The Next War: The Presidents of Iran and the United States are Thriving on the Belligerency of the Other

From: http://world.mediamonitors.net/content/view/full/26557

The Iran Crisis -- "Diplomacy" as a Launch Pad for Missiles
by Norman Solomon
(Monday February 06 2006)

"...the presidents of Iran and the United States are thriving on the
belligerency of the other. From all indications, a military assault on Iran
would boost Ahmadinejad¹s power at home. And it¹s a good bet that the U.S.
government will do him this enormous favor. Unless we can prevent it."

The current flurry of Western diplomacy will probably turn out to be
groundwork for launching missiles at Iran.

Air attacks on targets in Iran are very likely. Yet many antiwar Americans
seem eager to believe that won¹t happen.

Illusion #1: With the U.S. military bogged down in Iraq, the Pentagon is in
no position to take on Iran.

But what¹s on the horizon is not an invasion -- it's a major air assault,
which the American military can easily inflict on Iranian sites. (And if the
task falls to the Israeli military, it is also well-equipped to bomb Iran.)

Illusion #2: The Bush administration is in so much political trouble at home
-- for reasons including its lies about Iraqi WMDs -- that it wouldn't risk
an uproar from an attack on Iran.

But the White House has been gradually preparing the domestic political
ground for bombing Iran. As the Wall Street Journal reported on Feb. 3, "in
recent polls a surprisingly large number of Americans say they would support
U.S. military strikes to stop Tehran from getting the bomb."

Above those words, the Journal¹s headline -- "U.S. Chooses Diplomacy on
Iran's Nuclear Program"-- trumpeted the Bush administration's game plan.
It's a time-honored scam: When you¹re moving toward aggressive military
action, emphasize diplomacy.

Donald Rumsfeld proclaimed at a conference in Munich on Feb. 4 that -- to
put a stop to Iran's nuclear program -- the world should work for a
³diplomatic solution." Yet the next day, the German daily newspaper
Handelsblatt reports, Rumsfeld said in an interview: "All options including
the military one are on the table."

Top U.S. officials, inspired by the royal "W," aren't hesitating to speak
for the world. Condoleezza Rice said: "The world will not stand by if Iran
continues on the path to a nuclear weapons capability." Meanwhile, Rumsfeld
declared: "The Iranian regime is today the world's leading state sponsor of
terrorism. The world does not want, and must work together to prevent, a
nuclear Iran."

Translation: First we'll be diplomatic, then we can bomb.

Illusion #3: The U.S. won¹t attack Iran because that would infuriate the
millions of Iran-allied Shiites in Iraq, greatly damaging the U.S. war
effort there.

But projecting rationality onto the Bush administration makes little sense
at this point. The people running U.S. foreign policy have their own
priorities, and avoiding carnage is not one of them.

Non-proliferation doesn't rank very high either, judging from Washington's
cozy relationships with the nuclear-weapons powers of Israel, India and
Pakistan. Unlike Iran, none of those countries are signatories to the
nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Only Iran has been allowing inspections of
its nuclear facilities -- and it is Iran that the savants in Washington are
now, in effect, threatening to bomb.

With sugar-plum visions of Iran's massive oil and natural-gas reserves
dancing in their heads, the Washington neo-cons evidently harbor some
farfetched hopes of bringing about the overthrow of the Iranian regime. But
in the real world, an attack on Iran would strengthen its most extreme
factions and fortify whatever interest it has in developing nuclear arms.

"The U.S. will not solve the nuclear problem by threatening military strikes
or by dragging Iran before the U.N. Security Council," Iran's 2003 Nobel
Peace Prize winner Shirin Ebadi wrote in the Jan. 19 edition of the Los
Angeles Times, in an oped piece co-authored by Muhammad Sahimi, a professor
of chemical engineering at the University of Southern California. "Although
a vast majority of Iranians despise the country¹s hard-liners and wish for
their downfall, they also support its nuclear program because it has become
a source of pride for an old nation with a glorious history."

The essay added: "A military attack would only inflame nationalist
sentiments. Iran is not Iraq. Given Iranians' fierce nationalism and the
Shiites' tradition of martyrdom, any military move would provoke a response
that would engulf the entire region, resulting in countless deaths and a
ruined economy not only for the region but for the world. Imposing U.N.
sanctions on Iran would also be counterproductive, prompting Tehran to leave
the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and its "additional protocol." Is the
world ready to live with such prospects?"

While calling for international pressure against Iran's serious violations
of human rights, Ebadi and Sahimi said that "Iran is at least six to 10
years away from a nuclear bomb, by most estimates. The crisis is not even a
crisis. There is ample time for political reform before Iran ever develops
the bomb."

On Feb. 3, the Iranian Student News Agency quoted Iran's former president
Muhammad Khatami, who urged the Iranian government to offer assurances that
the country¹s nuclear program is only for generating electricity. "It is
necessary to act wisely and with tolerance so that our right to nuclear
energy will not be abolished," he said.

Though he failed to develop much political traction for reform during his
eight years as president, Khatami was a moderating force against
human-rights abuses. His demagogic successor, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is a
menace to human rights and peace. But it's by no means clear that
Ahmadinejad can count on long-term support from the nation's ruling clerics.
The man he defeated in the presidential runoff last summer, former president
Hashemi Rafsanjani, wields significant power as head of the government's
Expediency Council. Though he has a well-earned reputation as a corrupt
opportunist, Rafsanjani is now a beacon of enlightenment compared to
Ahmadinejad.

In early January, a pair of Iran scholars -- Dariush Zahedi and Ali
Ezzatyar, based at the University of California in Berkeley -- wrote an LA
Times piece making this point: "Contrary to popular belief, the traditional
conservative clerical establishment is apprehensive about the possibility of
violence inside and outside Iran. It generally opposes an aggressive foreign
policy and, having some intimate ties with Iran's dependent capitalist
class, is appalled at the rapid slide of the economy since Ahmadinejad's
inauguration. The value of Tehran's stock market has plunged $10 billion,
the nation's vibrant real estate market has withered and capital outflows
are increasing."

And the scholars added pointedly: "The history of U.S.-Iran relations shows
that the more Washington chastises Tehran for its nuclear ambitions, the
more it plays into the hands of the radicals by riling up fear and
nationalist sentiment."

Right now, the presidents of Iran and the United States are thriving on the
belligerency of the other. From all indications, a military assault on Iran
would boost Ahmadinejad¹s power at home. And it¹s a good bet that the U.S.
government will do him this enormous favor. Unless we can prevent it.

Source:

by courtesy & © 2006 Norman Solomon