiers it lost another 169 soldiers plus
several hundred civilians killed. The most damage to Israel was to its
invincibility built so impeccably in the six day war. Their super
efficient army suddenly did not look so super any more. Israel seems to
have learned its lessons and is now negotiating with its adversaries.

The
larger question for the U.S. is, where is the US media in all this? Are
they going to sit idly by while another war is launched and not
challenge Bush Administration as they did before Iraq war? Why is media
not analyzing and presenting to US public the consequences of such a
misadventure?

A far fetched idea though, but is Bush Administration so worried by an Obama
win and Democratic majorities in Senate and House this fall that it
rather not have judicial probes opening up into the missing billions in
Iraq, and massive no bid contracts to favorite companies etc. that it
may cause another war and a security situation leveling the way for
McCain to win - I hope not.

Iraq task, Iran risk, Paul Rogers

Paul Rogers — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 12:58:16 +0000

The architects of the "war on terror" in the George W Bush administration will soon be leaving office. But the four months until the United States presidential election on 4 November 2008 could be momentous. In Iraq and Iran, what happens in the next four months - or does not happen - will shape events in the next four years and even beyond (see "Washington's choice: subdue Iran, secure Iraq", 12 June 2008).

The current level of conflict in Iraq is lower than for most of the period since the start of the war in March-April 2003, but it continues at a substantial level. The United States military's losses have also been on a declining trend, but it still lost twenty-nine people in June 2008, an increase from nineteen in May. But this is far from the only index of the fragility of the current security environment, as two recent incidents and one longer-term factor show.

The first incident is a US military raid on 27 June 2008 on the town of Janaja in southern Iraq that killed a civilian reported to be a relative of Iraq's prime minister Nouri al-Maliki. The operation involved sixty US soldiers as well as Apache helicopter-gunships; did not include Iraqi units; and was apparently conducted without the knowledge of the provincial authorities, even though Karbala province was supposed to have been under Iraqi control. The response of the Iraqis was, not surprisingly, sharp (see Hannah Allam & Sahar Issa, "U.S. Raid Angers Iraq", Miami Herald, 28 June 2008).

The second is a suicide-bombing attack in Anbar province on 28 June that killed twenty-three people including three US marines, which an al-Qaida insurgent group said that it had perpetrated (see Alissa J Rubin, "Group Claims Responsibility for Iraq Attack", New York Times, 29 June 2008). The attack was targeted against local Sunni leaders who were supporters of the anti-al-Qaida "awakening movement", and the militant responsible had been a member of the movement. It was, in short, an "inside job".

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 trend is the construction right across Baghdad of a network of walls designed to separate armed factions and communities. These have contributed to the decrease in violence, but have also produced a prison-like environment that is resented by many citizens (see Hamza Hendawi, "Iraqis Say Walls Protect But Feel Like Prison", Associated Press, 28 June 2008).

The Iraq outlook

Beyond the immediate security environment, two large developments are a signal of Washington's current strategic thinking in relation to Iraq. The first is the opening up of Iraqi oil reserves to thirty-five companies in a bidding competition to increase oil production. At the outset the process involves six oilfields, though five short-term contracts are also being offered to American and European companies (see Sudarsan Raghavan & Steven Mufson, "Iraq Opens Oil Fields to Global Bidding", Washington Post, 1 July 2008).

The opening of the Iraqi oil industry to private companies represents a major departure from the nationalised industry of the Saddam Hussein era. Such a process was an early aim of the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) established in the wake of the US invasion as the key instrument of US political control in the post-Saddam flux. Many believed and more hoped that a partially functioning Iraqi government has been able to take an independent line on this issue, though it now appears that the process of privatisation has been closely overseen by a group of American advisers. This group itself, moreover, was led by a team from the US state department, thus giving the George W Bush administration a direct role in the process (see Andrew E Kramer, "U.S. helped Iraqis on oil contracts", International Herald Tribune, 1 July 2008).

