If you recall, Matthew Kroenig and Colin Kahl, both recently-departed Obama administration officials, noted that if Iran were to install advanced centrifuge designs in the deeply-buried Fordow facility, then Western officials would need to consider taking military action against that site.  Kroenig said such a move by Iran would mean “the United States must strike immediately or forfeit its last opportunity to prevent Iran from joining the nuclear club.”

I viewed this as an unreasonable redline to draw, since Iran is already operating next-generation centrifuges at its other enrichment facility and that moving IR-2m or IR-4 machines into Fordow wouldn’t fundamentally alter the nature of Iran’s nuclear weapons potential in the same way that, say, a decision to start stockpiling weapons-grade uranium would.  But I then got to thinking: wouldn’t more advanced centrifuges at the Qom site mean Iran could breakout quicker — possibly even in the 2-3 months between IAEA inspections?  That would, after all, fundamentally alter the state of play on the nuclear issue, and probably would necessitate some deep thinking in Washington and Tel Aviv.

So let’s figure out what we’re really dealing with here.

Read on.

Director of National Intelligence James Clapper reminded Congress earlier this week that U.S. intelligence estimates indicate that Iran has not yet decided to build a nuclear weapon. Meanwhile, U.N. nuclear inspectors report that their recent talks in Tehran made for a “good trip” and scheduled a second round of talks for later this month, and a flurry of recent articles from experts have cast doubt on the effectiveness of a U.S. or Israeli military attack on Iran’s nuclear program.

While some of the more hawkish rhetoric and efforts to drive forward on unilateral sanctions continue to come out of Congress, the new United Technologies/National Journal “Congressional Connection Poll,” found that public support for a military strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities is extremely low.

Forty-seven percent of respondents favored economic sanctions against Iran, only 13 percent said the U.S. should “go farther and take covert action against Iran such as sabotage and assassination of scientists working on their nuclear program,” and 17 percent would support “tak[ing] military action against Iran, including bombing weapons facilities inside the country.”

The combination of E.U. sanctions banning oil purchases from Iran and tighter U.S. sanctions led 60 percent of National Journal’s “National Security Insiders,” in a separate poll, to conclude that the new sanctions regime will stave off the need for military action.

*This week’s must-read is “Envisioning a Deal With Iran” by William H. Luers and Thomas R. Pickering, two Cold War diplomatic veterans writing in the New York Times.

Mainstream Media and Pundits:

Clifford D. May in the National Review: Former journalist and spokesman for the Republican National Committee, Clifford May is now president of the hawkish Foundation for the Defense of Democracies. This week he applauded the imposition of more crippling sanctions on Iran, which he calls a “weapon” for bringing about regime change. Despite praising the recent waves of strangling measures against the isolated Islamic Republic, May also implied that the U.S. should keep the military option wide open:

But sanctions are no panacea. They should be just one weapon in an arsenal of policies aimed at weakening Iran’s fanatical rulers immediately and dislodging them eventually.

…

Finally, there must be no ambiguity about the fact that, if all else fails, sharper arrows remain in our quiver; no ambiguity about our determination to prevent this regime — which, the evidence clearly shows, works hand in glove with al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups — from acquiring nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them.

There are conflicts, and then there are conflicts. Iran’s rulers need to understand that if they continue to escalate this conflict, sooner or later they will come to the end of the road. And there they will find not just a hive of bumblebees but the jaws of a very angry junkyard dog.

Michael Ledeen in Pajamas Media: Veteran hawk and pundit Michael Ledeen (who was far more prominent during the runup to the Iraq war) continues to push for U.S. sponsored regime change in Iran. This week he downplayed concern about a military conflict by saying that the U.S. and Iran are already at war. He went on to argue that more sanctions against Iran are welcomed but won’t bring about his goal of regime change:

But I don’t know anyone this side of the White House who believes that sanctions, by themselves, will produce what we should want above all:  the fall of the Tehran regime that is the core of the war against us.  To accomplish that, we need more than sanctions;  we need a strategy for regime change.

Ledeen also accused President Obama of being inadequately militaristic about Iran:

But even if all these are guided from Washington and/or Jerusalem, it still does not add up to a war-winning strategy, which requires a clearly stated mission from our maximum leaders.  We need a president who will say “Khamenei and Ahmadinejad must go.”  He must say it publicly, and he must say it privately to our military, to our diplomats, and to the intelligence community.

Without that commitment, without that mission — and it’s hard to imagine it, isn’t it? — we’ll continue to spin our wheels, mostly playing defense, sometimes enacting new sanctions, sometimes wrecking the mullahs’ centrifuges, forever hoping that the mullahs will make a deal.  Until the day when one of those Iranian schemes to kill even more Americans works out, and we actually catch them in the act.  Then our leaders will say “we must go to war.”

