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 Editorials | Opinions | February 2007 
The United States Cannot Launch a Military Offensive Against Iran Today
 Renaud Girard - Le Figaro
Editor's Note: Renaud Girard argues that the US "cannot" launch a military offensive against Iran today, but it might be a mistake to assume the current administration - given its track record - to be incapable of suicidal folly. -ljt
Ever since President George W. Bush ordered the dispatch of a second naval aviation group to the Persian Gulf, the rumor has been growing in Washington of the possibility of American air strikes targeted to destroy Iranian nuclear potential. The press conference that the United States Armed Forces' commander in chief gave on February 14 has only fed the rumor further: during the conference, Bush complained about Iran sending explosives to Iraq that were used against American soldiers, and he excluded any possibility of a direct dialogue between Washington and Tehran.
Many observers of the American administration have concluded that the president is seeking to provoke an "accidental conflict" with Iran, a country that figured along with Iraq and North Korea on the famous "Axis of Evil" list that was revealed to the world during his January 29, 2002, speech to Congress. Many analysts validate that hypothesis by asserting that the president desperately needs to leave history a foreign policy success that would compensate for the fiasco of his intervention in Iraq, the absence of any solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and NATO's being bogged down in Afghanistan.
The reality, however, is that too many obstacles make an American strike today against Iran unlikely. These obstacles are technical as well as political and diplomatic.
Technically, America does not know the exact location of all the Iranian uranium-enrichment installations. Satellite espionage clearly demonstrated its limitations the day when CIA boss George Tenet learned - as did everyone else, from the radio - that India had performed a nuclear explosion one morning in 1998. No American strategist today can guarantee that air strikes would effectively wipe out Iran's uranium-enrichment capability for the long term. Centrifuges are not very bulky, relatively speaking (the size of an umbrella stand), and can easily be moved and hidden.
Politically, a military operation would have two immediate consequences in Iran that Pentagon and State Department strategists are obligated to take into account. The first would be to rally the entire Iranian population in a patriotic reflex around the very radical president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Moderate tendencies, such as those recently expressed during the elections for the Assembly of Experts (a chamber that corresponds to our Senate), would be swept out from the local political landscape for a long time. Hope for an internal change in regime under the impact of young people's expressed aspirations for more freedom would dissipate.
The second immediate consequence would obviously be Iran's withdrawal from adhesion to the NPT ([Nuclear] Non-Proliferation Treaty) and the dismissal of all IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency, based in Vienna) inspectors from the country. The Tehran authorities have always asserted that their desire to master the enriched-uranium cycle only aims at producing electricity, and that they have no intention of endowing themselves with an atomic weapon. American bombing would seal the end of these professed good intentions - whether real or not.
In the longer term, American strategists must wonder about the following stage, a question that they evaded during the Iraq invasion planning, a failure that America is cruelly paying for today. Now, at present, no one in Washington can predict with [at least] a minimum of exactitude what would happen in the Middle East after such a strike. Would we or would we not see an unprecedented popular wave of anti-Americanism? Would the regimes in the region allied to the United States (Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf petro-monarchies, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon and Iraq) find themselves strengthened or weakened as a result? Would insurrections, even revolutions, break out? Would America be up to containing them? As long as American strategists have no answers to these questions, they will remain inclined to caution.
Finally, there would be significant diplomatic considerations. There is no chance that the UN Security Council today would give such military initiatives its endorsement. Russia would certainly impose its veto, as confirmed by Vladimir Putin's recent speech in Saudi Arabia - where the Kremlin boss took aim very directly at US "external interventionism." China, which intends to maintain its favored oil connections with Iran, would very probably follow Russia in this matter, brandishing its own veto.
In the United States itself, the idea of a new Bush administration rape of the UN Security Council would be very poorly received, even in the Republican camp. A UN founder in 1945, America for the most part still believes in the advantage of keeping the present system of international law intact. Moreover, America would not even have the support of its normally-most-unconditional allies for such an adventure. In the United Kingdom, two generals have just asserted that attacking Iran would constitute "pure madness."
Consequently, the dispatch of supplementary naval forces to the Gulf must be understood today as a simple gesticulation, designed to make Iranian leaders reflect. It's the stick one waves in the hope that the adversary will cry out for a reasonable carrot.
Renaud Girard is a star reporter in Le Figaro's Foreign News service. Translation: t r u t h o u t French language correspondent Leslie Thatcher. |
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