Opinion, May 24, 2003, Al-Jazeerah.info

Home

Patrick Seale

The Daily Star, 5/24/03

Now that Iraq has been conquered, hard-line American Jews, supporters of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, are urging the United States to overthrow the Islamic government in Iran. A systematic campaign of accusations, lies, propaganda and disinformation, very similar to the one which preceded the attack on Iraq, is now being mounted against Iran by a cabal of neoconservatives in Washington.
As in the case of Iraq, the real reasons for the campaign against Iran remain uncertain and ambivalent. Is the goal to spread “democracy” in the Middle East so as to make the United States safe from “terrorism?” Or is it to destroy any regional challenge to Israel? The most likely explanation is that it is a combination of both. The neoconservatives, who now dictate the pace and direction of US foreign policy, consider that American and Israeli interests are identical and cannot be separated.
To understand the way American opinion is shaped, one needs to read and listen to what is being said in the American press and in Washington’s numerous right-wing think tanks. The Weekly Standard is a leading organ of neocon opinion. Its editor, William Kristol, one of the most strident voices in favor of the Iraq war, has now turned his bellicose attention to Iran. In a lead editorial on 12 May he wrote:
“The liberation of Iraq was the first great battle for the future of the Middle East. The creation of a free Iraq is now of fundamental importance. We are already in a death struggle with Iran over the future of Iraq. The theocrats ruling Iran understand that the stakes are now double or nothing ­ as success in Iraq sounds the death knell for the Iranian revolution.
“So we must help our friends and allies in Iraq block Iranian-backed subversion. And we must also take the fight to Iran, with measures ranging from public diplomacy to covert operations. Iran is the tipping point in the war on proliferation, the war on terror, and the effort to reshape the Middle East. If Iran goes pro-Western and anti-terror, positive changes in Syria and Saudi Arabia will follow much more easily. And the chances for an Israeli-Palestinian settlement will greatly improve.
“On the outcome of the confrontation with Tehran, more than any other, rests the future of the Bush Doctrine ­ and, quite possibly, the Bush presidency ­ and prospects for a safer world.”
I have quoted Kristol’s editorial at length because it is a clear expression of the neocon’s determination to pressure, even blackmail, President George W. Bush into using American power to “reshape” the Middle East in Israel’s interest.
At a conference at the Saban Center in Washington on May 14, Kristol enlarged on his views by remarking that a US strike against Iran might possibly take place before the November 2004 American presidential elections.
Another leading neocon guru, Michael Ledeen, who throughout the 1990s called for an attack against Iraq, is now pressing as persistently for an attack on Iran. The new “Center for Democracy in Iran,” an American group calling for regime change in Tehran, is largely his creation. The flavor of his approach may be grasped from a speech he delivered at the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs in Washington on April 30, entitled “Time to focus on Iran ­ The Mother of Modern Terrorism.”
In it, he declared: “The time for diplomacy is at an end; it is time for a free Iran, free Syria and free Lebanon.” A week later, on May 6, at a conference at the American Enterprise Institute, another leading neocon think tank, Ledeen repeated his call for a US attack on Iran, in which he was supported by Uri Lubrani, a long-time adviser to Israel’s Defense Ministry and architect of Israel’s disastrous “security zone” in Lebanon, which was only wound up when Israeli forces were finally driven out of south Lebanon in 2000.
In their campaign against Iran, neocons and pro-Israeli lobbyists are joined by exiled Iranian monarchists, active among the large Iranian community in California, who pin their hopes on Reza Pahlavi, son of the late pro-Israeli Shah. In a recent interview with the Italian newspaper La Stampa, Reza Pahlavi declared: “The fall of the current regime would not only liberate the forces of a great nation, it would free the world of an imminent atomic risk and the biggest terrorist network in existence.”
Inflammatory accusations leveled against Iran by US officials, by friends of Israel, right-wing ideologues and others are given wide prominence on American television and in the mainstream American press. They usually include the following: that Iran’s nuclear program has reached such an advanced stage that it might soon test a nuclear weapon; that it is developing biological weapons and is seeking foreign help in developing chemical weapons; that it supports such “terrorist” organizations as Hizbullah in Lebanon as well as militant Shiite groups in Iraq and Afghanistan; and, most recently and sensationally, that the suicide bombings against residential compounds in Riyadh were planned by top Al-Qaeda commanders sheltering in Iran,
According to the American TV program Nightline, Al-Qaeda leaders in Iran include Seif al-Adel, wanted in connection with the 1998 bombings of two American embassies in East Africa. Needless to say, no firm evidence in support of these serious allegations is ever produced. It is noteworthy, however, that the charge of Iranian-Al Qaeda complicity strongly resembles the accusation of links between Iraq and Al-Qaeda made repeatedly against Baghdad in the run-up to the war ­ but of course never documented or proven.
In spite of the clamor from the neocons, few experts predict an early American military assault on Iran. For one thing, fear of a new wave of terrorist attacks, following the bombings in Riyadh and Casablanca, has captured America’s attention, almost to the exclusion of other foreign policy worries. For another, the United States has its hands full in Iraq, where resistance is mounting to the American occupation and where the task of putting the country back on its feet is proving far more difficult than Washington had anticipated.
For all these reasons, some experts believe that a military strike against Iran by either the US or Israel ­ or by both together ­ would only become a possibility if there were convincing proof that Iran was about to test a nuclear weapon or that an Al-Qaeda cell located in Iran had attacked US or Israeli targets in the past or was about to do so in the immediate future.
Rather than risk a major military assault, these experts believe that, if the United States and Israel wanted to send a strong message to Iran, they were more likely to use special forces against Iranian proxies in Iraq or Lebanon, or seek to undermine the Tehran regime by encouraging separatist tendencies among Iran’s Azeri and Baluchi communities, in an effort to destabilize the country.
The truth would seem to be that policy-makers and opinion formers in the United States are divided over what to do about Iran. Some follow the president’s lead in characterizing the Islamic Republic as the leading member of the “Axis of Evil.” They identify political Shiism backed by Iran as one of America’s most dangerous enemies and they fear that Iraq can never be stabilized unless Iran and its Shiite supporters in Iraq are neutralized ­ a totally impossible task unless the Shiite community is slaughtered en masse!
A radically different point of view, however, is that America’s most fearsome opponent is not Shiiism but fundamentalist Sunni Islam, as preached and practiced by Osama bin Laden and other Islamic extremists. According to this view, the United States should forge an alliance with Shiite Iran and encourage the emergence in Iraq of a Shiite-dominated government, thereby creating a “friendly” counterweight to the Sunni-ruled oil states of the Gulf. There have been repeated references in the American press to discreet meetings of US and Iranian representatives in Geneva, suggesting that some sort of dialogue is, in fact, in progress.
The policy debate in Washington has rarely been sharper. Following the swift military victory in Iraq, the neocons imagined they had gained in influence and routed their critics. Now, however, with Iraq in chaos, terrorism rampant, Sharon unrestrained, and the dollar and the American economy heading lower, the tide is turning once again. The strategic wisdom of the neocons is being questioned.
The sensible opinion would seem to be that America will need to show some success in rebuilding Iraq and resolving the Arab-Israeli conflict before it turns its attention to the mullahs in Tehran.

Patrick Seale, a veteran Middle East analyst, wrote this commentary for The Daily Star

2002-2003 Copyright © aljazeerah.info & aljazeerah.us. All Rights Reserved.

editor@aljazeerah.info