Think Tanks:

Bipartisan Policy Center: A report from a Washington think tank advises President Obama to make threats of a U.S. or Israeli attack against Iran more credible and launch an “effective surgical strike against Iran’s nuclear program” if punitive measures and aggressive posturing is not successful. The “Bipartisan Policy Center” houses several George W. Bush administration officials who supported the Iraq War and the report’s task force is dominated by Iran hawks, including the report’s staff director, Michael Makovsky.

Past and Present U.S. Officials and Politicians:

James Woolsey in the Jerusalem Post: During an interview at the Herzliya Conference in Israel, former CIA director James Woolsey (now with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies) argues for U.S. airstrikes on Iran. From the Jerusalem Post:

“At some point someone is going to have to decide to use force to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon. I’d argue that those who say we can deal adequately with Iran through deterrence are quite naive.”

…

Woolsey suggested sending approximately five carrier battle groups – each comprising an aircraft carrier and its escort vessels – to the Indian Ocean, accompanied by bomber support, if possible.

By Greg Thielmann

The United States’ intelligence community’s judgments on Iran’s nuclear program have not fundamentally changed from those revealed in its controversial 2007 National Intelligence Estimate. In presenting the intelligence community’s annual “Worldwide Threat Assessment” to the Senate Committee on Intelligence on January 31, Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper used language identical to that used in recent years on a number of critical points:

- We continue to assess Iran is keeping open the option to develop nuclear weapons in part by developing various nuclear capabilities that better position it to produce such weapons, should it choose to do so. We do not know, however, if Iran will eventually decide to build nuclear weapons.

- Iran has the scientific, technical, and industrial capacity to eventually produce nuclear weapons, making the central issue its political will to do so. These [technical] advancements contribute to our judgment that Iran is technically capable of producing enough highly enriched uranium for a weapon, if it so chooses.

- We judge Iran’s nuclear decision making is guided by a cost-benefit approach, which offers the international community opportunities to influence Tehran.

Clapper’s testimony acknowledged Iran’s additional accumulation of low-enriched uranium at both the 3.5 percent and 20 percent level and the start of enrichment at its second enrichment plant near Qom.

The senior intelligence officials also endorsed the November 2011 IAEA report as being the best public accounting to date of Iran’s nuclear activities, including information “relevant to possible military dimensions.”

However, the U.S. intelligence community’s assessment of Iran’s post-2003 nuclear activities has apparently not convinced it that Tehran has decided to build a nuclear weapon.  Moreover, Clapper’s testimony suggests that Iran has the domestic capabilities eventually to do so, regardless of foreign actions taken against it. The “central issue” is thus affecting political will.

Senators at the public Congressional hearing did not press for an intelligence judgment on how growing threats of military action influence the Iranian regime’s political will.

But given that Iranian pride and nationalism exist across the domestic political spectrum, it would be foolish to conclude that Tehran will capitulate only in response to increased costs for defying the international community. If a negotiated agreement is possible, it will also have to include something that Tehran perceives as a benefit.

Iran complained that the EU measures were “unfair” and “doomed to fail”, but the effects of the new sanctions, which enhance the pains of preexisting EU, US and UN sanctions, are already being felt. A Thomson Reuters headline from today reads: “Iran grain shipments stranded as sanctions bite“. Jonathan Saul and Michael Hogan build on a report from last week detailing how cargo ships destined for Iran, a major importer of grain, are waiting outside Iranian ports stocked with “about 420,000 tonnes” of product, because Tehran, with its blacklisted Central Bank, is finding it increasingly difficult to send “workable” letters of credit. These Iranian trade partners are in a lose-lose situation–at risk of incurring major losses if they deliver without guaranteed payment and facing the same consequences if they don’t. So the stocked cargo ships and European distributors are just waiting, like port employees and Iranian businesses are hoping, for some solution to materialize.

All the while Iran’s currency, the Rial, continues to devalue while its revenue sources are diminishing. An immediate EU-imposed ban on all new contracts for Iranian crude prevents the isolated country from courting new customers with deals enjoyed by countries like China and Russia. Financial headaches could also turn into major humanitarian issues if waivers and exceptions aren’t issued, especially with regard to food and other essential products.

Three days after the EU sanctions were announced, Israel declared that more, swifter sanctions are needed to halt Iran’s alleged nuclear ambitions. Influential U.S. voices, such as the Wall Street Journal’s hawkish editorial board, are making similar claims. Congress is also taking the U.S.’s Iran-sanctions policy to new levels by simultaneously approving legislation that makes diplomacy nearly impossible and pushing Iran into even smaller corners with the threat of more crippling sanctions.

The Obama administration has described its “dual-track approach” with Iran as a policy of sticks and carrots, but the sanctions that the U.S. has adopted and pressured other countries to implement are beginning to look like sticks being thrown at average Iranians at an increasing rate.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said in 2010 that the U.S. wants to change the behavior of the Iranian government “without contributing to the suffering of the ordinary people”, but in light of recent events and nightmares that could follow, the opposite seems to be occurring. Meanwhile, another drumbeat rolls on.

