No First Strike

CNN correspondent Walter Rodgers has written an excellent article regarding the dangerous counterproductivity of potential airstrikes against Iran's nuclear facilities:

"Israel has acted unilaterally to squash a perceived nuclear threat before. In 1981, Prime Minister Menachem Begin sent fighter jets to knock out Iraq's "Osirak" nuclear reactor. Israel claimed that Saddam Hussein was on the verge of obtaining nuclear weapons and that it had no choice but to bomb it out of existence. In 2007, Israel bombed a facility in Syria it claimed was a nuclear reactor.

Any strike on Iranian reactors would be a different matter entirely. Osirak was a lone, poorly guarded, and inoperative nuclear plant that had a year earlier been damaged by an Iranian airstrike. The Iranians have taken considerable precautions to build their facilities on something more solid than desert sand. At present there is but one facility, Bushehr I, but Tehran is gearing up to build an entire network of nuclear plants. Israel would be bombing until the Shah comes home to merely delay what is an unstoppable Iranian nuclear program."

The idea that Iran has not taken significant steps to harden and possibly even hide some of their installations is ludicrous - most analysts predict that even the smoothest IAF operation would only be 70-80% successful. Is such a probable success rate worth the potential ramifications of any strike?

"Consider:

•Iran has signaled that if attacked, it would close the Strait of Hormuz, through which 20 percent of the world's oil flows. This would plunge the world into economic calamity.

•Hezbollah, Iran's proxy army in Lebanon, is believed to have more than 42,000 missiles, according to Defense Minister Ehud Barak – enough to make Israeli cities such as Haifa and Tel Aviv burn like London did during the Nazis' Blitz. Hezbollah is believed to have terror cells in Europe and North America. It has struck in South America, and many terrorism experts believe it is potentially even more dangerous than Al Qaeda. Iran, using this proxy force, would probably unleash it on the world if Netanyahu were to bomb the Bushehr I reactor.

•It would trigger a tsunami of anti-Semitism that would inevitably translate into violence against Jews worldwide.

•Such a strike would be perceived as further evidence of a US-Israeli global war on Islam. Islamist fighters from Marrakesh, Marseille, London, Cairo, Karachi, and Tehran would enlist overnight by the thousands and march to Iraq and Afghanistan to wage jihad against the American troops there."

We underestimate the regional reach of Iran at our peril - they may only have the military output capability of Finland, but they have influence and clout that far surpasses that.

I would add to Rodgers' above list the possibility of widespread radioactive contamination of up to a thousand miles around Bushehr were it to be struck. I'd also add, on top of the blocking off of the Hormuz Straits, the possibility of sympathetic Shi-ites in Saudi Arabia sabotaging - or potentially a salvo of missiles from Tehran setting ablaze - that country's eastern oil fields. Then there's the risk from Iranian missiles to US vessels, such as aircraft carriers, sitting in the Persian Gulf, and more dangerously, the risk to oil tankers - a risk that insurers may not be willing to tolerate.

You think the economy is in dire straits now? How about, with a quarter of the world's oil supply coming from the region suddenly cut off, oil at $200/$300 a barrel?

What needs to be understood is any Israeli strike would be seen by the Iranians - rightly enough - as blessed with American complicity. US strategic interests in the region - and, accordingly of course, UK interests too - would be seen as fair game. That's why Iranian retaliation against oil-suppliers such as the Saudis - not forgetting too that they are longtime adversaries of Iran as well - is not unrealistic. Nor is it unrealistic to predict that Iran could bring more chaos still to the already-chaotic situation in Afghanistan/Pakistan. Iran proved its clout in Afghanistan in the initial US invasion, by helping the US and the Northern Alliance defeat the Taliban and catch senior members. The Mawaz-i-Sharif region, for example, is predominantly Shi-ite and sympathetic to Iran. One former CIA officer, Philip Giraldi, reckoned that backed into a corner, Iran could even have the capability of reaching right into Kabul and successfully ordering the assassination of President Hamid Karzai. This, in turn, could ignite a deadly civil war in the Af-Pak tribal regions between Tehran-backed or at least sympathetic Shia proxies and Iran's sworn enemies, the Sunni Taliban and al-Qaeda.

Can you see the already reluctant NATO countries being willing to commit their troops to an all-out civil war?

Finally there's Iraq:

Iran owns Iraq.

Maliki's Iraqi government sits snugly in Khamenei's back-pocket. Or, in the words of President Ahmadinejad himself:

"Iraq has been transformed into a strong bastion in defence of the Islamic revolution."

Or, in the words of Robert Scheer, at The Nation, commenting on Ahmadinejad's "lovefest" of a visit to Iraq in March '08:

"What leverage does the United States have over Iran when, as the image of Ahmadinejad holding hands with the top leaders of Iraq demonstrated to the world, we have put the disciples of the Iranian ayatollahs in power in Baghdad? There is no face-saving exit from Iraq without the cooperation of Tehran, and the folks who call America the "Great Satan" now hold the high cards.

How interesting that Ahmadinejad, unlike a US President who has to be airlifted unannounced into ultra-secure bases, was able to convoy in from the airport in broad daylight on a road that US dignitaries fear to travel. His love fest with Iraq President Jalal Talabani, a Kurd who fought on Iran's side against Iraq and who speaks Farsi, even took place outside of the safety of the Green Zone, adding emphasis to Ahmadinejad's claim that while he is welcome in Iraq, the Americans are not."

Ahmadinejad travelled that dangerous road, pre-announced, in broad daylight, to signal to the world the true owners of Iraq. Few people seem to know this, but during Saddam's tenure, current Iraqi PM Nouri al-Maliki and other members of his organisation fled to Iran, where they were taken care of by the Islamic Republic. They are, indeed, students of the Islamic Revolution. And so yes it's true - for some bizarre reason, whilst perusing the list of potential candidates to head their puppet government, the Americans eventually plumped for al-Maliki and his merry band of Khomeini's children, bestowing upon Iran a strategic gift they could have otherwise never have hoped for:

"Iran is now a major trading partner of Iraq that has offered a $1 billion loan, the border is increasingly porous as religious pilgrimages have become the norm, and many investment projects supervised by Iranians are in the works. Instead of isolating the "rogue regime" of Iran, the Bush Administration has catapulted the theocrats of Tehran into the center of Mideast political power. There can be no peace, whether in Lebanon, Gaza or Iraq, without the cooperation of the ayatollahs of Iran."

Consider the disorder those same ayatollahs could wreak in Iraq in the event of Israeli/US attacks. Iranian troops and militiamen would flood through that porous border to be welcomed by their Iraqi Shi-ite counterparts - many Iraqi Shia militias work as government proxies anyway, but hell, in such a situation, the discretion of proxies may be thrown to the wind, and government forces themselves may sign up to the Iranian project of shooting the Allied Forces the hell out of the country. The alleged success of "the Surge" (which, of course, consisted of little more than the Americans bribing the Sunnis into stopping killing them) would be revealed as the facade it really always was, and would soon fade into distant memory.

And from there, who knows what might happen?

All of this is, of course, a nightmare scenario - but no less plausible for being one. None of it need happen. All that's needed is for sense and restraint to prevail.