Is President Bush doubling down for an attack on Iran? Barnett Rubin has more:
Since my original post on a report of a post-Labor Day rollout of a propaganda barrage for war with Iran, the report has been picked up by quite a few bloggers who usually preface my name with some honorific such as "respectable," "highly respected,""Serious," "well-connected," etc. I think the point they are trying to get across is that I am not a total lunatic. I don't like being in the position of publishing reports with inadequate evidence, but the stakes are too high, so I will risk losing those adjectives. Here's something else:I posted the first blog on Wednesday, August 29. On the morning of Thursday, August 30, someone who is a professional in handling information called me to recount a conversation from the previous Thursday or Friday (August 23 or 24). In this conversation, someone whose proximity to knowledge of such things is so great that I cannot identify him in any other way, told my interlocutor that President Bush would be inclined to accept suggestions for withdrawing some troops from Iraq and moving as many as possible into more secure bases, as a safeguard against reprisals in the event of a U.S. attack on Iran.
In today's reports from Iraq (see for example the New York Times and the Washington Post) President Bush is quoted as saying, "If the kind of success we are now seeing here continues it will be possible to maintain the same level of security with fewer American forces." The president made a point of visiting and lauding the progress in predominantly Sunni Anbar province, where the U.S. would be more secure from reprisals by Shi'a militias sympathetic to Iran. Anyone who follows political thinking in the Middle East will realize that throughout the region this will be interpreted as confirming a shift in U.S. strategy toward allying with Sunnis to encircle Iran. The British withdrawal from Basra is also said have been accelerated to avoid reprisals on their highly exposed position there.
Madness. It's hard to know what to make of something that's just at the rumor stage, so we should be cautious. Cautious, but extremely wary.
(Via Andrew Sullivan.)
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What I find contradictory in the rhetoric relates back to the accusation that Iran is responsible for much of the disorder and violence impeding Iraq from its "recovery" from the US liberation of Iraq. We have our troops over there being attacked, killed, and maimed in the wake of this liberation as well. There are bombings and executions every single day. If Iran is being blamed for the horrors now occurring, and the current administration attacks Iran, what will then happen to our troops that are over there in Iraq? What will happen to the civilians of Iraq (Christians and/or Muslim) if the atrocities are augmented?
This is truly a Catch 22, or at least a dilemann which calls for handling with diplomacy and kid gloves, if only for the sake of our troops.
There, there, dears. The US hasn't enough bombs and hasn't enough guts to do the job right and it knows it, so it won't try. Wolf! Wolf!
Rod,
I'd say your priorities are a little off.
I'm worried that the Bush administration or the next administration will allow Iran to obtain nuclear weapons. If the Bush administration or the next administration, Democrat or Republican, were to announce the need for military action to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons, I would applaud that administration for taking a difficult problem head on.
Unfortunately, many people are using the difficulties that we are facing in Afghanistan and Iraq as an excuse to go back into a defensive posture, the posture we were in up until September 11, 2001.
If we tell the terrorists that it's quite alright with us if they obtain nuclear weapons, they will not only obtain those nuclear weapons. They will use them against the United States.
I, for one, don't want to wake up one morning and find out that Iran has nuked an American city using their Hizbollah terrorist group as a proxy.
There have been rumors that the Bush Administration plans to attack Iran for the last two years. The fury comes and goes, but I seriously doubt there will be any kind of military engagement with Iran. Scott Ritter, Bob Baer, Justin Raimondo of Antiwar.com, Pat Buchanan and others are suggesting that war with Iran is imminent. But I don't buy it.
It's not just that we don't have the troops; we don't have a valid reason. Besides if we do bomb Iran that could complicate matters in Iraq. How will the Shiites respond to a US invasion of Iran? Will the Persian Ayatollah Sistani, Iraq's most respected figure, just continue in silence or will he encourage Iraq's Shiites to rise up against the American occupiers? It might unify the Shiite parties, Mahdi and Badr, against the Americans. Our supply routes could easily jeopardized if the Shiites engage in a full scale revolt. How will Russia or China respond? Might they decide to arm Iran making our invasion even more problematic?
So my prediction is that there will not be a war with Iran, although I have no doubt that the Bush Administration, in particular Cheney, desires a war.
Finally, there is no reason to invade Iran; the IAEA is monitoring their nuclear activities and Iran has every right to develop nuclear technology for civilian purposes. Iran's refineries are in disrepair so they must import most of their oil; their economy is on the ropes, and they have a huge population to care for. Nuclear technology makes perfect sense for Iran, and it's something they have every right to pursue.
Barnett Rubin is propbably the most insightful analyst of Afghanistan in the US today, and has been for 20+ years.
I don't know how much he is in the loop for Bush admin discussions (probably not much), but it wouldn't surprise me at all if he talks to a lot of people in the government who are in the loop.
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