European leaders are telling their publics that the latest EU sanctions are to persuade Iran to talk to the P5+1 about its nuclear program. In the House of Commons, on 24 January, Foreign Secretary William Hague said the sanctions represent “peaceful and legitimate pressure on the Iranian government to return to negotiations”.

This begs a question: why does Iran need to be coerced into negotiating? Surely it is in Iran’s interest to take every opportunity to convince the P5+1 that it intends to abide by its Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) commitment to place all nuclear material in its possession under International Atomic Energy Association (IAEA) safeguards and to refrain from manufacturing or otherwise acquiring nuclear explosive devices—and that the 18 years during which Iran pursued a “policy of concealment” were an aberration that Iran’s leaders now regret.

The answer lies, I suspect, in the letter that EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton sent to Iran’s nuclear negotiator, Saeed Jalili, on 21 October. The letter was made public by the EU on 20 January. It contains the following sentences:

We remain committed to the practical and specific suggestions which we have put forward in the past. These confidence-building steps should form first elements of a phased approach which would eventually lead to a full settlement between us, involving the full implementation by Iran of UNSC and IAEA Board of Governors’ resolutions.

Dr. Jalili and his advisers could be forgiven for interpreting these sentences to mean that there is no point in turning up for talks unless they are committed to satisfying UN and IAEA demands in full. It looks as though the real goal of sanctions is not to get Iran back to the negotiating table, but to get Iran to give way on the demands that it has spent the last six years declining to concede.

These demands have become increasingly baroque with the passage of time, but in essence they remain unchanged since 2006:

- suspension of all enrichment-related activity and of the construction of a heavy water moderated reactor (HWRR);

- application of the Additional Protocol;

- resolution of all outstanding IAEA safeguards inspection issues.

This brings us to another question: why are the P5+1 so determined to get Iran to implement all the demands that, using their political muscle, they have persuaded the Security Council to adopt? After all, they could have recognised that over time some of these demands have become less relevant to the global community’s non-proliferation needs, and that some might more readily be accepted by Iran in the context of an open-ended search for common ground through the give-and-take of a genuine negotiation.

Suspension of all enrichment-related activity stands out as the demand that now least serves a practical non-proliferation purpose. Suspension was first conceived, in 2003, as a way of halting Iran’s progress towards the mastery of enrichment technology, while the IAEA looked into the nature and purpose of the activities that Iran had undertaken when pursuing a “policy of concealment”. Now the P5+1 look like a hapless groom trying to shut the stable door long after the horse has bolted: Iran has developed three or more centrifuge models and appears to have overcome most, if not all, of the technical problems involved.

Of course suspension would put a halt to the accumulation of low-enriched uranium (LEU) by Iran. But Iran’s LEU stocks are not in themselves a proliferation threat. They are under IAEA safeguards. Any attempt by Iran to draw on them for use in a clandestine enrichment program would be brought immediately to the world’s attention. The calibration of future LEU production to reactor fuel needs is something that Iran might be ready to concede in the context of a genuine open-ended negotiation.

Suspension of HWRR construction is probably too far advanced now for Iran to be ready to write off its investment. But from a proliferation perspective this suspension is no more vital than the suspension of LEU production. Once completed, the HWRR will be placed under IAEA safeguards. Any diversion of spent fuel rods, containing plutonium, to a reprocessing plant would be quickly detected. Besides, there is no evidence to date that Iran intends to build a reprocessing plant; hence there is good reason to think that Iran might be ready to foreswear reprocessing as part of a balanced deal.

Continuing P5+1 insistence on reapplication of the Additional Protocol is entirely reasonable, but is another demand that Iran would almost certainly accept if it felt that the playing-field were level. It must be apparent to Iran’s leaders that the Majles vote to terminate application prior to ratification was a classic own goal.

Had the Protocol remained in force since 2006, the IAEA might well have concluded by now that there are no undeclared “nuclear activities or material” in Iran, greatly complicating the task of any who wish to exploit the nuclear controversy for ulterior purposes.  (The alleged nuclear-related studies, which now constitute the only major issue on Iran’s IAEA file, fall outside the scope of IAEA safeguards. The IAEA mandate for investigating them comes from the Security Council, not from Iran’s NPT safeguards agreement. Such studies are “nuclear-related activities”, not “nuclear activities”.)

These alleged studies are nonetheless the biggest obstacle to a peaceful settlement. They cannot be ignored but they are problematic because:

- The West asserts that the evidence for them is authentic but seemingly lacks the means to satisfy Iran that they are not forgeries.

- Initially the IAEA secretariat took a sceptical view of the authenticity of this evidence. In the last two years the secretariat seems to have become more confident that the material is authentic, but they have not spelled out why in sufficient detail for those who are free of all political influence to be able to form their own judgements.

