US building pressure on Iran

Mazher · #1 Tuesday, March 20, 2007

The most worrisome crisis in the Middle Eastern region today, pitching the US and its allies against Iran, stems from their irreconcilable positions on the latter’s uranium enrichment programme.
The phase of high tempers, when open threats of the use of force to scuttle the programme and Tehran’s defiant challenge to retaliate were being freely exchanged every day, might have passed, but it has not given way to Washington’s acceptance of the need to reach a settlement of the problem through direct negotiations. Iran’s readiness to sit across the table to present its case and allay fears of nuclear weapons development has been cold-shouldered. It has been advised to first shut down its facilities, providing it with the justification to say that that would lose the very rationale for talks.
(This write-up will not go deeper into Washington’s motives that underlie its aggressive moves in the region either made through surrogate Israel or carried out direct, as in the case of Iraq – its unquestioned urge to control the world’s biggest reservoir of oil that fuels its industrial empire and helps maintain its global dominance. Its opposition to the Iranian programme typifies its fear that the acquisition of enrichment technology could be a stepping stone to the development of nuclear weapons. That would break the Israeli monopoly and, in the process, could endanger the easy flow of oil.)
One would like to hope that the inability to extricate itself from the mess it has created in Iraq, let alone win the war, would have taught the US a sobering lesson that might, after all, does not hold the key to turning defiance into compliance when a determined nation is the target. But apparently, it is waiting to get some breathing space from the Iraqi crisis to revert to the aggressive posture.
In the meantime, there is no let up in the threatening preparations, and the stationing of a formidable force of two aircraft carriers in the Gulf betrays its actual designs. In the words of former German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer, the US is “clearly…pressing ahead with preparations for an air strike”. But it seems the policy has shifted in the sense that the US is taking a rather winding path of first imposing sanctions to break the will of its people. The attempt to tighten the noose around Iran by advocating stiffer sanctions is reminiscent of the decade-long tribulations suffered by the people of Iraq that ended up impoverishing the nation, economically as well as militarily, and ruining its social welfare services rated as one of the best in the Middle East.
With intense lobbying and every conceivable tactic, diplomatic and economic, the US is trying to line up international support for its moves at the UN Security Council to compel the Iranians to wind up the enrichment programme. The upshot of the mounting pressure and Iran’s refusal to buckle under is keeping the world on tenterhooks.
As Tehran remains determined as ever to master the nuclear fuel cycle, the crisis is showing little sign of winding down in a peaceful manner. Iran’s argument that it would not like to remain exposed to economic and political blackmail of foreign suppliers, which can always be manipulated by countries hostile to it, and must produce its own fuel to run atomic power plants it proposes to build is countered by rather quaint logic by the US that there is no point in having nuclear power stations at all since it has plenty of oil and gas reserves to last for a long time.
But Washington has nothing to say when the Iranians assert their fundamental right to explore and acquire new technologies and, indeed, their sovereign privilege to decide whether to entirely depend upon the prized assets of oil and gas or adopt other means to cater for their energy needs. That the use of nuclear energy is on the increase in the US and other countries strengthens their stance of having access to the technology.
The US looks askance at the underlying Iranian intentions, suspecting them of setting their sights on producing the lethal weapon, and quotes intelligence sources to support the contention. The funny reality is that intelligence reports produce varying estimates tending to conform to the policies of their countries towards Tehran – it is on the verge of detonating a device to almost 10 years to achieve the required capability and that, too, if it were to follow that path. That shows how partial the assessments are. Recall the American and British sleuths’ claim about President Saddam Hussein’s links with Al-Qaeda and possession of weapons of mass destruction, and Tony Blair’s deliberate lie about the timeframe in which they could be launched!
Iran professes to a strict adherence to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty to which it is a signatory and categorically discounts the possibility that it would, in the future, exploit the acquisition of enrichment technology to manufacture nuclear weapons. It even cites an edict of Imam Khomeini, the spiritual guide behind the government’s policies, declaring the acquisition of a mass-murdering instrument as contrary to the injunctions of Islam.
But it does not let the Iranians off the hook and the US pressure continues to mount. The Russians, with economic stakes in Iran, are dithering at the last minute to complete the Bushehr atomic reactor by September this year to honour their commitment, and, according to some analysts, the dispute over the payment of dues is a mere façade; it is the American pressure that is at work.
Similarly, reports from New York suggest that all five permanent members at the UN Security Council have come round to voting for a draft resolution that enjoins upon the world community to abide by a tightened version of sanctions already in place against Tehran. With Moscow and Beijing consenting the way for its approval seems clear. It is doubtful, though, whether the sanctions would achieve the desired objective. They might even induce the Iranian nation to take the nuclear weapons course and with its vast economic wealth it would be hard to hold it back. Historically, prohibitions have invariably failed and sanctions breached.

