A sense of the wider conflict emerges
Tuesday, July 18, 2006 at 7:17AM ANALYSIS: Options for U.S. Limited As Mideast Crises Spread, by Robin Wright, Washington Post, 13 July 2006, p. A19.
ANALYSIS: U.S., Needing Options, Finds Its Hands Tied, by Helene Cooper, New York Times, 15 July 2006, p. A1.
EDITORIAL: Iran's First Strike, Wall Street Journal, 18 July 2006, p. A14.
ARTICLE: Syrian President May Hold Key To Mideast Crisis: As Diplomatic Steps Begin, Assad's Choices Could Fan Or Defuse Regional Violence, by Karby Leggett, Mariam Fam, and Neil King Jr., Wall Street Journal, 18 July 2006.
There is a growing consensus that begins to see this mini-war as having little to do with the Arab-Israeli conflict and mostly to do with the settling out of the U.S.-rogue regime relationships in the region. In other words, this is still all about the Big Bang.
Many have called that strategy "failed," and yet look how it still plays out. Iran and Syria, both openly named as potential "who's next?" candidates, are clearly pre-emptively striking out. Some will naturally see this as Iran's answer to the offer made by the Bush Administration recently--thus the logic of direct action against Iran looms larger.
Me? I just see the logic of the Big Bang giving us what we always wanted: decision points for the region's dictators. The choice right now is to force some larger security engagement (the settling of issues that Iran has signalled it is interested in pursuing, but not in any venue that discusses ONLY their pursuit of nukes--go figure!) or to take action pre-emptively to rule out American-led invasions.
Our tie-down in Iraq is real, and everyone in the region knows it, so if we're not willing to engage the larger regional security agenda (and that's the signal we send with this myopic focus on WMD that's perverted our foreign and security policies almost like abortion has perverted our foreign aid agenda), then we give off the vibe that our diplomacy is fake, largely designed to buy time and consensus for ultimate military action. And guess what? The pigeons in question aren't going to wait around for that plan to unfold on Bush's watch, so their socialize their problem quite effectively through Hamas and Hezbollah.
As the NYT article pointed, it gets tough to seek diplomatic solutions when your basic foreign policy strategy is that we don't talk directly to rogues, we just threaten them and let others speak on our behalf.
Right now our approach comes off as rather bassawkwards: we decide who's bad and we threaten them directly, then we sort of backtrack to having our key allies (basically the G-8 crowd plus China) try and work the diplomacy. But we're leading with the military threat as the big prod both to our enemies and our allies, and that puts both in the position of being reactive, so the dialogue stays rather stale when our focus is so heavy on just this notion of WMD prevention.
Russia and China, no surprise, are acting like they won't let us track this war back to Iran. That leaves Assad as the weak link, so our focus will likely turn there. But if it does, Iran's already won what it really wanted: to move this discussion off their WMD pursuit, pushing the conversation back in the direction of Israel.
When I wrote last year in Esquire that Iran can basically veto our peace efforts in Beirut and Baghdad and Jerusalem, this is exactly what I had in mind. We go myopic, they socialize the problem, and our only option is diplomacy to achieve the same ends that we earlier vowed never to accept, or we fight, which we can't really pull off right now.
Iran remains the key, but this Administration hasn't expressed any interest in trying to unlock that particular door, so this war is what gets lobbed over the transom instead, and now Israel is running America's Middle East policy--which is exactly where Tehran wants us.
Reader Comments (9)
I wouldn't be so sure that American military forces are "tied down" in Iraq. There is nothing to stop the USAF from taking out every visible hard target in both Syria and Iran.
Oh yes there is: 140,000 targets in Iraq.
Consequence-free bombing there is not.
Additionally, not only would we have to worry about retaliation against our forces from Iran, and its regional proxies, but also how would we deal with the eventuality of the collapse of the Iranian state. Given that we still lack a SysAdmin capability (and what little we have is still “tied down” in Iraq) it is doubtful we would be able to fill the vacuum left by the Shiite state. That opens the door to instability and more importantly to the al Qaeda-Taliban insurgency in Balochistan, Pakistan to move freely into Iran and from there to the rest of the Muslim world. An unstable Iran would also be a heaven sent to the drug lords in southern Afghanistan who would not only have more fertile fields to go to, but also safer routes for their products. Unless we have boots on the ground, the prospect of attacking Iran is not one I would want to face given the repercussions it is likely to have. Imagine the remnants of the Iranian intelligence services joining forces with al Qaeda or other groups to wreak havoc across the Muslim world, while our troops are unable to leave Iraq lest it too follow Iran into failed state status.
Our tie-down in Iraq is real, and everyone in the region knows it...and our only option is diplomacy to achieve the same ends that we earlier vowed never to accept, or we fight, which we can't really pull off right now.
Tom,
Couldn't agree more.
What sort of timetable are we looking at until we're able to actually engage Iran? Quick answer is not soon enough, but I certainly would hope that our connections with other countries' militaries to create a multinational SysAdmin force is expedited as we see stability in the region deteriorate. I hope the ability to quickly destroy infrastructure underscores the difficulty a SysAdmin force will face during these new campaigns.
Look at a map.
Syria is between Iraq and Lebanon.
The obvious strategy is to hold on the Iran-Iraq border while Israel and the US take out Syria.
The "Lebanese front" is to Syria as the "Turkish front" was to Iraq.
I don't say this is going to happen, or that it should happen, but it is an option that is available to Bush, who, as you noted in the later post, is nothing if not bold.
It seems to me that the Iranian nukes issue is all about the Israel issue. Rather than diverting attention from Iranian WMDs this situation underlines it. Iran launches a third party attack on Israel as if to give evidence that fact that their vow to erase Israel is not all bluster. Weather anyone else believes it or not, Israel will never believe that Iran’s WMD desires are about the security of the state of Iran. To them it will be about the destruction of Israel, and if nothing else this whole thing has demonstrated that Israel still has no problem giving the finger to world opinion. I would be surprised if they didn’t eventually take action against the Iranian program, and even if they violated Iraqi air space without clearance (the nation of hutzpah), I don’t see how we could abandon them, and we wouldn’t because we would understand. I would love to see Bush go to Iran and if I turned on the TV and he was there I imagine I would have a pretty good belly laugh (for more than one reason, but mainly joy). But even with that, I have a feeling it would take more than we could do to placate Iran. I think the Palestinian issue has to be resolved, and the Palestinians seem to me, with their election of Hamas to be more interested in vengeance than freedom or statehood (or life?).
thus far it seems Iran has enjoyed impunity, but Tom, what do you think about the mullahs economic vulnerability vis a vis the Gulf Arab states? In other words, if they push their advantage and/or Shi'a radicalism too hard, what are the prospects of those refined gasoline deliveries being interrupted across the Persian Gulf and the too clever Ahmadenijad regime dealing with gasoline lines in Tehran, in a country afloat on oil? I think the mullahs seem to be counting on pro-Hezbollah public opinion in the Arab countries to insulate them from such retaliation. But what does public opinion have to do with a few "technical problems" at a few Gulf refineries? That is a vulnerability that will take another ten years and lots of foreign investment in domestic refining for the mullahs to close. They are not untouchable, and no dropping of bombs or major open action is required for serious blowback on their regime.
Re: Charles Ganske's comment
I don't think that there is any chance that the Gulf states will provoke Iraq by cutting off gasoline supplies. The Gulf states do not have strong militaries. Their security strategy is based not so much on winning wars as on avoiding them. Part of that is being a reliable supplier, because oil is an essential commodity and countries are willing to go to war to obtain it if they can't buy it for cash.