Skip to content or view mobile version

Home | Mobile | Editorial | Mission | Privacy | About | Contact | Help | Security | Support

A network of individuals, independent and alternative media activists and organisations, offering grassroots, non-corporate, non-commercial coverage of important social and political issues.

Bush's Iraq Plan: Goading Iran into War

Trita Parsi | 15.01.2007 12:42 | Analysis | Anti-militarism | World

President George W. Bush's address on Iraq Wednesday night was less
about Iraq than about its eastern neighbor, Iran. There was little new
about the US's strategy in Iraq, but on Iran, the President spelled
out a plan that appears to be aimed at goading Iran into war with the
US.


President George W. Bush's address on Iraq Wednesday night was less
about Iraq than about its eastern neighbor, Iran. There was little new
about the US's strategy in Iraq, but on Iran, the President spelled
out a plan that appears to be aimed at goading Iran into war with the
US.

While Washington speculated whether the president would accept or
reject the Iraq Study Group's recommendations, few predicted that he
would do the opposite of what James Baker and Lee Hamilton advised.
Rather than withdrawing troops from Iraq, Bush ordered an augmentation
of troop levels. Rather than talking to Iran and Syria, Bush virtually
declared war on these states. And rather than pressuring Israel to
resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the administration is
fuelling the factional war in Gaza by arming and training Fatah
against Hamas.

Several recent developments and statements indicate that the
administration is ever more seriously eyeing war with Iran. On
Wednesday, Bush made the starkest accusations yet against the rulers
in Tehran, alleging that the clerics were "providing material support
for attacks on American troops."

While promising to "disrupt the attacks on our forces" and "seek out
and destroy the networks providing advanced weaponry and training to
our enemies in Iraq," he made no mention of the flow of arms and funds
to Sunni insurgents and al Qaeda from Jordan and Saudi Arabia.

Instead, he revealed the deployment of an additional carrier strike
group to the Persian Gulf and of the Patriot anti-missile defence
system to Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states to protect U.S.
allies. The usefulness of this step for resolving the violence in Iraq
remains a mystery. Neither the Sunni insurgents nor the Shia militias
possess ballistic missiles. And if they did, nothing indicates that
they would target the GCC states -- Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar,
Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

The deployment of the Patriot missiles can be explained, however, in
light of a U.S. plan to attack Iran. Last year, Tehran signalled the
GCC states in unusually blunt language that it would retaliate against
the Arab sheikhdoms if the U.S. attacked Iran using bases in the GCC
countries. Mindful of the weakness of Iran's air force, Tehran's most
likely weapon would be ballistic missiles -- the very same weapon that
the Patriots are designed to provide a shield against. A first step
towards going to war with Iran would be to provide the GCC states with
protection against potential Iranian retaliation.

Perhaps the starkest indication of an impending war with Iran is
Washington's recent arrest of Iranian diplomats in Iraq. Around the
time of President Bush's speech, U.S. Special Forces -- in blatant
violation of diplomatic regulations reminiscent of the hostage taking
of U.S. diplomats in Tehran by Iranian students in 1979 -- stormed the
Iranian consulate in Arbil in northern Iraq, arresting five diplomats.
Later that day, U.S. forces almost clashed with Kurdish peshmerga
militia forces when seeking to arrest more Iranians at Arbil's
airport.

These operations incensed the Iraqi government, including its Kurdish
components that otherwise are staunchly pro-Washington. "What
happened... was very annoying because there has been an Iranian
liaison office there for years and it provides services to the
citizens," Iraq's Minister of Foreign Affairs Hoshiyar Zebari, who is
himself a Kurd, told Al-Arabiya television.

The Bush administration has justified the raids -- including the
arrests of several Iranian officials in December last year -- on the
grounds that evidence is collected on Iranian involvement in
destabilising Iraq. But if the purpose is intelligence gathering, it
would make more sense to launch a simultaneous mass raid of Iranian
offices rather than the current incremental approach that provides the
Iranians forewarning and an opportunity to destroy whatever evidence
they may or may not have in their possession.

