An energetic charm offensive launched by the George W Bush administration in November-December 2005, involving a series of speeches by the president himself and supporting declarations from vice-president Dick Cheney, attempted to convince the American public that the situation in Iraq was improving. Whatever favourable short-term impact on public opinion the campaign had, the continuing conflict in Iraq in January-February 2006 largely negated.
The huge upsurge of violence sparked by the 22 February bombing of the al-Askari shrine in Samarra has dealt a further blow to Washington's narrative of progress in Iraq. This is occurring at a time when tensions with Iran are on the rise. But amidst its troubles, the United States persists in seeking comfort (see "Victory in Iraq", 15 December 2005).
The president returned to the rhetorical fray with a speech on 13 March at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. As so often, George W Bush's intervention coincided with further severe violence in Iraq: numerous bomb attacks in and around Baghdad, including the bombing of a market in the mainly Shi'a Sadr city district that killed up to sixty people. There have also been numerous cases of mass abductions followed by torture and execution; in just one gruesome example, eighty-five bodies were found dumped in three sites across Baghdad on 14 March.
This unfolding pattern of events was reflected in the note of caution, the awareness of difficult times ahead, that underlay Bush's speech. At the same time, the essential story was familiar: of a declining insurgency in which Iraqi government security forces were progressively taking charge. Unusually, the president even specified a target of at least half of the country under local security control by the end of 2006; he also claimed that such forces already have "primary responsibility" for around one-sixth of Iraqi territory.
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Indeed, British as well as American sources have suggested that more than 200,000 Iraqi police and security personnel are now available for deployment, and Bush himself cited sixty battalions of Iraqi forces out of a total of 130 now able to take the security lead (see Peter Baker, "Bush Sets Target for Transition in Iraq", Washington Post, 14 March 2006). What he did not mention was that a US military assessment in late 2005 had concluded that only one Iraqi battalion was able to operate entirely on its own and that the figure had now fallen to zero. On this basis, the idea that Iraqi forces can now exercise "primary responsibility" to control one-sixth of the country is illusory; in reality, US assistance remains essential.
The US has also repeatedly claimed that the insurgency is limited to four of Iraq's eighteen provinces. Even if this were accepted, to aim for a situation where Iraqi security forces control half of the country in nine months' time seems extraordinarily modest; but in any case, the combination of sectarian violence and ongoing insurgency makes it on present trends highly unlikely to be fulfilled. There are even reports that the Pentagon, having withdrawn more than 10,000 troops since the December 2005 elections, is moving to increase its numbers again (see Thom Shanker, "U.S. sends 800 new troops to Iraq", International Herald Tribune, 16 March 2006).
Across the border
The deeper significance of Bush's speech, however, may lie in its emphasis on Iranian interference in the Iraqi insurgency. An earlier column in this series pointed to the manner in which the Iran issue had receded (see "Iran in Israel's firing-range", 8 December 2005) following British claims of Iranian involvement in the use of improvised explosive devices (IEDs). The particular concern was with shaped-charge IEDs that could be used to destroy armoured vehicles; British foreign-office sources had attributed the use of this kind of technology to Hizbollah in southern Lebanon, and also indicated that the Iranians were helping to ensure that IEDs ended up in Iraq.
The British claims did not last very long, as some analysts pointed out that this had been a problem for the Americans well before Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was elected. In any case, the technical competence of some of Saddam Hussein's Special Republican Guard was likely to be quite sufficient for the development of these devices within Iraq, without help from the Iranians or Hizbollah.
Any such considerations did not prevent Bush from returning to this theme. A significant part of his speech concentrated on the "threat from Iran", in terms both of involvement in the Iraq insurgency and of its nuclear ambitions. Such concentration on Iran is already having two effects on US public opinion: diverting attention from the problems in Iraq and preparing the way for a hardline stance on Iran (reflected in a Gallup poll finding that most Americans regard Iran as the major enemy and a Washington Post-ABC News poll indicating 42% support for military action).
One of the key changes in recent weeks has been the decision of the United States to reassert its leadership of diplomatic manoeuvres against Iran, taking over from the Europeans who had been allowed more or less free rein. For Washington hawks, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's holocaust denial and threats against Israel have been an absolute gift, both in terms of the Israel lobby in the United States that includes considerable Christian Zionist support but also because it has had a marked effect in Europe, diminishing the standing of German, French and British diplomats who thought dialogue the best option.