- Iran may well be deterred from making an avowal and moving on—assuming there is something for them to avow—by the thought that the West might try to use an avowal to persuade non-Western members of the Security Council to further tighten UN sanctions, or authorise an attack on Iran (though I suspect that now Russia has achieved WTO admission it will be more robust in resisting Western pressure for anti-Iranian Council resolutions).

A solution to the alleged studies issue is not inconceivable, however. In the context of a genuine, open-ended negotiation one can imagine Western diplomats finding ways to reassure Iran that an avowal will not be misused—unless, as some fear, Western policy is driven not by non-proliferation goals, but by some ulterior purpose.

Other Obstacles to a Peaceful Settlement

The inflexibility apparent in Baroness Ashton’s letter, and the West’s apparent failure to take a fresh look at how Western non-proliferation goals might most realistically be achieved, are not my only reasons for feeling pessimistic about prospects for a peaceful settlement.

First, were there to be a genuine P5+1/Iran negotiation this year, what would the West have to offer Iran? The White House acted on Congressional demands in December and prevailed on EU doubters to adopt oil sanctions in January because, in an electoral year, it wants protection for the President from the charge of being weak on Iran. The White House will not easily surrender that protection by allowing the EU to repeal its oil sanctions in return for Iranian concessions, or offer meaningful US concessions.

Second, Western policy appears to be suffering from a sense of proportion failure.  The British Defence Secretary announced in Washington on 5 January that Iran is working “flat-out” to make nuclear weapons. The US intelligence community, however, (and now, if Haaretz can be believed, even the Israeli intelligence community), assesses that the decision to make such weapons has yet to be taken, and may not be taken provided the likely consequences of taking it remain dissuasive.

Then the Canadian Prime Minister said that Iran is a “very serious threat to international peace and security”, followed by President Sarkozy, Chancellor Merkel and Prime Minister Cameron accusing Iran of being on a path that “threatens the peace and security of us all”. Yet the Security Council has so far failed to determine that Iran’s nuclear activities represent a “threat to the peace”. This is in marked contrast to what the Council has said about North Korea’s nuclear excesses. All this raises questions about Western perceptions of Iran and somewhat undermines the validity of the “international obligations” that the Council has imposed on Iran, and that Iran is frequently called upon to respect. (A careful reading of chapter VII of the UN Charter suggests that a threat to the peace determination ought to precede the creation of obligations under article 41.)

If Western policy-makers really believe that Iran’s nuclear program is a threat to international peace and security, they cannot be expected to accept Iran’s NPT right to enrich (provided all Iranian nuclear material is under safeguards), and consequently hope of a peaceful settlement is vain. The fact that most of the world believes that Iran has yet to become a threat to peace is unlikely to change anything.

The final causes for pessimism (though my list is not intended to be exhaustive) are called Saudi Arabia and Israel. It ought to be well within the range of Western diplomacy to persuade Saudi Arabia that Iran’s nuclear activities still fall short of constituting a threat to Saudi security, and to remind Riyadh that, as a party to the NPT, it is committed to refrain from seeking nuclear weapons. But I have yet to come across evidence of the West taking such a line.

The Israeli case is complicated by ever-changing messages from Tel Aviv. One day Iran’s nuclear program constitutes an existential threat to Israel, the next it does not. One day Israeli pilots are warming up their engines in preparation for take-off to the East, the next senior Israelis are explaining why an Israeli strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities would lead to catastrophe for Israel and the West.

Yet Israel remains hugely dependent on US benevolence. For a non-American it is hard to understand why this does not entitle the US to tell the Israelis to make a vow of silence on Iran and leave the West to settle this controversy in a manner consistent with the provisions of the NPT, and with maintaining the integrity of this vital global regime.

Like most pessimists, I am yearning for my judgements to prove mistaken.

Posted by Tom Dispatch

Exclusive: New Iranian Commando Team Operating Near U.S.

(Tehran, FNA) The Fars News Agency has confirmed with the Republican Guard’s North American Operations Command that a new elite Iranian commando team is operating in the U.S.-Mexican border region. The primary day-to-day mission of the team, known as the Joint Special Operations Gulf of Mexico Task Force, or JSOG-MTF, is to mentor Mexican military units in the border areas in their war with the deadly drug cartels.  The task force provides “highly trained personnel that excel in uncertain environments,” Maj. Amir Arastoo, a spokesman for Republican Guard special operations forces in North America, tells Fars, and “seeks to confront irregular threats…”

The unit began its existence in mid-2009 — around the time that Washington rejected the Iranian leadership’s wish for a new diplomatic dialogue. But whatever the task force does about the United States — or might do in the future — is a sensitive subject with the Republican Guard.  “It would be inappropriate to discuss operational plans regarding any particular nation,” Arastoo says about the U.S.