The incremental raids and arrests may instead be aimed at provoking
the Iranians to respond, which in turn would escalate the situation
and provide the Bush administration with the casus belli it needs to
win Congressional support for war with Iran. Rather than making the
case for a pre-emptive war with Iran over weapons of mass destruction
-- a strategy the U.S. pursued with Iraq that is unlikely to succeed
with Iran -- the sequence of events in the provocation and escalation
strategy would make it appear as if war was forced on the U.S.

Prominent Republican and Democratic Senators seem to have picked up on
the president's war strategy. At Thursday's hearing in the Senate
Foreign Relations Committee, Senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraska drew
parallels with the Richard Nixon administration's strategy of lying to
the U.S. people and expanding the Vietnam war into Cambodia. "[W]hen
you set in motion the kind of policy that the president is talking
about here," he warned Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, "it's
very, very dangerous."

Senator Joseph Biden of Delaware added that war with Iran would
require congressional authority. Still, Congress is yet to pose a
major challenge to Bush's war plan beyond holding hearings with heated
exchanges between frustrated Senators and defensive administration
officials.

The next move may be Iran's. Tehran has likely sniffed the trap and
will sit idly by for now and deprive the Bush administration of a
pretext for escalation. But continued provocations from the U.S.
through additional raids of Iranian consulates and offices will likely
lead to an intentional or unintentional response, after which
escalation and war may become reality. Iran has at times failed to
exhibit the discipline necessary to refrain from responding to
aggressions.

While the administration's calculation may be that lethal pressure on
Iran will force Tehran to compromise, faith in Iran that offering
concessions will prompt a change in the U.S.'s Iran-policy is next to
nonexistent due to the Bush administration's past rejections of
Iranian offers.

But Tehran may be able to change the political climate and escape
Bush's war trap by reinitiating talks with the European Union to
address regional matters as well as the nuclear impasse. Europe's
patience and faith in Iran has largely been depleted due to Tehran's
failure to fully appreciate efforts by Javier Solana, high
representative for the European Union's Common Foreign and Security
Policy, to negotiate an agreement on enrichment suspension last fall.

Still, the EU understands that the tidal waves of a regional war in
the Middle East will reach Europe much sooner than they reach U.S.
shores. Whether Europe will stand up for its own values and security
and against Bush's war plans, however, remains to be seen. Here,
Tehran's offers are likely not inconsequential.




[1] The National Iranian American Council is a Washington, DC-based non-partisan, non-profit educational 501 c(3) organization promoting Iranian-American participation in American civic and political life. This document is a product of NIAC’s US-Iran Media Resource Project, funded by Connect US, the Ploughshares Fund and OSI. For more information, please visit www.niacouncil.org.


[2] Dr. Trita Parsi is the President of the National Iranian American Council and the author of Treacherous Triangle - The Secret Dealings of Israel, Iran and the United States (Yale University Press, 2007.)

Trita Parsi
- Homepage: http://www.niacouncil.org/pressreleases/press511.asp

Upcoming Coverage
View and post events
Upcoming Events UK
24th October, London: 2015 London Anarchist Bookfair
2nd - 8th November: Wrexham, Wales, UK & Everywhere: Week of Action Against the North Wales Prison & the Prison Industrial Complex. Cymraeg: Wythnos o Weithredu yn Erbyn Carchar Gogledd Cymru

Ongoing UK
Every Tuesday 6pm-8pm, Yorkshire: Demo/vigil at NSA/NRO Menwith Hill US Spy Base More info: CAAB.

