The military strike option against Iran

posted August 17, 2005 at 11:00 a.m.
The military strike option against Iran
By Tom Regan | csmonitor.com
Christian Science Monitor

Experts disagree about possible effect of US or Israeli preemptive strike on Iranian nuclear facilities.

Iran once again says it will resume its nuclear program, despite International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)concerns. Iran claims its interest in nuclear power is entirely for peaceful purposes.
Last week US President George Bush said during an interview on Israeli TV that "all options are on the table," including a possible military strike against Iran's nuclear facilities by US or Israeli forces, if Iran doesn't "comply with international standards."

When it comes to relations between Iran and the US, an editorial in the Daily Times of Pakistan notes that "the normal rules don't apply" because of the acrimonious history that stretches over the past 26 years, when Iranian militants held US diplomats hostage for more than a year.

Yet experts and commentators are split over what such a possible "military option," or even the threat of one, might achieve.

Columnist Robert Robb of the Arizona Republic says when Mr. Bush makes threats of this sort, he is in danger of becoming a "lame duck president" regarding foreign affairs. Mr. Robb believes that Bush is using the strike threat as a way to get current negotiations with Iran on a track more favorable to US interests, which would include having Iran referred to the UN Security Council, which would then place sanctions on it.

But Robb says this approach will bear little fruit, as most of Iran's nuclear transgressions happened in the past, and it has owned up to them.

It's a little late in the game to be referring Iran to the Security Council for its past reporting failures. And an attempt to refer Iran for currently doing what it has a right to do under the non-proliferation treaty would certainly seem a non-starter. Even if the matter got to the Security Council, the chances are remote that Russia and China, both of which have significant and growing economic relations with Iran, would go along with anything meaningful.

Daniel T. Barkley, who teaches microeconomics at Northern Kentucky University, writes in the Cincinnati Enquirer that a strike against Iran, one of the world's top oil producers, would have serious negative economic consequences for the global economy, where the "loss of just a fraction of Iranian oil production either though collateral damage, sabotage or economic embargo could trigger a severe economic global recession."
Columnist Robert Scheer writes in the Los Angeles Times that the US doesn't "respect or understand any religious or nationalist fervor other than our own," and that this had always caused foreign policy problems, in particular for the Bush administration. Mr. Scheer says the White House is also using a double standard when it comes to talk of nuclear weapons.

If Tehran refuses to be transparent and open to inspections, the UN Security Council can take up the issue of imposing sanctions.
Yet as the head of the only nation to have used nuclear weapons on human beings and the one currently devising the next generation of "battlefield" nukes, it would seem that Bush should be a little more careful about trying to seize the moral high ground. This is especially the case because Washington has accommodated the nuclear programs of three allies (Pakistan, India and Israel).

But global issues expert Dan Plesch argues in the Guardian that Bush has "the capability and the reasons" for an assault on Iranian nuclear facilities. He notes that anyone who thinks that the US is "overextended" militarily in Iraq "misunderstands" the goals of the Bush administration.
America's devastating air power is not committed in Iraq. Just 120 B52, B1 and B2 bombers could hit 5,000 targets in a single mission. Thousands of other warplanes and missiles are available. The army and marines are heavily committed in Iraq, but enough forces could be found to secure coastal oilfields and to conduct raids into Iran.
Mr. Plesch writes that attacking Iran also makes sense domestically for the White House, as 'war with Iran next spring can enable them to win the mid-term elections and retain control of the Republican party, now in partial rebellion over Iraq."

Newsweek International editor Fareed Zakaria, however, disagrees with this scenario. Mr. Zakaria writes that while it is important that Iran's nuclear ambitions be curtailed - because of the way it would change the nuclear ambitions of countries like Saudi Arabia and Egypt, thus radically changing the "security atmosphere" in the Middle East - he doesn't think "sticks" are going to work.

In its second term, the Bush administration has softened its Iran policy, and yet it remains unwilling to talk, let alone negotiate, on anything substantive. As with North Korea, the shift toward a less hostile policy is so slight that it can't possibly succeed. In fact, I sometimes wonder whether this new "soft" policy has been designed by Vice President Cheney's office, so that it fails, discredits any prospect of negotiating and thus returns us to the old policy, which is to do nothing and hope the regime falls (a prediction that has been made by neoconservatives for 15 years now).

Zakaria says that Iran's ultimate goal is actually better relations with the West, the US in particular, but it wants that deal in a way that creates a "grand bargain" - a comprehensive normalization of relations with the West in exchange for concessions on nuclear issues. The US should explore this path, he says, because even if it failed, the situation would be no different than it is today.