For the moment, while the Bush administration does not talk so openly about enforced regime change, it is still putting a greatly increased effort into supporting opposition groups, as well as funding a $75 million programme intended to enhance radio and TV outlets aiming at Iranian audiences. It is also working to gain support for firm action from the United Nations Security Council, even though Iran is not currently in breach of International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) requirements under the terms of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty of 1970.
A complication for the Bush propaganda effort is that this is viewed with considerable mistrust by many reformers within Iran itself, for whom it raises two awkward issues. The first is that any obvious attempt by the Bush administration to foment opposition within Iran is likely to have the effect of heightening support for the Ahmadinejad administration, raising nationalist hackles in the face of foreign interference. The second (and more worrying for reformers) is the tendency for the current government to claim that any form of opposition to the status quo must be in the pay of the Americans.
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 has written a report for the Oxford Research Group on the likely effects of a military attack on Iran:
"Iran: Consequences of a War" (February 2006)
A collection of Paul Rogers's Oxford Research Group briefings, Iraq and the War on Terror: Twelve Months of Insurgency, 2004-05 is published by IB Tauris
(October 2005)
History's payback
Meanwhile, the rhetoric of confrontation between the United States and Iran is being combined with feelers towards a possible dialogue, at least over Iraq. The quadrennial United States national security strategy published on 16 March affirms that the US may face no greater challenge from a single country than from Iran. Yet on the same day, both sides indicated a cautious willingness to enter discussions about Iraq in response to a plea from the Iraqi Shia cleric Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim; Irans chief nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani said that Iran is prepared to help the US take a hard look at the way it acts.
At the same time, the government in Iran seems intent on playing a firm line regarding the nuclear issue, by insisting on Iran's absolute right to develop civil nuclear power, including a nuclear-fuel cycle. It does so in the near-certain knowledge that any increase in tension with the United States will add to internal support from sectors of Iranian society otherwise suspicious of the Ahmadinejad government.
If the Bush administration is looking much more closely at Iran, military officials in the Pentagon are now paying more attention to the possibility of Israeli action against the Tehran regime. A revealing moment in this connection was when the former Israeli chief-of-staff, Moshe Ya'alon, openly discussed the option of joint Israeli/US action (see Nathan Guttman, "US Monitoring Israel's Iran Options", Jerusalem Post, 13 March 2006).
There have been frequent comments in recent days that the current situation is strikingly similar to the run-up to the start of the Iraq war on 20-21 March 2003. But while war-related rhetoric has not yet developed to an equivalent extent, the absence of one important "brake" on US policy is a key factor currently missing from the discussion.
Before the Iraq war was launched in 2003 there were credible reports that competent officials in the US state department were highly dubious of plans to terminate the Saddam Hussein regime. They pointed to the risks of occupation and the wider regional reaction, especially from the al-Qaida movement, to any US control of Iraq. These views carried little weight Colin Powell was relatively isolated within the administration and was also undermined by some state department political appointees such as John Bolton (then under-secretary for arms control). The overall effect was that the state department exercised little in the way of constraint in an administration in which neo-conservatism was rampant.
Today, as the dispute with Iran evolves, the neo-conservatives are now less prominent, not least because of the myriad problems in Iraq (and John Bolton has departed to be US ambassador at the United Nations). In principle, this means that the state department could play a genuinely restraining role when the prospect of a military confrontation with Iran is mooted. In practice, two factors may prevent this.
First, memories of the US diplomats held hostage for 444 days in 1979-80 (during the immediate post-revolution period in Iran) remain very deep within the state department. Second, the assertive nationalism of Colin Powell's successor, Condoleezza Rice, removes a critical brake on the more hawkish elements in the Pentagon, National Security Council and the vice-president's office. In consequence, there is more chance of the conflict becoming military.
The young revolutionary militants in Iran who took the American diplomats hostage in 1979 did so partly in protest against what they saw as decades of US interference in their country's politics. For them, it was payback time. It may prove that one effect of their actions a full generation later is to make a further chapter in such interference markedly more likely.
