Iran's Great Game

Joe Katzman at Winds of Change has an interesting post on the power relationships affecting Iran, and the response of the ayatollahs to those power relationships. One thing that is apparent from the overall shape of the post, but which the comments by and large seem to have missed, is that Iran's ayatollahs are juggling tigers. Consider what the ayatollahs are dealing with:

• an educated, largely pro-Western population, mostly young, whose demands for political reform were so ignored that they are turning into demands for freedom instead;
  
• border populations of Shi'a with no fealty to Iran's ayatollahs and living under increasing freedom and safety;
  
• an openly-hostile US led by a President who has followed his rhetoric with carefully-considered forceful action, who stands an excellent chance of being President for four more years, who named Iran second in a list of three nations who form "an axis of evil", and who is willing to use force to prevent hostile nations from obtaining nuclear weapons;
  
• large US armies sitting on two land borders of Iran, one of which can easily be supplied by sea, and both of which are capable of stockpiling serious amounts of war supplies in advance;
  
• a long coastline controlled by the US Navy, and a narrow route for Iran's major commodity, oil, to be shipped through; which route is also controlled by the US Navy;
  
• both Israeli and US will and capability to undertake armed attacks on resources for nuclear weapons production.

Joe's analysis of the ayatollahs' options is very nicely done: oppress the Iranian populace, destabilize Afghanistan and Iraq, attempt to sway Shi'a populations outside of Iran into a de facto deference to the Iranian ayatollahs, attack Israel by proxy and attempt to ratchet up the violence there, and create numerous terrorist threats that America cannot afford to ignore.

Now, let's look at the American side. Our situation is as follows:

• The Iranians are acting in accordance with the strategy mentioned above.
  
• The Syrians and Saudis are also attempting to tie down US power, while ensuring that Iraqi moves towards self-rule stall and eventually fail. The Syrians are apparently behind almost as much of the unrest in Iraq as Iran is. The Saudis apparently prefer to link terrorists with resources, and provide cash, training and ideological justification to terrorists.
  
• The ongoing occupation of Iraq ties down a significant number of troops while the security situation and border control are unresolved.
  
• Significant elements of the American body politic are either unaware of the threats America faces; or unwilling to confront them openly and honestly; or believe that confronting these threats will exacerbate, rather than lessen, our vulnerability. In addition, there is a very small, but vocal and influential, part of the American body politic which actively empathizes with our enemies and considers America itself to be the primary danger to humanity.
  
• During this election year, any large-scale actions against other nations would be politically suicidal, in that even were the President to prevail on the policy, the divisions stirred up in America by partisans over any such actions would outweigh the benefits of undertaking the action. This is true so long as no imminent and existential threat exists, but could change if, for example, Iran demonstrated a working nuclear weapon. (That is, any threat horizon more than six months out is not worth considering in this context.)
  
• Our post-WWII alliances are in a huge state of flux. Many traditional allies (not least the Axis of Weasels) apparently believe that limiting American power and influence is more important - at least more urgent - than confronting the terrorist threat to us and them alike. At the same time, many of those allies who have been with us up to now (the UK for example) are either overcommitted or politically incapable of following up with future actions, at least until their forces are no longer needed in Iraq. New potential allies such as Afghanistan and Iraq are in no shape to assist outside their own borders, and in fact need substantial assistence from the US within their own borders.

Before formulating a plan for American action over the next few years, there are a couple of pre-requisite realizations that we must make. First, there are different ways, equally valid, to prioritize tasks to undertake. Despite snarkiness from some, such as Tacitus contributors fabius and democritus, it is simply not possible simultaneously to undertake every task we wish to take. Resources are limited, and threats have to be dealt with in a certain order. In some cases, reasonable people can disagree about the order.

Second, the US does not merely have to defend in place against the attempts by Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia - and to a lesser extent Russia, France and China - to prevent us from acting in our own interest. Right now, we're largely playing defense, because we are not yet at the point where our resources exceed our needs. However, Afghanistan is really pretty quiet at this point, at least in a strategic sense, and Iraq appears to be moving in that direction. Once an interim government is in place in Iraq, and more police and border guards are trained, our hand will be considerably freer. But, as with the domestic political sitatuation, this argues against major action this year.

Our high-priority tasks are: removal of the Iranian ayatollahs from power before Iran acquires nuclear weapons; completely dismantling the nuclear proliferation regime set up by A. Q. Khan; further disrupting the terrorist organizations, particularly in Pakistan, India and Lebanon; stabilizing Iraq.