Mazher · #2 Tuesday, March 20, 2007

Peace was never given a chance, as former Beatle John Lennon and his singer wife Yoko Ono demanded. Rather, the generals at the Pentagon are saying, give war a chance.

WAR, it is said, is the failure of diplomacy. In Iraq's case it must have been stillborn diplomacy, as by all appearances the Bush administration had no intention of seriously negotiating anything with Saddam that would have left him in Baghdad and in power. In that respect, peace was never given a chance, as former Beatle John Lennon and his singer wife Yoko Ono demanded.

Rather, the generals at the Pentagon are saying, give war a chance. And that loud noise you hear in the background is not Yoko banking the Amsterdam Hilton Hotel door for effects, it's the sound of exploding car bombs.

Coinciding with his surge of Marines and soldiers to Iraq President George W. Bush has named Lt. Gen. David Petraeus, nicknamed the "intellectual warrior," to be the new commanding officer in charge of Iraq.

Petraeus is a formidable tactician in his own right, according to several former Marine officers, which is reason enough for President Bush to select him for the most arduous task in today's US military armed forces. But Bush might have chosen Petraeus because Lt. Gen. David Petraeus, believes the president's new initiative to surge tens of thousands of more US troops into Iraq might actually just have a chance to work.
In order to defeat the resistance this new plan calls for deploying the troops in areas of populations, be they hamlets, villages, towns or modern cities, such as Baghdad. It requires for the troops to not only secure those hamlets, villages, towns and cities, but for the plan to work, it requires for the American troops to remain in those areas once they have been cleared of resistance fighters and potential terrorists.

In the past a soldier who had served his term could start making plans for home leave. That is no longer the case.

But to keep US soldiers and Marines in Iraq just to play policeman, securing neighbourhood by neighbourhood, starting with the capital, Baghdad, and then keep on holding those neighbourhoods, would require a tad more than 21,500 troops.

"Gen. Petraeus has adopted Gen. Victor H. 'Brute' Krulak's philosophy," Charles Henderson, a former US Marine who served in Vietnam and Beirut and the author of half a dozen books on warfare told me earlier this week.

Krulak was a highly decorated Marine officer who saw action in World War II, Korea and Vietnam and is now considered a sort of a visionary military strategist by fellow Marines. He's the author of "First to Fight: An Inside View of the US Marine Corps."

And his son, Charles Krulak, became the 31st commandant of the Marine Corps.
When one compares what Krulak Sr. wrote about problems Marines in Vietnam came up against, one can easily understand why Petraeus wants to employ similar tactics in Iraq. In more than one aspect the similarities between fighting he Vietcong in southeast Asia and fighting the Islamist insurgents in the Middle East are frightfully close.

"The problem of seeking out and destroying guerrillas was easy enough to comprehend, but winning the loyalty of the people, why it was so important and how to do it, took longer to understand," wrote Victor Krulak about Vietnam. He could have just as easily been writing about the war in Iraq.

"Protection is the most important thing you can bring them (the people). After that comes health. And, after that, many things -- land, prosperity, education, and privacy to name a few," wrote Krulak. That was for Vietnam. Ditto for Iraq.

According to Henderson, the former Marine turned author, the plan consists of the following: "Secure the cities and increase friendly forces gradually. Put a ring of troops around the cities and eliminate all weapons." Indeed, this sounds very similar to the tactics employed in Vietnam by Krulak.

"At one point you eliminate the enemy from his logistics," says Henderson. "And all wars have been one through logistics."

Henderson goes on to explain: "The enemy's logistics are the people. So you secure the cities. Secure the borders. And the enemy ends up without anything. No food, no water."

But here is the catch: "For such an operation on a city the size of Baghdad you would need more than 21,000 troops. You would need at least half-a-million troops to secure the Iraqi capital," said Henderson."

Where is the US military going to come up with an additional 500,000 troops to secure Baghdad and another 500,000 for the rest of the country, short of re-instating the draft? Everyone one talks to on Capitol Hill is adamant that there will be no draft. So given the reality of numbers one is tempted to ask why the sudden optimism?
Some of it may be blamed on the media hype created by the Bush administration in handing over, and from Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the man Petraeus is to replace. But, says writer William M. Arkin, this may be the equivalent of rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic.

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