Fool Us Twice: the Empty Case for War Against Iran

Nine propositions have been advanced to justify a pre-emptive American military strike against Iran. When supposition, exaggeration, distortion and demonization are stripped away, each proposition proves to be utterly empty as a casus belli.

1. Iran is the nerve center of an Islamo-Fascist movement that threatens international security in the same way today that Nazi Fascism did from 1933 to 1945, and that Soviet Communism did from 1946 to 1989.

The nerve center of the ideologies that have spawned international Islamic terrorism in recent years is not in Iran, it is in the Pashtun regions on both sides of the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan. This is where the al Q and Taliban leadership established themselves prior to 9/11, and this is where today they flourish, organize, fund and cheer-lead for terrorist actions not only inside Pakistan and Afghanistan, but also in the Maghreb, Europe and the USA. It is from there, not from Teheran, that the doctrines of Islamic liberation from and conquest of the infidel (if that is what “Islamo Fascism” refers to) are being articulated. Khomeini died over 18 years ago and none of his successors has articulated anything remotely approaching the visions of a “new Caliphate” articulated by bin Laden, Zawahiri and other al Quaeda ideologues. Pakistan is also a country in which long-entrenched members of the state’s ruling elite (primarily in the army and the intelligence services) have made alliances with the radical Islamists who control much of the western half of the country. And it is a nuclear weapons state. To argue that Iran , rather than Pakistan , should be the next target of American action in the war on terror is as wrong-headed as it was to argue in 2002 that Iraq , rather than Afghanistan , should be the next target in the war on terror. There should have been no next target then, and there should be no next target now.

2. Ahmadinejad’s call for Israel to be “wiped off the map” is a call for military action.

Unless one speaks Farsi (in which Ahmadinejad’s call is made), it is difficult to know exactly what he means. While it may be a call for military action, it is more likely a call for political action, as Ahmadinejad himself insists. In fact Ahmadinejad is parroting Ayatollah Khomeini’s call (in Farsi) for Israel to be wiped off the map. Neither Ahmadinejad nor Khomeini has ever asserted the right or intention of Iran to destroy Israel. Neither of them has ever declared " Iran will wipe Israel off the map." Both have called for the revocation of UN Resolution 242 which partitioned Palestine and put the state of Israel on the map. Revocation of 242 would wipe Israel off the map, replacing it with the single state of Palestine. Taken at face value, this is a call for political, not military action.

Is it possible for a nation to be wiped off the map without military intervention by its neighbors? Some examples come to mind: the German Democratic Republic, Yugoslavia , Czechoslovakia and the Union of the Soviet Socialist Republics . Throughout the cold war, the Western side contested the right of these entities to call themselves “nations” and to appear as such on maps of the world. In the event, all of these “nations” were wiped off the map without a shot being fired. Nato’s member states routinely denied the right of the GDR, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia and the USSR to exist, but such denials were never intended or understood as declarations that western powers intended to resolve the matter by military means.

3. Iran is a State Sponsor of Terrorism

Critics of the current regime in Iran accuse Iran of sponsoring terrorism either directly, or by proxy through Hezbollah, Hamas, and Iraqi Shiite militias. This claim can only be upheld by rejecting the commonly-accepted definition of “terrorism” in favor of a definition better-suited to the rhetorical requirements of Iran’s critics. The commonly-accepted definition of terrorism is “violence targeted at civilians in order to achieve political objectives.” By this definition, none of the activities cited to support Iran’s SST designation qualifies.

· Hezbollah. While Iran’s ideological, financial and material support for Hezbollah is well-documented, this is not Iranian state sponsorship of terrorism. It is Iranian state sponsorship of the Arab side in a conflict at the Lebanese/Israeli border that has been going on since 1983. Nor does the US State Department’s classification of Hezbollah as a terrorist organization stand up to scrutiny using the commonly-accepted definition of the term. The two most widely-cited examples of terrorist action by Hezbollah were the Lebanese Hezbollah attack on the US Marine barracks in Beirut in 1983 and the Saudi Hezbollah attack on the Khobar Towers barracks in Saudi Arabia in 1996. These were Hezbollah operations against the barracks of American troops stationed in those countries and the targets were therefore military, not civilian.

Neither do Lebanese Hezbollah’s missile attacks against Israeli towns and cities in the summer war of 2006 qualify as terrorism in the commonly-accepted sense of the word. These were retaliatory operations with a deterrent intent at a time when Israeli warplanes were bombing the Shiite towns, villages and cities of Lebanon . If this was terrorism, then so also was the 1945 British fire-bombing of Dresden , and the American nuclear attacks of Hiroshima and Nagasaki . This analogy cannot be rejected on the grounds that Hezbollah "started" the summer war of 2006 by seizing two Israeli soldiers. That incident was just another episode in a conflict of regular tit-for-tat provocations (the Israeli favorite being to shatter the sound barrier over Lebanese towns and villages) between Israel and the Shiite community in Lebanon that began with Israel 's 1983 invasion and occupation of southern Lebanon to drive out Arafat’s PLO.

