“Why Bush Won’t Attack Iran” – Steve Clemons
By SusanUnPC on September 19, 2007 at 10:37 PM in Bush/Cheney, Iran, Iraq
(WTF? Now the Senate wants to pass a bill praising Petraeus and condemning MoveOn’s NYT ad?… Sen. Cornball (Cornyn) is promoting the bill. Yes, I’m still listening to C-Span2.)
BACK ON TOPIC NOW: My daughter knows Steve Clemons and received this mailing list note from him today about the reaction to his op-ed in today’s Salon:
The public comments at Salon are running about 3 to 1 against the premise of my argument — which is that while some analysts like Zbigniew Brzezinski see a military attack on Iran as likely given our current course, most making that assertion are not working through what we know about Bush’s posture and those empowered around Bush to generate “third option strategies.”
The piece works through some of the nuances — and I hope you find it of
interest:19 September 2007
Salon.com
“WHY BUSH WON’T BOMB IRAN” by Steven Clemons
It’s a two-page article that draws heavily on Clemons’ interactions with and correspondence with members of the Bush administration and foreign policy experts.
Before you comment, you will want to read the entire piece to get all of Steve’s observations, evidence, and considerations. Here are the opening paragraphs:
Sept. 19, 2007 | WASHINGTON — During a recent high-powered Washington dinner party attended by 18 people, Zbigniew Brzezinski and Brent Scowcroft squared off across the table over whether President Bush will bomb Iran.
Brzezinski, former national security advisor to President Carter, said he believed Bush’s team had laid a track leading to a single course of action: a military strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities. Scowcroft, who was NSA to Presidents Ford and the first Bush, held out hope that the current President Bush would hold fire and not make an already disastrous situation for the U.S. in the Middle East even worse.
The 18 people at the party, including former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, then voted with a show of hands for either Brzezinski’s or Scowcroft’s position. Scowcroft got only two votes, including his own. Everyone else at the table shared Brzezinski’s fear that a U.S. strike against Iran is around the corner. …
And here are the concluding paragraphs:
In sum, Bush does not plan to escalate toward a direct military conflict with Iran, at least not now — and probably not later. The costs are too high, and there are still many options to be tried before the worst of all options is put back on the table. As it stands today, he wants that “third option,” even if Cheney doesn’t. Bush’s war-prone team failed him on Iraq, and this time he’ll be more reserved, more cautious. That is why a classic buildup to war with Iran, one in which the decision to bomb has already been made, is not something we should be worried about today.
What we should worry about, however, is the continued effort by the neocons to shore up their sagging influence. They now fear that events and arguments could intervene to keep what once seemed like a “nearly inevitable” attack from happening. They know that they must keep up the pressure on Bush and maintain a drumbeat calling for war.
They are doing exactly this during September and October in a series of meetings organized by the American Enterprise Institute on Iran and Iraq designed to reemphasize the case for hawkish, interventionist deployments in Iraq and a military, regime-change-oriented strike against Iran. And through Op-Eds and the serious political media, the “bomb Iran now” crowd believes they must undermine those in and out of government proposing alternatives to bombing and keep the president and his people saturated with pro-war mantras.
We should also worry about the kind of scenario David Wurmser floated, meaning an engineered provocation. An “accidental war” would escalate quickly and “end run,” as Wurmser put it, the president’s diplomatic, intelligence and military decision-making apparatus. It would most likely be triggered by one or both of the two people who would see their political fortunes rise through a new conflict — Cheney and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
That kind of war is much more probable and very much worth worrying about.
Clemons’ blog, by the way, is The Washington Note. The latest pieces, by colleagues of Clemons’, are: “Bhutto Fires Back” and “Zimbabwe on the Verge of Collapse.”
BACK TO IRAN: We haven’t referred to this article by Pat Lang and Larry Johnson for The National Interest magazine in a while, but it’s important to re-read:
Contemplating the Ifs
by W. Patrick Lang and Larry C. Johnson03.01.2006
THE WAR drums are reverberating while warnings about an Iranian nuclear threat are becoming more frequent and dire. The 2005 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) concludes that Iran, if left to its own devices, is about a decade away from manufacturing the key ingredient for a nuclear weapon. In making a judgment about the soundness of that estimate, it would be prudent to recall the October 2002 NIE on Iraq’s WMD capability. That estimate proved to be altogether wrong in alleging the existence of such programs in Iraq. Should we wager that the estimate on Iran is more accurate?
The Wikipedia entry for Pat Lang says:
Lang is of the opinion that an American attack on Iran would have deadly repercussions on U.S. occupation troops in Iraq. This would be because “troops all over central and northern Iraq are supplied with fuel, food, and ammunition by truck convoy from a supply base hundreds of miles away in Kuwait. All but a small amount of our soldiers’ supplies come into the country over roads that pass through the Shiite-dominated south of Iraq.” Iraqi Shiia could easily interdict these supplies, not easily replaced by air, once hostilities start.[6]
He believes diplomacy has been underutilized in the Iraq crisis and a regional approach where all the parties talked and addressed their interests would be beneficial. The phrase “Concert of the Middle East” evokes that kind of harmonious settlement.
He has stated that the Surge Strategy is not new but is a revival of old French tactics of quadrillage implemented in Algeria.[9] [10]
Will the U.S. Bomb Iran?
Lang interprets “the U.S. has no plans to bomb Iran” to mean that intensive planning is at an advanced stage but no final decision has been made to push the button. He says the forces are largely in place. The bombing could be carried out by naval air from the aircraft carriers in place, missiles from the screening ships of the carrier groups, and Air Force assets. He says there is dissension in the U.S. administration at high levels whether to bomb Iran, and it is possible for high level resignations to occur even in the uniformed services. He says the concentration of forces has a dual purpose, to prod Iran toward serious negotiations and to be there as a resort if negotiations fail.[11][12]
by Ronald Scott
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