Okay, so I made that up.  Sue me.  But first admit that, a line or two in, you knew it was fiction.  After all, despite the talk about American decline, we are still on a one-way imperial planet.  Yes, there is a new U.S. special operations team known as Joint Special Operations Task Force-Gulf Cooperation Council, or JSOTF-GCC, at work near Iran and, according to Wired magazine’s Danger Room blog, we really don’t quite know what it’s tasked with doing (other than helping train the forces of such allies as Bahrain and Saudi Arabia).

And yes, the quotes are perfectly real, just out of the mouth of a U.S. “spokesman for special-operations forces in the Mideast,” not a representative of Iran’s Republican Guard.  And yes, most Americans, if they were to read about the existence of the new special ops team, wouldn’t think it strange that U.S. forces were edging up to (if not across) the Iranian border, not when our “safety” was at stake.

Reverse the story, though, and it immediately becomes a malign, if unimaginable, fairy tale.  Of course, no Iranian elite forces will ever operate along the U.S. border.  Not in this world.  Washington wouldn’t live with it and it remains the military giant of giants on this planet.  By comparison, Iran is, in military terms, a minor power.

Any Iranian forces on the Mexican border would represent a crossing of one of those “red lines” that U.S. officials are always talking about and so an international abomination to be dealt with severely.  More than that, their presence would undoubtedly be treated as an act of war.  It would make screaming headlines here.  The Republican candidates for the presidency would go wild.  You know the rest.  Think about the reaction when Attorney General Eric Holder announced that an Iranian-American used-car salesman from Texas had contacted a Mexican drug cartel as part of a bizarre plot supposedly hatched by senior members of the elite Iranian Quds Force to assassinate the Saudi ambassador in a Washington restaurant and possibly bomb the Saudi and Israeli embassies as well.

Though doubts were soon raised about the likelihood of such an Iranian plot, the outrage in the U.S. was palpable.  Secretary of State Hillary Clinton insisted that it “crosses a line that Iran needs to be held to account for.”  The Wall Street Journal labeled it “arguably an act of war,” as did Congressman Peter King, chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee.  Speaker of the House John Boehner termed it “a very serious breach of international behavior,” while House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers swore that it crossed “a very dangerous threshold” and called for “unprecedented” action by the Obama administration.

On the other hand, no one here would claim that a U.S. special operations team edging up to the Iranian border was anything out of the ordinary or that it potentially crossed any lines, red or otherwise, or was a step beyond what the international community accepts.  In fact, the news, such as it was, caused no headlines in the press, no comments on editorial pages, nothing.  After all, everyone knows that Iranians would be the equivalent of fish out of water in Mexico, but that Americans are at home away from home in the Persian Gulf (as in most other places on Earth).

The Iranian “War” Against America

Nonetheless, just for the heck of it, let’s suspend the laws of political and military gravity and pile up a few more fairy-tale-ish details.

Imagine that, in late 2007, Iran’s ruling mullahs and their military advisors had decided to upgrade already significant covert activities against Washington, including cross-border operations, and so launched an intensification of its secret campaign to “destabilize” the country’s leadership — call it a covert war if you will — funded by hundreds of millions of dollars of oil money; that they (or their allies) supported armed oppositional groups hostile to Washington; that they flew advanced robot drones on surveillance missions in the country’s airspace; that they imposed ever escalating sanctions, which over the years caused increased suffering among the American people, in order to force Washington to dismantle its nuclear arsenal and give up the nuclear program (military and peaceful) that it had been pursuing since 1943; that they and an ally developed and launched a computer worm meant to destroy American centrifuges and introduced sabotaged parts into its nuclear supply chain; that they encouraged American nuclear scientists to defect; that one of their allies launched an assassination program against American nuclear scientists and engineers, killing five of them on the streets of American cities; that they launched a global campaign to force the world not to buy key American products, including Hollywood movies, iPhones, iPods, and iPads, and weaponry of any sort by essentially embargoing American banking transactions.

Imagine as well that an embattled American president declared the Gulf of Mexico to be off-limits to Iranian aircraft carriers and threatened any entering its waters with dire consequences.  In response, the Iranians promptly sent their aircraft carrier, the Mossadegh, and its battle group of accompanying ships directly into Gulf waters not far from Florida and then stationed a second carrier, the Khomeini, and its task force in the nearby Caribbean as support.  (Okay, the Iranians don’t have aircraft carriers, but just for a moment, suspend disbelief.)

And keep in mind that, in this outlandish scenario, all of the above would only be what we knew about or suspected.  You would have to assume that there were also still-unknown aspects to their in-the-shadows campaign of regime change against Washington.