Our medium-priority tasks are: removal of the Syrian regime from power; shutting down the influence of fundamentalist elements (primarily Wahhabi) in Saudi Arabia; bolstering European nations - particularly France, Germany and the Low Countries - to be able to withstand turmoil among or open revolt by the unassimilated immigrant Muslim communities in their nations; reshaping or enlarging the military to be able to undertake multiple simultaneous invasions, interventions or occupations; spreading Enlightenment ideals throughout the Arab/Muslim world, and reinforcing those ideals in Western Europe.

In formulating a plan for the next several years, it is tempting to look at the threats and challenges to the US, along with the limitations of the US and our allies, and simply give up. This actually seems to be the Democrat strategy, by and large, and it's the major reason I cannot vote for Kerry. Despite his Johnnie-come-lately attempts to sound like he's aware that we are actually at war, and cares, he's done little to lay out a plan of action, and doesn't have a history to make any such plan credible. Sending envoys to N. Korea and Iran and threatening to scowl at them is not going to improve our safety at all. So what plan should we undertake?

Certain actions are already underway. We are addressing at least some of the high and medium priorities I listed above: restructuring the Army, spreading Enlightenment ideals in the Arab/Muslim world, disrupting Taliban and al Qaida remnants in Pakistan and working to stabilize Iraq. I suspect that, behind the scenes, we are also doing a huge amount of work to dismantle the off-the-shelf nuclear weapons market set up by A. Q. Khan. We can argue about the effectiveness of methods and the relative priorities, but these at least seem to be actively being undertaken by the US at this time.

This ties up some of our capabilities. A large part of our conventional ground force is tied up in Iraq, and some part of our special forces are tied up in Iraq and also along the Afghan/Pakistani border. This rules out an invasion of Iran or Syria this year. A large part of our law enforcement and intelligence capability is currently focused on limiting the damage caused by Khan's activities, meaning that significant undercover activities will be limited.

Of the high-priority tasks that are not currently being undertaken (or at least, that I don't know about), Iran is the big question mark. I think that we have some options this year, though, that make it possible to return Iran to representative government next year.

First, we should undertake to inhibit Iran's nuclear weapons program. I would do this in three ways: first, conventional attacks on known nuclear sites (such as Bushehr); second, recruiting or assassinating Iranian nuclear scientists; and third, sabotage.

Second, we should fund and encourage Iranian dissidents. Propaganda is effective in this kind of situation, as is the provision of supplies and promises of support and normalization of relations (and we should have the means to back this up!). We can use Iraqi and Afghan territory as a staging base for special forces attacks against regime allies, particularly against terrorist bases in Iran. If the ayatollahs cannot stop us, they will look weak, and that could be fatal to them.

Third, we should attack Hezbollah in Lebanon. The Marines are largely available (I believe about 1/3 of the Marine combat units are currently deployed), are effective at littoral operations (which all of Lebanon is), and have a score to settle. Taking down Hezbollah in the Beka'a Valley, in particular, would be incredibly damaging to both Iran (Hezbollah is their major overseas action arm) and Syria (who would lose face from not being able to keep us out of Lebanon, which they occupy). If the Syrians were determined to actively resist US action in Lebanon, they have to face the possibility of a two-front war, since the US could also attack from Iraq if we had to. The Iranians would be unable to provide sufficient support in time to make a difference, and Hezbollah would be forced to run for the hills. At that point, we could reestablish and support local Christian militias, with help from Israel (who used to be supporters of these militias) to aid in keeping Hezbollah on the defensive.

Each of these steps can be done with different resources which are currently available to the US. Each of them would assist in destabilizing our enemies and putting them on the defensive.

And next year, if Iraq's stability increases as expected, the rotation of troops in Iraq could easily be turned into a surge for an invasion of Iran. It is possible, but not likely, that Iran could develop nuclear weapons in a year. However, with the active interventions described above, we should be able to prevent that. At that point, there would be a single belt of US force stretching from Afghanistan to Iraq. Hopefully, the Arab/Muslim world would then begin to reevaluate its options, and maybe think about modernization and democratization. If not, we could be ready for Syria and Saudi Arabia by 2007.

Posted by Jeff at March 5, 2004 05:11 PM | Link Cosmos