This series of columns has consistently argued that the primary purpose of the termination of the Saddam Hussein regime was less to gain control of Iraq's oil reserves, even if they were around four times the size of US domestic reserves; rather, it was the location of Iraq in a region containing nearly two-thirds of all of the world's oil that was more significant (see, for example, "Iraq's danger signals", 13 December 2007). Nonetheless, the manner in which Iraq's oil is coming under external control does begin to give some credence to those who claim a more direct connection between Iraq's oil and the decision to go to war.

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 most recent book is Why We're Losing the War on Terror (Polity, 2007) - an analysis of the strategic misjudgments of the post-9/11 era and why a new security paradigm is needed.

The plan to expand Iraqi oil production carries a real concern for its designers: that the pipelines and processing plants will be vulnerable to the kind of insurgent activity that inflicted such enormous economic damage in 2004-05. This fear may be connected with the second large development - the plan to maintain US military forces at current levels for at least until mid-2009. The last of the five additional combat-brigades that formed the year-long US "surge" is now departing the country, but plans are already underway to bring 30,000 fresh troops into the country early in 2009 (see Lolita C Baldor, "U.S. To Send 30,000 Troops To Iraq", Associated Press, 28 June 2008). These will replace existing contingents in a routine fashion, but what is less remarked is their effect on overall US deployment; namely, that that 142,000 troops will remain in Iraq, a number actually 7,000 more than were present before the surge began in February 2007.

It is always possible that violence will decrease to the extent that further withdrawals can take place, but the Pentagon is not currently planning for this. Its calculation is most likely based on a real fear that many of the insurgents are lying low and will return to the conflict in the coming months. If this proves correct, then a likely target will be Iraq's oil installations just as foreign companies are moving in. This too will become clear by November 2008.

The Iran prospect

The Pentagon's current preparation for a major long-term military presence in Iraq is accompanied by a sharpening of rhetoric over the putative threat posed by Iran's nuclear plans. Most of this is at present emanating from some Israeli commentators and some of the Washington-based think-tanks and policy groups that identify themselves with what they imagine Israel's national interest to be.

Most analysts are aware of the capacity of the Iranians to respond to any military attack by the United States or Israel in numerous ways, by (for example) escalating tension in Iraq or engineering a massive spike in crude oil prices. This often leads them as a result to discount the risk of an attack on Iran. Against this, some circles in Washington argue that Iran's capacity to react has been much overplayed; in this view, Iran is actually far weaker than is commonly appreciated (see Seymour M Hersh, "Preparing the Battlefield", New Yorker, 7 July 2008). The conclusion is that now may be a good time to demonstrate resolve by targeting Tehran's nuclear facilities, however limited they might currently be (see Gareth Porter, "'Weak' Iran ripe to be attacked", Asia Times, 1 July 2008).

What has always to be remembered in weighing the effect of these nuances is that there is a bottom-line for Israel: namely, there must never be another country in the region that has nuclear weapons - deterrence must work only one way if Israel is to be secure. In addition, a strong thread within hardline Israeli political thinking in the present political conjuncture (though opinion on the matter is not uniform) is that a Barack Obama presidency would be bad news. He may have sounded hardline over Iran in his speech to Aipac on 4 June 2008, but Obama is seen as a highly intelligent politician with a worrying streak of independence in him (see "Iran and the American election", 5 June 2008).

It is troubling, then - a matter of concern to those in Israel and Washington who seek to resolve the Iran issue by force - that Obama is ahead of John McCain in the opinion polls. Perhaps, in such uncertain and unpredictable circumstances, now is the time to pre-empt Iranian nuclear developments - whatever the costs - rather than wait for an Obama victory and the nightmare prospect of talking to the enemy?

These, then, are the four months that will determine the future of the region and much of the world - not least the long-term security of the state of Israel - for years ahead. Iran and Iraq at the heart of present concern, though the security deterioration in other areas deserves to be noted: Afghanistan and Pakistan (see Julian E Barnes & Peter Spiegel, "Afghanistan Attacks Rise, U.S. Says", Los Angeles Times, 25 June 2008), and parts of north Africa (see Michael Moss, "Algerian militants win new lease on life as Al Qaeda affiliate", International Herald Tribune, 1 July 2008). Whether the incoming White House tenant faces the ashes of a new landscape of war or merely the fallout of the old one, the world is in for a long and bumpy ride.

Average rating

(4 votes)