Now, pinned to Iran, that list looks absurd.  Were such things to have happened (even in a far more limited fashion), they would have been seen across the American political spectrum as an abomination (and rightly so), a morass of illegal, illegitimate, and immoral acts and programs that would have to be opposed at all costs.  As you also know perfectly well, it is a description of just what we do know or suspect that the U.S. has done, alone or in concert with its ally Israel, or what, in the case of the assassination operations against nuclear scientists (and possibly an explosion that destroyed much of an Iranian missile base, killing a major general and 16 others), Israel has evidently done on its own, but possibly with the covert agreement of Washington.

And yet you can search the mainstream news far and wide without seeing words like “illegal,” “illegitimate,” or “immoral” or even “a very serious breach of international behavior” applied to them, though you can certainly find sunny reports on our potential power to loose destruction in the region, the sorts of articles that, if they were in the state-controlled Iranian press, we would consider propaganda.

While the other three presidential candidates were baying for Iranian blood at a recent Republican debate, it was left to Ron Paul, the ultimate outsider, to point out the obvious: that the latest round of oil sanctions being imposed by Washington and just agreed to by the European Union, meant to prohibit the sale of Iranian oil on the international market, was essentially an “act of war,” and that it preceded recent Iranian threats (an unlikely prospect, by the way) to close the Strait of Hormuz, through which much of the planet’s oil flows.

And keep in mind, the covert war against Iran is ostensibly aimed at a nuclear weapon that does not exist, that the country’s leaders claim they are not building, that the best work of the American intelligence community in 2007 and 2010 indicated was not yet on the horizon.  (At the moment, at worst, the Iranians are believed to be working toward “possible breakout capacity” — that is, the ability to relatively “quickly” build a nuclear weapon, if the decision were made.)  As for nuclear weapons, we have 5,113 warheads that we don’t doubt are necessary for our safety and the safety of the planet.  These are weapons that we implicitly trust ourselves to have, even though the United States remains the only country ever to use nuclear weapons, obliterating two Japanese cities at the cost of perhaps 200,000 civilian deaths.  Similarly, we have no doubt that the world is safe with Israel possessing up to 200 nuclear weapons, a near civilization-destroying (undeclared) arsenal.  But it is our conviction that an Iranian bomb, even one, would end life as we know it.

Added to that fear is the oft-cited fact that Iran is run by a mullahtariat that oppresses any opposition.  That, however, only puts it in league with U.S. allies in the region like Bahrain, whose monarchy has shot down, beaten up, and jailed its opposition, and the Saudis, who have fiercely repressed their own dissidents.  Nor, in terms of harm to its people, is Iran faintly in a league with past U.S. allies like General Augusto Pinochet of Chile, who launched a U.S.-backed military coup against a democratically elected government on September 11, 1973, killing more than died in the 9/11 attacks of 2001, or the Indonesian autocrat Suharto on whom the deaths of at least half a million of his people are usually pinned.

Washington At Home in the World

Here, then, is a little necessary context for the latest round of Iran-mania in the U.S.: Washington has declared the world its oyster and garrisons the planet in a historically unique way — without direct colonies but with approximately 1,000 bases worldwide (not including those in war zones or ones the Pentagon prefers not to acknowledge).  That we do so, unique as it may be in the records of empire, strikes us as anything but odd and so is little discussed here.  One of the reasons is simple enough.  What’s called our “safety” and “security” has been made a planetary issue.  It is, in fact, the planetary standard for action, though one only we (or our closest allies) can invoke.  Others are held to far more limiting rules of behavior.

As a result, a U.S. president can now send drones and special operations forces just about anywhere to kill just about anyone he designates as a threat to our security.  Since we are everywhere, and everywhere at home, and everywhere have “interests,” we may indeed be threatened anywhere.  Wherever we’ve settled in — and in the Persian Gulf, as an example, we’re deeply entrenched — new “red lines” have been created that others are prohibited from crossing.  No one, after all, can infringe on our safety.

In support of our interests — which, speaking truthfully, are also the interests of oil — we could covertly overthrow an Iranian government in 1953 (starting the whole train of events that led to this crisis moment in the Persian Gulf), and we can again work to overthrow an Iranian government in 2012.  The only issue seriously discussed in this country is: How exactly can we do it, or can we do it at all (without causing ourselves irreparably greater harm)?  Effectiveness, not legality or morality, is the only measurement.  Few in our world (and who else matters?) question our right to do so, though obviously the right of any other state to do something similar to us or one of our allies, or to retaliate or even to threaten to retaliate, should we do so, is considered shocking and beyond all norms, beyond every red line when it comes to how nations (except us) should behave.

This mindset, and the acts that have gone with it, have blown what is, at worst, a modest-sized global problem up into an existential threat, a life-and-death matter.  Iran as a global monster now nearly fills what screen-space there is for foreign enemies in the present American moment.  Yet, despite its enormous energy reserves, it is a shaky regional power, ruled by a faction-ridden set of fundamentalists (but not madmen), the most hardline of whom seem at the moment ascendant (in no small part due to American and Israeli policies).  The country has a relatively modest military budget, and no recent history of invading other states.  It has been under intense pressure of every sort for years now and the strains are showing.  The kind of pressure the U.S. and its allies have been exerting creates the basis for madness — or for terrible miscalculation followed by inevitable tragedy.

