Bush's Iraq Plan - Goading Iran into War
Analysis by Trita Parsi*
 http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=36152


WASHINGTON, Jan 12 (IPS) - President George W. Bush's address on
Iraq Wednesday night was less about Iraq than about its eastern
neighbour, Iran. There was little new about the U.S.'s strategy in
Iraq, but on Iran, the president spelled out a plan that appears to
be aimed at goading Iran into war with the U.S.

While Washington speculated whether the president would accept or
reject the Iraq Study Group's recommendations, few predicted that he
would do the opposite of what James Baker and Lee Hamilton advised.
Rather than withdrawing troops from Iraq, Bush ordered an
augmentation of troop levels. Rather than talking to Iran and Syria,
Bush virtually declared war on these states. And rather than
pressuring Israel to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the
administration is fuelling the factional war in Gaza by arming and
training Fatah against Hamas.

Several recent developments and statements indicate that the
administration is ever more seriously eyeing war with Iran. On
Wednesday, Bush made the starkest accusations yet against the rulers
in Tehran, alleging that the clerics were "providing material
support for attacks on American troops."

While promising to "disrupt the attacks on our forces" and "seek out
and destroy the networks providing advanced weaponry and training to
our enemies in Iraq," he made no mention of the flow of arms and
funds to Sunni insurgents and al Qaeda from Jordan and Saudi Arabia.

Instead, he revealed the deployment of an additional carrier strike
group to the Persian Gulf and of the Patriot anti-missile defence
system to Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states to protect U.S.
allies. The usefulness of this step for resolving the violence in
Iraq remains a mystery. Neither the Sunni insurgents nor the Shia
militias possess ballistic missiles. And if they did, nothing
indicates that they would target the GCC states -- Bahrain, Kuwait,
Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

The deployment of the Patriot missiles can be explained, however, in
light of a U.S. plan to attack Iran. Last year, Tehran signalled the
GCC states in unusually blunt language that it would retaliate
against the Arab sheikhdoms if the U.S. attacked Iran using bases in
the GCC countries. Mindful of the weakness of Iran's air force,
Tehran's most likely weapon would be ballistic missiles -- the very
same weapon that the Patriots are designed to provide a shield
against. A first step towards going to war with Iran would be to
provide the GCC states with protection against potential Iranian
retaliation.

Perhaps the starkest indication of an impending war with Iran is
Washington's recent arrest of Iranian diplomats in Iraq. Around the
time of President Bush's speech, U.S. Special Forces -- in blatant
violation of diplomatic regulations reminiscent of the hostage
taking of U.S. diplomats in Tehran by Iranian students in 1979 --
stormed the Iranian consulate in Erbil in northern Iraq, arresting
five diplomats. Later that day, U.S. forces almost clashed with
Kurdish peshmerga militia forces when seeking to arrest more
Iranians at Arbil's airport.

These operations incensed the Iraqi government, including its
Kurdish components that otherwise are staunchly pro-
Washington. "What happened... was very annoying because there has
been an Iranian liaison office there for years and it provides
services to the citizens," Iraq's Minister of Foreign Affairs
Hoshiyar Zebari, who is himself a Kurd, told Al-Arabiya television.

The Bush administration has justified the raids -- including the
arrests of several Iranian officials in December last year -- on the
grounds that evidence is collected on Iranian involvement in
destabilising Iraq. But if the purpose is intelligence gathering, it
would make more sense to launch a simultaneous mass raid of Iranian
offices rather than the current incremental approach that provides
the Iranians forewarning and an opportunity to destroy whatever
evidence they may or may not have in their possession.

The incremental raids and arrests may instead be aimed at provoking
the Iranians to respond, which in turn would escalate the situation
and provide the Bush administration with the casus belli it needs to
win Congressional support for war with Iran. Rather than making the
case for a pre-emptive war with Iran over weapons of mass
destruction -- a strategy the U.S. pursued with Iraq that is
unlikely to succeed with Iran -- the sequence of events in the
provocation and escalation strategy would make it appear as if war
was forced on the U.S.

Prominent Republican and Democratic Senators seem to have picked up
on the president's war strategy. At Thursday's hearing in the Senate
Foreign Relations Committee, Senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraska drew
parallels with the Richard Nixon administration's strategy of lying
to the U.S. people and expanding the Vietnam war into Cambodia. "[W]
hen you set in motion the kind of policy that the president is
talking about here," he warned Secretary of State Condoleezza
Rice, "it's very, very dangerous."

Senator Joseph Biden of Delaware added that war with Iran would
require congressional authority. Still, Congress is yet to pose a
major challenge to Bush's war plan beyond holding hearings with
heated exchanges between frustrated Senators and defensive
administration officials.

The next move may be Iran's. Tehran has likely sniffed the trap and
will sit idly by for now and deprive the Bush administration of a
pretext for escalation. But continued provocations from the U.S.
through additional raids of Iranian consulates and offices will
likely lead to an intentional or unintentional response, after which
escalation and war may become reality. Iran has at times failed to
exhibit the discipline necessary to refrain from responding to
aggressions.

While the administration's calculation may be that lethal pressure
on Iran will force Tehran to compromise, faith in Iran that offering
concessions will prompt a change in the U.S.'s Iran-policy is next
to nonexistent due to the Bush administration's past rejections of
Iranian offers.

But Tehran may be able to change the political climate and escape
Bush's war trap by reinitiating talks with the European Union to
address regional matters as well as the nuclear impasse. Europe's
patience and faith in Iran has largely been depleted due to Tehran's
failure to fully appreciate efforts by Javier Solana, high
representative for the European Union's Common Foreign and Security
Policy, to negotiate an agreement on enrichment suspension last
fall.

Still, the EU understands that the tidal waves of a regional war in
the Middle East will reach Europe much sooner than they reach U.S.
shores. Whether Europe will stand up for its own values and security
and against Bush's war plans, however, remains to be seen. Here,
Tehran's offers are likely not inconsequential.

*Dr. Trita Parsi is the author of "Treacherous Triangle -- The
Secret Dealings of Israel, Iran and the United States" (Yale
University Press, 2007). (END/2007)