Scott Ritter: Target Iran

George W Bush has been targeting Iran at least since his 2002 State of the Union address located Iran in the so-called Axis of Evil. The Bush administration's rhetoric has waxed and waned ever since, with escalations occurring both when the US feels particularly strong or weak. The far right wing in Israel has developed comparable obsessions with Iran, so much so that it is hard to tell which dog is wagging which tail. Scott Ritter assesses all this in Target Iran: The Truth About the White House's Plans for Regime Change (2006, Nation Books). The main thing the book provides is a fairly detailed account of the conflict the US and Israel have advanced against Iran's development of nuclear power (and potentially nuclear weapons) technology. The book has little if anything to offer on Iran's views of this dispute, and has little grounding in Iran's foreign policy views.

Ritter focuses on an Israeli intelligence official, Amos Gilad, who had a strong record of accurate assessments until he got involved with Iran (p. 16):

This new Israeli assessment of Saddam dropped him from the number-one threat facing Israel in 1994, to number six by 1998. The Israelis viewed Saddam as the evil they knew, and as such felt that as long as he was contained by U.N. weapons inspections, they would rather live with him in power than confront the great unknown of a post-Saddam Iraq governed by unknown and unpredictable forces.

On Israel's past association with Iran and the Kurds in Iraq (pp. 19-20):

Up until a year before the 1979 Islamic revolution that swept the Shah of Iran out of power, Israel had long-standing ties with Iran. The Iranian monarchy was one of the first nations to recognize Israel as a new state in 1948, and from 1948 to 1949, Iran worked closely with Israel to facilitate the relocation to Israel of Iranian Jews who wanted to live in the new Jewish state. In 1958 Israel initiated an intelligence and military exchange program with the Shah of Iran, and that same year, with the cooperation of the Shah, Israel started arming and training Kurds in northern Iraq, using bases inside Iran, in an effort to destabilize the Iraqi government. This cooperation expanded considerably in 1963, to the extent that by 1965 Israeli personnel were on the ground in northern Iraq, training and advising the Iraqi Kurdish rebels. The close nature of this cooperation mainfested itself in June 1967 when, at the behest of their Israeli advisers, the Kurds of northern Iraq launched an offensive against the Iraqi Army in an effort to tie down Iraqi forces that might have been offered up in support of Syria, Jordan or Egypt. A similar rebellion by Iraq's Kurds in 1973 was timed to support Israeli military interests.

In the end, Gilad bends his analyses to the politically preferred conceptual thinking -- something Israeli intelligence organizations had previously dismissed as "konseptsia" (p. 27):

Amos Gilad was presented with a quandry. When assessed in isolation, each component of the threat spectrum facing Israel could be moderated on teh basis of fact, or in Gilad's opinion, the lack of fact. However, when packaged together, the threats combined into a single package that left no doubt as to the danger Israel faced. Amos Gilad had to assess the entire scope of the threat faced by Israel: the increased militancy of the Palestinian Authority, combined with a dramatic increase in the number of terrorist attacks inside Israel, the increased militancy of the pro-Iranian Lebanese Hezbollah party, and the actions by Iran to acquire nuclear capability and missiles capable of reaching Israel.

In Amos Gilad's mind, these factors combined in a sort of modern konseptsia, where gut feel trumped hard fact. Gilad's tough approach was increasingly welcomed by the hard-line government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. In a system which prided itself on a disciplined approach to intelligence analysis, Amos Gilad's konseptsia was heresy. But under Netanyahu, the intelligence won out over objections from within the Military Intelligence branch, even when officers senior to Amos Gilad voiced those objections.

Most of the book reviews in great detail the intelligence gathering, inspections, and diplomacy surrounding Iran's nuclear fuel cycle program. The US and Israel consistently drove this matter into crisis mode, leaving the Europeans stuck in the middle -- wishing to avoid confrontation, unwilling to defend Iran, and therefore unable to stand up to the US (p. 163):

But the fact was that no German politician had the wherewithal or political courage to stand up to the United States. Germany, together with Britain and France, were behaving in a manner that was strikingly similar to the behavior of British [P]rime Minister Chamberlain in 1938 when he backed down over Hitler's demands over the Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia. Ion an effort to forestall another American illegal war of aggression, the Europeans were negotiating with Iran to convine the Iranians to give up a nuclear program that operated demonstrably within the framework of international law. Europe committed to the principle of Iranian legal rights regarding the enrichment of uranium, all the whle caving into pressure from the United States to deny Iran this right. The inherently contradictory policy position taken by Europe in this regard was clear to all, it seemed, except Europe. Iran refused to give up its right to pursue the nuclear fuel cycle, while the United States refused to give Europe any maneuver room in this regard.

