The Iranian Threat?
By Noam Chomsky
June 29 "2010" -- "ZNet" -- The
dire threat of Iran is widely recognized to be the most serious foreign
policy crisis facing the Obama administration. Congress has just
strengthened the sanctions against Iran, with even more severe
penalties against foreign companies. The Obama administration has been
rapidly expanding its offensive capacity in the African island of Diego
Garcia, claimed by Britain, which had expelled the population so that
the US could build the massive base it uses for attacking the Middle
East and Central Asia. The Navy reports sending a submarine tender to
the island to service nuclear-powered guided-missile submarines with
Tomahawk missiles, which can carry nuclear warheads. Each submarine is
reported to have the striking power of a typical carrier battle group.
According to a US Navy cargo manifest obtained by the Sunday Herald
(Glasgow), the substantial military equipment Obama has dispatched
includes 387 “bunker busters” used for blasting hardened underground
structures. Planning for these “massive ordnance penetrators,” the most
powerful bombs in the arsenal short of nuclear weapons, was initiated
in the Bush administration, but languished. On taking office, Obama
immediately accelerated the plans, and they are to be deployed several
years ahead of schedule, aiming specifically at Iran.
“They
are gearing up totally for the destruction of Iran,” according to Dan
Plesch, director of the Centre for International Studies and Diplomacy
at the University of London. “US bombers and long range missiles are
ready today to destroy 10,000 targets in Iran in a few hours,” he said.
“The firepower of US forces has quadrupled since 2003,” accelerating
under Obama.
The
Arab press reports that an American fleet (with an Israeli vessel)
passed through the Suez Canal on the way to the Persian Gulf, where its
task is “to implement the sanctions against Iran and supervise the
ships going to and from Iran.” British and Israeli media report that
Saudi Arabia is providing a corridor for Israeli bombing of Iran
(denied by Saudi Arabia). On his return from Afghanistan to reassure
NATO allies that the US will stay the course after the replacement of
General McChrystal by his superior, General Petraeus, Chairman of the
Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Michael Mullen visited Israel to meet
Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi and senior Israeli
military staff along with intelligence and planning units, continuing
the annual strategic dialogue between Israel and the U.S. in Tel Aviv.
The meeting focused “on the preparation by both Israel and the U.S. for
the possibility of a nuclear capable Iran,” according to Haaretz, which reports
further that Mullen emphasized that “I always try to see challenges from
Israeli perspective.” Mullen and Ashkenazi are in regular contact on a secure
line.
The
increasing threats of military action against Iran are of course in
violation of the UN Charter, and in specific violation of Security
Council resolution 1887 of September 2009 which reaffirmed the call to
all states to resolve disputes related to nuclear issues peacefully, in
accordance with the Charter, which bans the use or threat of force.
Some
respected analysts describe the Iranian threat in apocalyptic terms.
Amitai Etzioni warns that “The U.S. will have to confront Iran or give
up the Middle East,” no less. If Iran’s nuclear program proceeds, he
asserts, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and other states will “move toward” the
new Iranian “superpower”; in less fevered rhetoric, a regional alliance
might take shape independent of the US. In the US army journal Military Review,
Etzioni urges a US attack that targets not only Iran’s nuclear
facilities but also its non-nuclear military assets, including
infrastructure – meaning, the civilian society. "This kind of military
action is akin to sanctions - causing 'pain' in order to change
behaviour, albeit by much more powerful means."
Such
harrowing pronouncements aside, what exactly is the Iranian threat? An
authoritative answer is provided in the April 2010 study of the
International Institute of Strategic Studies, Military Balance 2010.
The brutal clerical regime is doubtless a threat to its own people,
though it does not rank particularly high in that respect in comparison
to US allies in the region. But that is not what concerns the
Institute. Rather, it is concerned with the threat Iran poses to the
region and the world.
The
study makes it clear that the Iranian threat is not military. Iran’s
military spending is “relatively low compared to the rest of the
region,” and less than 2% that of the US. Iranian military doctrine is
strictly “defensive,… designed to slow an invasion and force a
diplomatic solution to hostilities.” Iran has only “a limited
capability to project force beyond its borders.” With regard to the
nuclear option, “Iran’s nuclear program and its willingness to keep
open the possibility of developing nuclear weapons is a central part of
its deterrent strategy.”
Though
the Iranian threat is not military, that does not mean that it might be
tolerable to Washington. Iranian deterrent capacity is an illegitimate
exercise of sovereignty that interferes with US global designs.
Specifically, it threatens US control of Middle East energy resources,
a high priority of planners since World War II, which yields
“substantial control of the world,” one influential figure advised (A.
