Beyond calculation

US plans for a military strike against Iran have already been drawn up and the Bush administration is mad enough to put them into action, writes Hassan Nafaa*

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The Middle East is racing towards yet another precipice beyond which lies a gaping unknown, and we might reach the edge sooner than expected.

In recent months there has been a steady stream of reports in the West concerning the possibility of a military strike against Iran. In recent weeks, though, such reports have undergone a subtle shift in emphasis: it is as if the option of a strike against Iran has moved from the theoretical drawing board to the operational planning table, as though it were no longer a question of if but when and how.

"The US is studying military strike options against Iran," announced a Washington Post article on 9 April." A week later, on 17 April, the New Yorker featured "The Iran plans", a report by Seymour Hersh claiming the Bush administration is ready to launch an attack against Iran. In the same week the Russian news agency RIA Novosti carried a lengthy article entitled "Storm gathers over Iran", by intelligence analyst Lt-General Gennady Yevstafiyev.

The Bush administration, each of these articles suggests, has elevated military action from one option among many to its only option in dealing with Iran. If this should prove correct, then the US has already begun manoeuvring to set the international stage and prepare public opinion for another military adventure. In short, we may be in a phase similar to that which preceded the invasion of Iraq.

The Bush administration took the decision to occupy Iraq long before it launched the war. Bush's September 2002 address to the UN General Assembly was, in effect, the opening shot in a drive to lay the diplomatic groundwork for the eventual execution of military plans that had already been drawn up. This precedent lends weight to the likelihood that the administration has already taken a similar decision with respect to Iran and that the transfer of the Iranian nuclear file from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to the Security Council is the prelude to taking another set of military plans off the drawing board and putting them into action.

Not that we will witness a blow-by-blow repeat of the build-up to the war against Iraq. The Bush administration is fully aware that a completely different set of factors governs its collision course against its enemy in Tehran. Iran has never attempted to attack and occupy a UN member state, as Saddam did in 1990. Iran in 2006 is not the materially and morally exhausted Iraq of 2003, which had suffered 13 years of the harshest sanctions ever imposed by the Security Council. The IAEA has yet to state unequivocally that Iran has violated any of its obligations under the Nuclear Non- Proliferation Treaty and it is doubtful if the agency has the evidence to support such a claim. The Bush administration must also know that it will have a much harder time convincing anyone to go along with its plans. Revelations regarding the justification of the invasion, the failure to accomplish military and political objectives, and the scandals of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo have seen the credibility of this administration drop to an all time low.

Unfortunately, we can take no solace in the knowledge that invading Iran would be an act of utter madness. The Bush administration, as its record shows, is too ideologically blinkered to behave rationally and pragmatically. Its policy architects have a vision of America's global dominion and a project for bringing this vision to fruition. The project begins by securing control over the Middle East's oil resources, and Iran stands as the last remaining obstacle to this goal. If another war is needed to remove this obstacle, so be it.

So fanatically are they committed to this project that they are not about to let reality stand in their way, making it almost a certainty they will forge ahead with their plans for Iran. They still the US military can accomplish their objectives in Iran and, in spite of America's tarnished image abroad, they believe in their ability to win allies to their cause. After all, didn't the EU come around in the end over Iraq? And there's always Israel, Washington's proxy in the region, whose services they will not hesitate to call on in time of need, having shed any remnants of embarrassment over the nature of that alliance some time ago. Then there are the Arab regimes that they believe will cooperate, either willingly, out of fear of Iran and Islamic fundamentalism, or grudgingly, in deference to the American carrot and/or stick. Nor will they have to ask anyone here for permission to pass, now that they have fleets and airbases on the spot, already brimming with arms.

Meanwhile, Iran takes a totally different approach to the matter. The Americans want it to halt its nuclear programme, but they want other things as well. They want Tehran to help restore security and stability in Iraq and not to object to the US keeping permanent bases there. They also want it to put some pressure on its allies in the region. There is Hizbullah, which needs to be convinced to lay down its arms and confine itself to being an ordinary player in the Lebanese political process. Also in Lebanon, the Palestinians have to be told in no uncertain terms to clean the weapons out of their tents and, perhaps, to reconcile themselves to naturalisation. The Palestinians in Palestine, too, have to be urged to throw away their weapons and to accept Israel's conditions for a settlement. Then there is Damascus, which Tehran should either abandon to its fate or persuade to bow to all the terms of resolution 1559, especially those pertaining to Palestinian resistance organisation headquarters in Damascus and the Palestinian camps in the country. The Iranians know that for them to concede to American wishes on all, or most of these issues, would ultimately require them to alter the nature of the regime brought into being by the Islamic revolution. They also know that this is what the Americans want, and that the Bush administration's ultimate goal is regime change in Iran, achieved by force if necessary.

From Tehran's perspective, then, the Iranian nuclear programme is only a pretext in Washington's drive to attain more ambitious goals, goals that require much more than a surgical operation like the Israeli attack against the Iraqi nuclear reactor in 1981. Tehran believes collision with the US is inevitable unless it can convince Washington that its aim of toppling the Iranian regime cannot be accomplished through military means.

Iran's behaviour on the international and regional scene suggests that it has taken up the American gauntlet, that it is confident of its ability to play its cards well and that it is equally confident that American and Israeli political blunders and criminal acts will hand it additional cards along the way. Among the strongest cards it holds is its ability to retaliate, not just against American military targets but against international economic targets, notably the oil fields that the US is so desperately trying to safeguard. In addition, Tehran can avail itself of precisely those points of leverage in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Palestine that the US is determined to pry from its grip.

The third international conference in support of Jerusalem and Palestinian Rights, held in Tehran on 14 to 16 April, offered a timely opportunity for Iran to demonstrate some of the support it can avail itself of in order to stand up to American bullying. The conference was attended by delegations from 68 nations, and participants included heads of state, parliamentary members and academics. While the Egyptian foreign minister in Cairo was apologising for not having enough time to meet the PA foreign minister during his visit to the Egyptian capital, the Iranian foreign minister, during the closing ceremonies of the conference in Tehran, announced that his government would donate $50 million (later upped to $100 million) in aid to the Palestinian people who are being starved by Israel, the US and Europe in punishment for their democratic choices. Two days earlier, during the inauguration of the conference, the Iranian Supreme Guide Ali Khamenei, had called upon the Islamic world to make the Palestinian cause its cause "because this is the magic key to open the doors of salvation to the Islamic nation". Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad took the same occasion to declare, "if what we are told about the Holocaust is true, then why doesn't Europe compensate the Jews out of its own possessions. Why should the Palestinians, who have committed no wrong, be persecuted today for the persecution perpetrated against the Jews yesterday?"

In short, Tehran took advantage of the conference to present itself as the champion of Arab and Muslim rights.

Bearing this in mind, one cannot ignore the ramifications on regional balances of power of Iran's agreement to negotiate with the US over the situation in Iraq. It is hardly surprising that governments should express their anxiety over the prospect that these negotiations might lead to an accommodation between Washington and Tehran for which the Arabs would eventually pay. But conditions are such that such an accommodation is unlikely at present. What is worrying, though, is that there appears to be only two powers -- Iran and the US -- vying for influence in the Middle East. The Arab world, or to be more precise, Arab regimes, are completely out of the picture, or if they are in the picture they are there as meek hangers on to American -- and by extension, Israeli -- coat tails.

* The writer is a professor of political science at Cairo University.