In January 2005, while George Bush was propounding the lofty ideals of his project to transform the Middle East, the campaign to engineer consent for a strike against Iran was in full swing. Vice President Cheney stated that Washington‘s chief concern was not democracy, was not even terrorism, but Iran‘s “fairly robust new nuclear program.” Investigative journalist Seymour Hersh reported that American Special Operation Forces were already operating inside Iran in preparation for a possible air ground attack (New Yorker, Jan 24, 05) The Washington Post reported on February 13, that the Bush administration had been secretly flying surveillance drones over Iran “for an eventual air attack.” Hersh also later reported that current and former officials had told him that one of the options being considered by the Bush administration against Iran called “for the use of a bunker-buster tactical nuclear weapon, such as the B61-11, against underground nuclear sites.” (New Yorker, April 17, 06).

 

It seemed that the campaign for an American strike against Iran, possibly with nuclear weapons, might have become unstoppable.

 

A number of events seem to have slowed down the Bush administration’s blind galloping towards another war in the Middle East.

 

First, there was the opposition of the American Joint Chiefs to the option of using nuclear weapons against Iran. No nuclear weapons have ever been used since Hiroshima and Nagazaki in 1945. The consequences in terms of radioactivity, casualties, and mere precedence for transforming the nature of nuclear weapons, are simply too incalculable to be embarked upon lightly by any nuclear state. The cooler heads at the Pentagon seem to have prevailed, for now.

 

Secondly, the Bush administration’s staunchest ally in the Iraq war, British Prime Minister Tony Blair, has been considerably weakened by financial scandals and by the mounting evidence that he manipulated the intelligence to justify the Iraq war. He is in no position to muster support for another Bush war in the Middle East. Neither he nor Bush can marshal the international support necessary even for the fictional coalition of the Willings they used for the Iraq war.

 

Third, and perhaps most significantly, Bush himself has been rapidly squandering his political capital at home. This was dramatically illustrated by the sobering message the American people sent to him by giving the democrats control of the congress in the November congressional election.

 

And if Bush had any doubt about how to interpret this message, an opinion poll carried out after the election showed that almost 80% of respondents supported negotiations with Syria and Iran- a key recommendation of the Iraq Study Group.

 

This was not an environment in which Bush could delude himself into believing that the American people would support him in waging another war in the Middle East.

 

Forth, The Iranian elections for municipal councils and religious assembly, this past December, dealt President Ahmadinejad’s loyalists a serious blow, and gave the moderate conservatives and the reformers a significant victory.

 

President Ahmadinejad’s provocative statements and seemingly confrontational stands were usefully exploited by the Bush administration and by Israel‘s supporters to present Ahmadinejad as another Hitler and label any negotiations with him as reprehensible appeasement.

 

The outcome of Iranian elections confirms that power in Iran is not monolithic and the drive for war against Iran could not be as personalized as it conveniently was in the case of Saddam Hussein.

 

And lest the Iranians interpret these events as excluding a military strike against Iran, President Bush announced that his new Iraq strategy included dispatching not only additional troops to Iraq, but also a second aircraft carrier and several Patriot antimissile batteries to the Gulf region. US Secretary of Defense Robert Gate affirmed during his recent visit to Afghanistan that America was building up its forces to demonstrate its resolve to remain in the Persian region.

 

Yet, a war against Iran will strengthen the ultra conservatives, harden Iran‘s determination to develop nuclear technology, and engulf the region in more violence and conflict. Such a scenario will assuredly have dire consequences for the American standing in the Arab and Muslim worlds, already profoundly discredited by the Iraq war and the indifference to the Palestine conflict.

 

Under ordinary circumstances these considerations would probably have left President Bush unmoved and undeterred. But these are no ordinary circumstances. Bush is bogged down in Iraq, unpopular at home, fighting multiple-front war against vaguely defined enemies, and under assault from influential opinion makers who accuse him of obduracy and delusion.

 

An American strike against Iran under these conditions is difficult to plan for publicly; but an American-supported Israeli strike against Iran is not.

 

Israeli leaders seem to have reached a similar conclusion and began a concerted campaign of propaganda and intimidation to prepare the international community for a strike against Iran.

 

Shortly after it became clear that Bush had been weakened by the outcome of the congressional election in early November, Israeli accusations against Iran intensified. Ronen Bergman claimed in the widely read Israeli paper Yedioth Ahronot that: satellite images “reveal that the Iranians are making considerable and particularly rapid progress in producing a bomb.” (November 10, 06) Israeli Prime Minister Olmert visited all five permanent members of the UN Security Council in an effort to stop “the development of the Iranian nuclear program.” (Haarezt, Jan 8, 07) Last week, a British newspaper revealed Israeli plans for a nuclear strike against Iran: “Two Israeli air force squadrons” wrote the Sunday Times, “are training to blow up an Iranian facility using low-yield nuclear “bunker-busters.” (January 7, 2007) In November, Israeli writer Michael Oren wrote that Israeli Prime Miniter Olmert came to Washington in search of a green light for a strike against Iran. “The light Mr. Olmert received in Washington,” he wrote, “was probably not green, but neither was it flashing red.” (Wall Street Journal, November 15, 06).  Oren drew analogy with the Israeli attack on its neighbors in June 1967, when US President Johnson gave visiting Israeli foreign Minister Abba Eban support that stopped short of a green light. The suggestion is that the absence of an explicit green light from Washington is no impediment to Israeli action against Iran. Bush, democrats and republicans alike would ‘understand.’ The international community and the UN have a responsibility to save the region from another war. 

 

 

 

Prof. Adel Safty is Distinguished Visiting Professor at the Siberian Academy of Public Administration, Russia. His latest book, Leadership and Democracy, is published in New York

 

 

 

 

 

 

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