In an election year in the U.S., little of this is apparent.  The Republicans, Ron Paul aside, have made Iran the entrée du jour on the American (and Israeli) security menu, a situation that couldn’t be more absurdly out of proportion or more dangerous.  In fact, when it comes to “American security,” our fundamentalists are off on another rampage with the Obama administration following behind.

Just as a small exercise to restore some sense of proportion, stop for a moment the next time you hear of American or Israeli plans for the further destabilization of Iran and think: what would we do if the Iranians were planning something similar for us?

It’s one small way to begin, individually, to imagine a planet on which everyone might experience some sense of security.  And here’s the oddest thing, given the blowback that could come from a blowup in the Persian Gulf, it might even make us all safer.

Tom Engelhardt, co-founder of the American Empire Project and the author of The American Way of War: How Bush’s Wars Became Obama’s as well as The End of Victory Culture, runs the Nation Institute’s TomDispatch.com. His latest book, The United States of Fear (Haymarket Books), has just been published. To listen to Timothy MacBain’s latest Tomcast audio interview in which Engelhardt discusses reversal scenarios on a one-way planet, click here, or download it to your iPod here.

[Note: The initial “Iranian” news article in this piece was taken, with a few small changes, from “New U.S. Commando Team Operating Near Iran,” a post by the intrepid Spencer Ackerman of Wired’s Danger Room blog, an important place to keep up on all things military.  Let me offer a bow as well to Antiwar.com, Juan Cole’s Informed Comment, and Paul Woodward’s the War in Context.  I don’t know what I’d do without them when it comes to keeping up.]

Follow TomDispatch on Twitter @TomDispatch and join us on Facebook.

Copyright 2012 Tom Engelhardt

By Gary Sick

The real answer is no, they will not. But you would never figure that out by reading the New York Times.

The sensationalist article in the Sunday New York Times Magazine (Jan. 29) adds to the hysteria surrounding U.S. and Israeli relations with Iran. Ronen Bergman, a columnist with the leading Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth, concludes that Israel will probably attack Iran this year.

He draws this fearful conclusion after recounting his discussions with key Israeli military and intelligence officials, present and former, who describe to him in great detail: (1) why Israel is incapable of conducting such an attack; (2) why such a foolhardy action would fail to stop Iran’s nuclear program; and (3) why it would actually leave the situation far worse than it is now.

Say what?

Not only is his conclusion at odds with virtually everything he produces as evidence, but there are some omissions in his analysis that regrettably have become predictably routine in talking about the Iranian nuclear program:

He darkly quotes “the latest intelligence” about the number and current activity of Iran’s centrifuges. Where did he get that secret information? Well, just like you or me, he can read the periodic reports of the International Atomic Energy Agency, which are published on the web virtually the same day they are handed to member states.

How did the IAEA get that “intelligence?” Not hard: they have inspectors in all the sites where Iran is producing enriched uranium. These inspectors, who make frequent surprise visits, keep cameras in place to watch every move, and they carefully measure Iran’s input of feed stock to the centrifuges and the output of low enriched uranium, which is then placed under seal. You would think that would be worth mentioning, at least in passing, but it gets overlooked by virtually every journalist writing on this subject.

Like virtually all other commentators on this issue, Bergman slides over the fact that the IAEA consistently reports that Iran has diverted none of its uranium to military purposes. Like others, he focuses on the recent IAEA report, which was the most detailed to date in discussing Iran’s suspected experiments with military implications; but like others, he fails to mention that the suspect activity took place seven or more years ago and there is no reliable evidence that it has resumed. A problem, yes; an imminent threat, no.

Bergman also overlooks the fact that Iran has almost certainly NOT made a decision to actually build a bomb and that we are very likely to know if they should make such a decision. How would we know? Simply because those pesky IAEA inspectors are there on site and Iran would have to kick them out and break the seals on their stored uranium in order to produce the high enriched uranium needed for a bomb.

Would Israel actually attack while these international inspectors are at work? No, they would need to give them warning, thereby giving Iran warning that something was coming. The IAEA presence is a trip wire that works both ways. It is an invaluable resource. Risking its loss would be not only foolhardy but self-destructive to Israel and everyone else.

Bergman’s dramatic statement that “I have come to believe that Israel will indeed strike Iran in 2012,” is also nothing new — it simply changes the date. We heard the same thing a year ago from Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic, and two years before that from uber-hawk John Bolton, who confidently predicted that the U.S. and/or Israel would strike Iran before George W. Bush left office.  It is becoming almost an annual ritual.