Confusion over aims, both of US and Iran (pp. 189-190):

With typical diplomatic alacrity, the United States proceeded to issue statements which questioned its commitment to a diplomatic solution. Secretary of State [Condoleezza] Rice, remarking on the debate unfolding in the Security Council, noted that "Perhaps one of the biggest challenges that we face is the policy of the Iranian regime, which is a policy of destabilization of the world's most volatile and vulnerable region. And it's not just Iran's nuclear program but also their support for terrorism around the world. They are, in effect, the central banker for terrorism around the world." Clearly the United States was casting a larger net on the issue of Iran than simply bringing a nuclear enrichment program to heel.

Ritter attempts to imagine the consequences of a preemptive US attack on Iran (pp. 204-205):

Any aerial bombardment of Iran would result in the immediate attack by Iranian missiles on targets in Israel, followed by a major Hezbollah rocketing of northern Israel. If U.S. military forces were deployed from the soil of any nation within striking distance of Iran, those nations, too could be expected to come under Iranian attack. Iran will fire missile barrages against American forces in Iraq, and then engage the entire coalition occupation force on the ground, either with Iranian paramilitary forces infiltrated into Iraq, or using Iraqi proxies in the form of the various pro-Iranian Shi'a militias that are in power in Iraq today. American freedom of movement, such as it is, will be eliminated almost overnight. Lines of communication with American logistics bases in Kuwait and Jordan will be cut, and the sole remaining line of communicationt hrough Kurdistan into Turkey, already tenuous, will become untenable. American forces will become almost exclusively dependent on aerial re-supply, which will expose American helicopters and aircraft to great risk from Iranian surface-to-air missiles. Americans will be forced to abandon some bases in favor of consolidation of resources, and eventually America will be forced to quit Iraq altogether or suffer extremely heavy casualties (Iranian intensification of the conflict in Iraq could have U.S. casualty figures approach weekly KIA/WIA rates that approach those suffered during the Vietnam War).

Iran will do its utmost to play the oil card, not only shutting off its exportation of oil and natural gas, but also threaten the oil production of Iraq, Kuwait, UAE, and Saudi Arabia, either through missile attack or direct action by pro-Iranian Shi'a activists or Iranian military commando unit. U.S. naval forces operating in the Persian Gulf will be put at risk, and there is a real possibility that Iran would succeed in sinking or heavily damaging a number of U.S. capital warships, including any aircraft carriesr that might be operating inthe region. There is a better than even chance that Iran would succeed in shutting down the straight of Hormuz, choking off the global oil supply.

The Iranian reaction will have global reach, with Iranian agents or their proxies conducting terror bombings, kidnappings and/or assassinations of American, Israeli, and allied orces diplomats and civilians. Attacks will definitely occur in Europe, and may even spread to American soil.

Any American ground invasion of Iran would be doomed to fail. [ . . . ] Faced with such a disaster, the United States would have no choice but to escalate the conflict along military lines, which means to engage Iran with nuclear weapons. At this juncture, the equation becomes unpredictable, the damage done incalculable, and the course of world history, including America's role as a viable global leader.

This all seems rather excessive. It's unclear to me that Iran's relationships with Hezbollah, SCIRI, and others are such as would ensure their participation in the military defense of Iran. While Iran has forces that should suffice to make the US think twice before attacking, the use of those forces as anything other than deterrence may be unwise -- the escalation Ritter envisions would certainly hurt Iran much worse than the US, even though it might be unacceptable to the US as well.

Actually, what Iran should do if the US and/or Israel attacks is to take the case to the UN and demand censure and reparations for the attacks. A UN failure at that point would be a disastrous reflection on what the US has done to international law. It would also give Iran a green light to shut down the Straits of Hormuz, a pinch-point on the world's oil supply, and also Iran's most defensible position.

posted 2007-07-06