By Warren P. Strobel & Nancy A. Youssef
McClatchy News, Fri, Aug. 17, 2007
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/homepage/story/19039.html
As President Bush escalates the United States’ confrontation with Iran across a broad front, U.S. allies in Europe and the Middle East are growing worried that the steps will achieve little, but will undercut diplomacy and increase the chances of war. In the latest step, Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice are considering designating Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the elite military force that serves as the guardian of Iran’s Islamic state, as a foreign terrorist organization.
News of the decision was leaked to newspapers in what a senior State Department official and Washington-based diplomats said was a sign of an intensifying internal struggle within the U.S. government between proponents of military action and opponents, led by Rice.
State Department officials and foreign diplomats see Rice’s push for the declaration against the Revolutionary Guards as an effort to blunt arguments by Vice President Dick Cheney and his allies for air strikes on Iran. By making the declaration, they feel, Rice can strike out at a key Iranian institution without resorting to military action while still pushing for sanctions in the United Nations.
Partisans of military force argue that Rice’s strategy has failed to change Tehran’s behavior. “It really does seem this is more tied to the internal debate that is going on in the administration on Iran, rather than a serious attempt to influence Iranian behavior,” said an Arab diplomat, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the issue’s sensitivity. “How that debate will play out is what’s concerning” Arab and European countries, he said.
Bush and his aides also have accused Iran of playing an unhelpful role in Afghanistan – although some State Department officials say the reality is much more complicated.
What remains unclear is what the administration will do if none of those steps has an impact on Iran, whose leaders seem confident as they see Bush unpopular at home and bogged down in Iraq.
“The coercion … undermines diplomacy. And once diplomacy is undermined, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy,” said Ray Takeyh, an Iran expert at the Council on Foreign Relations. By early 2008, “You’re in a position where you have a series of escalatory measures … And then the military option becomes something you can consider,” Takeyh said.
The U.N. Security Council has passed two resolutions imposing sanctions on Iran for its nuclear work. But negotiations on a third have stalled and a September deadline for enacting new sanctions will likely be missed, say State Department officials and diplomats.
Critics say that designating the Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist group could further undermine the effort, and also scuttle U.S.-Iranian talks in Baghdad on Iraq’s security. Those talks have achieved little.
On Iran’s role in Iraq, U.S. ground commanders in Iraq oppose proposals from Cheney and his allies to counter-attack inside Iran itself, saying they believe they can contain Iran’s growing influence without acting outside Iraq.
Privately, some are hostile to suggestions that the military strike another country, saying they are mired in Iraq. “Let them put on the uniform and go there then,” said one military official in Baghdad who asked not to be identified because of the sensitivity of the topic.
Michael Ledeen’s Dangerous Iran Obsession
Steve Clemons, The Washington Note, August 18, 2007
http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/002278.php
Michael Ledeen – who once told me that he only supported the Iraq War because it provided momentum and pre-positioning of American military forces to then go after Iran – is not going to feel self-actualized until America unleashes a considerable portion of its arsenal against the nation and people of Iran.
But Ledeen, James Woolsey, Norman Podhoretz, and others want war now with Iran. They want the bombs to fly. They are obsessed with delegitimating the important diplomatic efforts of Undersecretary of State R. Nicholas Burns, US Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker, Ambassador to the United Nations Zalmay Khalilzad, and others. They despise Defense Secretary Bob Gates and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice – and they are increasingly offering defamatory comments about George W. Bush himself at their small dinner parties and neocon gatherings.
Ledeen has a piece, “Talking with Iran,” that has just appeared in the Wall Street Journal that tries to savage those calling for negotiations with Iran. It’s embedded throughout with distortions, but it is an important case statement profiling neocon obsession with waging war against Iran as soon as possible.
Ledeen is entitled to his views, but smart respondents should remember a few things when considering how to deal with Iran.
First, remember that on the night of 9/11/2001, Tehran was the only place in the Middle East [sic: other than Israel!] where thousands of people walked out into the streets holding candles and expressing grief and empathy for Americans who died that day. There are many in Iran who identify with America and are inspired by our country (though less so under current US political leadership).
Also, remember that former Ambassador and now RAND strategist James Dobbins successfully recruited Iran to play an important and constructive role in the Bonn Conference that was necessary to stabilize Afghanistan in 2002. Iran worked with us and did not need to. Yes, Afghanistan is coming apart at the seams now, and Iran may be playing both sides, but this is a function of America’s failing, not Iran’s designs and machinations.
Iran is a fake democracy – but there are elements of democracy and popular will being expressed through elections there. If we bomb Iran, we need to realize and accept that there is a strong chance that the public will rally toward rather than away from its current populist political leadership under President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The worst situation would be to have a perception of citizen-given legitimacy behind an extremist Iranian government now committed more than ever to the acquisition of nuclear weapons.