Why do these false alarms keep going off? Bergman suggests an answer with disarming honesty:

Some have argued that Israel has intentionally exaggerated its assessments to create an atmosphere of fear that would drag Europe into its extensive economic campaign against Iran…

To this, the ubiquitous “senior American official” adds that “It is unclear if the Israelis firmly believe this or are using worst-case estimates to raise greater urgency from the United States.” In other words, Israel benefits by keeping the pot near the boiling point so that no one can ignore the Iran issue, even for a moment.

If that is true, then Israeli strategists and American hawks should be overjoyed at Bergman’s analysis.

“We live in a world where there is still a huge amount of economic and financial fragility,” he said. “There is a huge amount of uncertainty — macro, financial, fiscal, sovereign, banking, regulatory, taxation — and there is also geopolitical and political and policy uncertainty.”

“There are lots of sources of uncertainty from the eurozone, from the Middle East, from the fact that the U.S. is not tackling its own fiscal problem, from the fact that Chinese growth is unbalanced and unsustainable, relying too much on exports and fixed investments and high savings, and not enough on consumption. So it’s a very delicate global economy,” Roubini said.

He said the biggest uncertainty is the possibility of a conflict with Iran over its nuclear program that involves Israel, the United States, or both. That could lead oil prices now hovering around $100 a barrel to spike to $150 per barrel, he said, and lead to a global recession.

Earlier this month Roubini also spoke to Bloomberg alongside Ian Bremmer, president of the Eurasia Group, about the outlook for the global economy. Roubini told host Margaret Brennan that in addition to various destabilizing factors in the Middle East, the “looming” possibility of military confrontation between Iran and the U.S. and Israel could cause “supply shocks to oil” this year. He noted that despite an upward trend in oil prices, oil markets have not yet fully reacted to the potentiality of war.

*This week’s must-read is Trevor Thrall’s “Support for Whacking Iran: Who Needs Propaganda?” in the National Interest.

Mainstream Media and Pundits:

Matthew Kroenig in the Christian Science Monitor: The online publication of the Georgetown assistant professor’s  “Time to Attack Iran” in Foreign Affairs was met with several critical responses that demolished Kroenig’s pro-war argument, most notably by Stephen Walt and Paul Pillar. But Kroenig’s claims continue to be referenced, mainly by right-wing news publications, or in the case of the Christian Science Monitor, with an entire article slot given to Kroenig to rehash his original piece into “5 reasons to attack Iran”.

Past and Present U.S. Officials and Politicians:

Tom Ridge in Fox News: George W. Bush’s Secretary of Homeland Security Tom Ridge says that the U.S. should “publicly support” the Mujahedin-e-Khalq (MEK) and “regime change in Iran”. Ridge erroneously implies that the MEK, which has killed U.S. and Iranian citizens and is a U.S.-designated foreign terrorist organization, is Iran’s “democratic opposition”. But as many journalists and analysts have pointed out, the group’s leadership has no support among the vast majority of Iranians—pro-regime or not. Ridge is nevertheless one of several former U.S. officials who continue to make misleading claims about the group, which has spent millions through its affiliates on speaking fees for it well-known advocators. In response to the barrage of pieces like this one that were published at the peak of the MEK’s 2011 campaigning, I produced this compilation of articles exposing it for what it is (most of which were written by people opposed to the current Iranian government).

Side note: Last year, Georgetown law professor David Cole wondered out loud whether Ridge and other former officials committed a federal crime by endorsing a U.S.-designated terrorist organization.

KT McFarland in Fox News: Earlier this month a slight drama ensued over a changing Washington Post headline that initially contained the words “Iran” and “regime collapse” in it. The Post had published an article that made it appear like the Obama administration was pursuing regime change in Iran through sanctions instead of a “dual-track approach”. Hours after the article’s publication, the Post revised it three times to disavow that assumption. Whatever went on behind closed doors at the Post over that article is a mystery, but one thing is certain, Iranian regime change is still being endorsed in certain influential circles, particularly among Republicans. Case in point: here is Kathleen Troia ‘KT’ McFarland, who worked in the Nixon, Ford and Reagan administrations and now serves on the advisory board of the hawkish Foundation for Defense of Democracies, advising President Obama to use “Option C” on Iran, described by her as

…using Western resolve, Arab cooperation and Western technological advances to stress the Iranian economy to the point that it collapses and the Iranian people bring about regime change on their own.

James Woolsey on WorldNetDaily Radio: Eli Clifton of Think Progress reports that former CIA director and pro-Israel hawk James Woolsey (who has also vocally supported the Iranian exile terrorist group, the Mujahideen-e Khalq), told a right wing radio station that “anything that is related to the thugs that are oppressing the Iranian people” were “fair game” for attacks if Iran moves to close the Strait of Hormuz”. See Woolsey’s expanded pro-war argument from last week here.