A. Berle).
But
Iran’s threat goes beyond deterrence. It is also seeking to expand its
influence. As the Institute study formulates the threat, Iran is
“destabilizing” the region. US invasion and military occupation of
Iran’s neighbors is “stabilization.” Iran’s efforts to extend its
influence in neighboring countries is “destabilization,” hence plainly
illegitimate. It should be noted that such revealing usage is routine.
Thus the prominent foreign policy analyst James Chace, former editor
the main establishment journal Foreign Affairs, was
properly using the term “stability” in its technical sense when he
explained that in order to achieve “stability” in Chile it was
necessary to “destabilize” the country (by overthrowing the elected
Allende government and installing the Pinochet dictatorship).
Beyond
these crimes, Iran is also supporting terrorism, the study continues:
by backing Hezbollah and Hamas, the major political forces in Lebanon
and in Palestine – if elections matter. The Hezbollah-based coalition
handily won the popular vote in Lebanon’s latest (2009) election. Hamas
won the 2006 Palestinian election, compelling the US and Israel to
institute the harsh and brutal siege of Gaza to punish the miscreants
for voting the wrong way in a free election. These have been the only
relatively free elections in the Arab world. It is normal for elite
opinion to fear the threat of democracy and to act to deter it, but
this is a rather striking case, particularly alongside of strong US
support for the regional dictatorships, particularly striking with
Obama’s strong praise for the brutal Egyptian dictator Mubarak on the
way to his famous address to the Muslim world in Cairo.
The
terrorist acts attributed to Hamas and Hezbollah pale in comparison to
US-Israeli terrorism in the same region, but they are worth a look
nevertheless.
On
May 25 Lebanon celebrated its national holiday, Liberation Day,
commemorating Israel’s withdrawal from southern Lebanon after 22 years,
as a result of Hezbollah resistance – described by Israeli authorities
as “Iranian aggression” against Israel in Israeli-occupied Lebanon
(Ephraim Sneh). That too is normal imperial usage. Thus President John
F. Kennedy condemned the “the assault from the inside, and which is
manipulated from the North.” The assault by the South Vietnamese
resistance against Kennedy’s bombers, chemical warfare, driving
peasants to virtual concentration camps, and other such benign measures
was denounced as “internal aggression” by Kennedy’s UN Ambassador,
liberal hero Adlai Stevenson. North Vietnamese support for their
countrymen in the US-occupied South is aggression, intolerable
interference with Washington’s righteous mission. Kennedy advisors
Arthur Schlesinger and Theodore Sorenson, considered doves, also
praised Washington’s intervention to reverse “aggression” in South
Vietnam – by the indigenous resistance, as they knew, at least if they
read US intelligence reports. In 1955 the US Joint Chiefs of Staff
defined several types of “aggression,” including “Aggression other than
armed, i.e., political warfare, or subversion.” For example, an
internal uprising against a US-imposed police state, or elections that
come out the wrong way. The usage is also common in scholarship and
political commentary, and makes sense on the prevailing assumption that
We Own the World.
Hamas
resists Israel’s military occupation and its illegal and violent
actions in the occupied territories. It is accused of refusing to
recognize Israel (political parties do not recognize states). In
contrast, the US and Israel not only do not recognize Palestine, but
have been acting for decades to ensure that it can never come into
existence in any meaningful form; the governing party in Israel, in its
1999 campaign platform, bars the existence of any Palestinian state.
Hamas
is charged with rocketing Israeli settlements on the border, criminal
acts no doubt, though a fraction of Israel’s violence in Gaza, let
alone elsewhere. It is important to bear in mind, in this connection,
that the US and Israel know exactly how to terminate the terror that
they deplore with such passion. Israel officially concedes that there
were no Hamas rockets as long as Israel partially observed a truce with
Hamas in 2008. Israel rejected Hamas’s offer to renew the truce,
preferring to launch the murderous and destructive Operation Cast Lead
against Gaza in December 2008, with full US backing, an exploit of
murderous aggression without the slightest credible pretext on either
legal or moral grounds.
The
model for democracy in the Muslim world, despite serious flaws, is
Turkey, which has relatively free elections, and has also been subject
to harsh criticism in the US. The most extreme case was when the
government followed the position of 95% of the population and refused
to join in the invasion of Iraq, eliciting harsh condemnation from
Washington for its failure to comprehend how a democratic government
should behave: under our concept of democracy, the voice of the Master
determines policy, not the near-unanimous voice of the population.
The
Obama administration was once again incensed when Turkey joined with
Brazil in arranging a deal with Iran to restrict its enrichment of
uranium. Obama had praised the initiative in a letter to Brazil’s
president Lula da Silva, apparently on the assumption that it would
fail and provide a propaganda weapon against Iran. When it succeeded,
the US was furious, and quickly undermined it by ramming through a
Security Council resolution with new sanctions against Iran that were
so meaningless that China cheerfully joined at once – recognizing that
at most the sanctions would impede Western interests in competing with
China for Iran’s resources. Once again, Washington acted forthrightly
to ensure that others would not interfere with US control of the region.