Every Tuesday, UK & worldwide: Counter Terror Tuesdays. Call the US Embassy nearest to you to protest Obama's Terror Tuesdays. More info here

Every day, London: Vigil for Julian Assange outside Ecuadorian Embassy

Parliament Sq Protest: see topic page
Ongoing Global
Rossport, Ireland: see topic page
Israel-Palestine: Israel Indymedia | Palestine Indymedia
Oaxaca: Chiapas Indymedia
Regions
All Regions
Birmingham
Cambridge
Liverpool
London
Oxford
Sheffield
South Coast
Wales
World
Other Local IMCs
Bristol/South West
Nottingham
Scotland
Social Media
You can follow @ukindymedia on indy.im and Twitter. We are working on a Twitter policy. We do not use Facebook, and advise you not to either.
Support Us
We need help paying the bills for hosting this site, please consider supporting us financially.
Other Media Projects
Schnews
Dissident Island Radio
Corporate Watch
Media Lens
VisionOnTV
Earth First! Action Update
Earth First! Action Reports
Topics
All Topics
Afghanistan
Analysis
Animal Liberation
Anti-Nuclear
Anti-militarism
Anti-racism
Bio-technology
Climate Chaos
Culture
Ecology
Education
Energy Crisis
Fracking
Free Spaces
Gender
Globalisation
Health
History
Indymedia
Iraq
Migration
Ocean Defence
Other Press
Palestine
Policing
Public sector cuts
Repression
Social Struggles
Technology
Terror War
Workers' Movements
Zapatista
Major Reports
NATO 2014
G8 2013
Workfare
2011 Census Resistance
Occupy Everywhere
August Riots
Dale Farm
J30 Strike
Flotilla to Gaza
Mayday 2010
Tar Sands
G20 London Summit
University Occupations for Gaza
Guantanamo
Indymedia Server Seizure
COP15 Climate Summit 2009
Carmel Agrexco
G8 Japan 2008
SHAC
Stop Sequani
Stop RWB
Climate Camp 2008
Oaxaca Uprising
Rossport Solidarity
Smash EDO
SOCPA
Past Major Reports
Encrypted Page
You are viewing this page using an encrypted connection. If you bookmark this page or send its address in an email you might want to use the un-encrypted address of this page.
If you recieved a warning about an untrusted root certificate please install the CAcert root certificate, for more information see the security page.

Global IMC Network


www.indymedia.org

Projects
print
radio
satellite tv
video

Africa

Europe
antwerpen
armenia
athens
austria
barcelona
belarus
belgium
belgrade
brussels
bulgaria
calabria
croatia
cyprus
emilia-romagna
estrecho / madiaq
galiza
germany
grenoble
hungary
ireland
istanbul
italy
la plana
liege
liguria
lille
linksunten
lombardia
madrid
malta
marseille
nantes
napoli
netherlands
northern england
nottingham imc
paris/île-de-france
patras
piemonte
poland
portugal
roma
romania
russia
sardegna
scotland
sverige
switzerland
torun
toscana
ukraine
united kingdom
valencia

Latin America
argentina
bolivia
chiapas
chile
chile sur
cmi brasil
cmi sucre
colombia
ecuador
mexico
peru
puerto rico
qollasuyu
rosario
santiago
tijuana
uruguay
valparaiso
venezuela

Oceania
aotearoa
brisbane
burma
darwin
jakarta
manila
melbourne
perth
qc
sydney

South Asia
india


United States
arizona
arkansas
asheville
atlanta
Austin
binghamton
boston
buffalo
chicago
cleveland
colorado
columbus
dc
hawaii
houston
hudson mohawk
kansas city
la
madison
maine
miami
michigan
milwaukee
minneapolis/st. paul
new hampshire
new jersey
new mexico
new orleans
north carolina
north texas
nyc
oklahoma
philadelphia
pittsburgh
portland
richmond
rochester
rogue valley
saint louis
san diego
san francisco
san francisco bay area
santa barbara
santa cruz, ca
sarasota
seattle
tampa bay
united states
urbana-champaign
vermont
western mass
worcester

West Asia
Armenia
Beirut
Israel
Palestine

Topics
biotech

Process
fbi/legal updates
mailing lists
process & imc docs
tech