Not
surprisingly, Turkey (along with Brazil) voted against the US sanctions
motion in the Security Council. The other regional member, Lebanon,
abstained. These actions aroused further consternation in Washington.
Philip Gordon, the Obama administration's top diplomat on European
affairs, warned Turkey that its actions are not understood in the US
and that it must “demonstrate its commitment to partnership with the
West,” AP reported, “a rare admonishment of a crucial NATO ally.”
The
political class understands as well. Steven A. Cook, a scholar with the
Council on Foreign Relations, observed that the critical question now
is "How do we keep the Turks in their lane?" – following orders like
good democrats. A New York Times headline captured the general mood: “Iran Deal
Seen as Spot on Brazilian Leader’s Legacy.” In brief, do what we say, or else.
There
is no indication that other countries in the region favor US sanctions
any more than Turkey does. On Iran’s opposite border, for example,
Pakistan and Iran, meeting in Turkey, recently signed an agreement for
a new pipeline. Even more worrisome for the US is that the pipeline
might extend to India. The 2008 US treaty with India supporting its
nuclear programs – and indirectly its nuclear weapons programs -- was
intended to stop India from joining the pipeline, according to Moeed
Yusuf, a South Asia adviser to the United States Institute of Peace,
expressing a common interpretation. India and Pakistan are two of the
three nuclear powers that have refused to sign the Non-proliferation
Treaty (NPT), the third being Israel. All have developed nuclear
weapons with US support, and still do.
No
sane person wants Iran to develop nuclear weapons; or anyone. One
obvious way to mitigate or eliminate this threat is to establish a NFWZ
in the Middle East. The issue arose (again) at the NPT conference at
United Nations headquarters in early May 2010. Egypt, as chair of the
118 nations of the Non-Aligned Movement, proposed that the conference
back a plan calling for the start of negotiations in 2011 on a Middle
East NWFZ, as had been agreed by the West, including the US, at the 1995 review
conference on the NPT.
Washington
still formally agrees, but insists that Israel be exempted – and has
given no hint of allowing such provisions to apply to itself. The time
is not yet ripe for creating the zone, Secretary of State Hillary
Clinton stated at the NPT conference, while Washington insisted that no
proposal can be accepted that calls for Israel's nuclear program to be
placed under the auspices of the IAEA or that calls on signers of the
NPT, specifically Washington, to release information about “Israeli
nuclear facilities and activities, including information pertaining to
previous nuclear transfers to Israel.” Obama’s technique of evasion is
to adopt Israel’s position that any such proposal must be conditional
on a comprehensive peace settlement, which the US can delay
indefinitely, as it has been doing for 35 years, with rare and
temporary exceptions.
At the same time, Yukiya
Amano, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, asked foreign
ministers of its 151 member states to share views on how to implement a
resolution demanding that Israel "accede to” the NPT and throw its
nuclear facilities open to IAEA oversight, AP reported.
It is rarely noted that the US and UK have a special
responsibility to work to establish a Middle East NWFZ. In
attempting to provide a thin legal cover for their invasion of the Iraq
in 2003, they appealed to Security Council Resolution 687 (1991), which
called on Iraq to terminate its development of weapons of mass
destruction. The US and UK claimed that they had not done so. We need
not tarry on the excuse, but that Resolution commits its signers to
move to establish a NWFZ in the Middle East.
Parenthetically,
we may add that US insistence on maintaining nuclear facilities in
Diego Garcia undermines the nuclear-free weapons zone (NFWZ)
established by the African Union, just as Washington continues to block
a Pacific NFWZ by excluding its Pacific dependencies.
Obama’s
rhetorical commitment to non-proliferation has received much praise,
even a Nobel peace prize. One practical step in this direction is
establishment of NFWZs. Another is withdrawing support for the nuclear
programs of the three non-signers of the NPT. As often, rhetoric and
actions are hardly aligned, in fact are in direct contradiction in this
case, facts that pass with little attention.
Instead
of taking practical steps towards reducing the truly dire threat of
nuclear weapons proliferation, the US must take major steps towards
reinforcing US control of the vital Middle East oil-producing regions,
by violence if other means do not succeed. That is understandable and
even reasonable, under prevailing imperial doctrine.
Satrio Arismunandar
Executive ProducerNews Division, Trans TV, Lantai 3
Jl. Kapten P. Tendean Kav. 12 - 14 A, Jakarta 12790
Phone: 7917-7000, 7918-4544 ext. 3542, Fax: 79184558,
79184627 http://satrioarismunandar6.blogspot.comhttp://satrioarismunandar.multiply.com Verba
volant scripta manent...(yang terucap akan lenyap, yang tertulis akan abadi...)
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