· Hamas. There is no question that Iran supports Hamas’ political objective of a single-state solution for Palestine. And while the evidence that Iran has trained, funded or armed the military wings of Hamas is nowhere near as conclusive as the evidence of such Iranian support for Hezbollah, there have been unconfirmed reports of Hamas Palestinians being trained in Iran. If confirmed this would not be evidence of Iranian state sponsorship of terrorism. It would be evidence of Iranian state sponsorship of the Arab side in a war between Jews and Arabs in Palestine that has been going on for over 70 years. The Arab side has committed many terrorist acts in this war, especially since Israel assumed the military upper hand. So also did the Jewish side when the Arab side had the military upper hand with British support.

· Iraq. Iran is training, funding and arming Shiite militias in Iraq. This does not make Iran a state sponsor of terrorism. It makes Iran a state sponsor of one side in the Iraqi civil war, a war in which both sides routinely resort to terrorism. Iran’s stakes in the outcome of this war are “existential,” far exceeding any stakes the USA has now or ever did have in Iraq. Twenty-seven years ago, Saddam Hussein’s Sunni regime launched a ground invasion to conquer Iran, and only abandoned the attempt after an eight-year struggle in which Iran suffered one million casualties. Given that history, how can Americans possibly expect Iran not to take sides in the Sunni/Shiite struggle for supremacy unleashed by the American invasion of Iraq, or hold Iran accountable for terrorist activities of the Shiite side?

· Argentina. The State Department’s case against Iran as an SST also includes the allegation of Iranian responsibility for a suicide attacks on the Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aeries in 1992, and a Jewish community center in 1994. Iran denies these charges. The Argentine prosecutors have so far been unable to bring a case before a jury. They attribute this to Iran’s refusal to cooperate with their investigation. Iran’s refusal to cooperate with the Argentine investigations is neither more nor less excusable than the Bush administration’s refusal to cooperate with Iranian investigations of bomb attacks in the Iranian cities of Ahwaz in 2006 and Zahedan in 2007. Iran says it has evidence that these attacks were carried out by Sunni Iranian insurgents using American explosives provided by the CIA.

4. Weapons from Iran are being used to kill Americans in Iraq.

From the American point of view, one of the most infuriating aspects of the conflict in Iraq is that, even though America’s invasion kicked the Sunni boot from the Shiite neck, many Shiite Iraqis regard American troops not as liberators but us as an occupying army. It is rather self-centered for Americans to believe that the primary reason for Iran’s support of the Shiite militias is because the militias are fighting a proxy war against Americans on Iran’s behalf. Iran’s paramount concern in Iraq is not a proxy war against America, but the real war between the Shiite Iraqis and the Sunni Iraqis at whose hands Iran suffered so much during Saddam’s rule. Americans should be neither surprised nor outraged that, in deciding whom to attack with the weapons they receive from Iran, Iraq’s Shiite militias fail to distinguish between their Sunni enemy and their American enemy. The casualties Americans are taking from Iranian arms in Iraq are simply a part of the price America is paying for its decision to attempt regime change in Iraq.

5. The purpose of Iran’s nuclear program is to acquire nuclear weapons.

This is pure supposition for which there is no confirmed evidence. So far as Iran’s enrichment activities are concerned, nothing they have done up to now evidence of an intention to acquire nuclear weapons as opposed to nuclear electricity. They IAEA continues to confirm this. If the observed levels of enrichment were to rise above the 3% required for reactor fuel rods, this would be evidence of a weapons intent, but this is not the case. More conclusive would be evidence that Iran is working with designs for nuclear warheads. Iran has told the IAEA that it received warhead design information from Pakistan . This is one of the matters that Iran has agreed to clarify under the “workplan” recently agreed with the IAEA.

6. Iran’s nuclear program violates international law.

Iran continues to enrich uranium in defiance of Security Council resolutions. Security Council resolutions are not legally binding on the targets of those resolutions. They are no more than expressions of the political will of the Council’s member states. This is why the most the Bush administration can honestly say on the subject is that Iran is “defying the will of the international community.” And this is only true if the Security Council represents the will of the international community. Iran rejects the resolutions on the grounds that they demand that Iran stop doing things it is entitled to do under international law, and this is entirely correct. Iran’s obligations under international law are defined by the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) to which Iran is a signatory. The primary obligation under the Treaty is to allow International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors to verify that Iran’s nuclear program is for peaceful purposes (electric power and medicine) under a Comprehensive Safeguards Agreement.

In September 2002, Iran informed the IAEA that, in violation of the Comprehensive Safeguards Agreement, it had for several years been carrying out an undisclosed program of research and development to develop a nuclear fuel-cycle capability (including uranium enrichment) to support a civilian nuclear power program. Following this disclosure, Iran voluntarily agreed to the more intrusive inspections of the NPT’s “Additional Protocol” allowing the IAEA to make unannounced inspections of any facilities it wished. The IAEA has since determined that none of the concealed activities (including uranium enrichment) was prohibited under the NPT, since all were of the kind normally associated with a civilian nuclear program. The IAEA has also found no evidence that Iran is carrying out nuclear R&D at any facilities that have not been disclosed, despite its freedom to look wherever it wished. Unfortunately, the IAEA lost these rights in 2006 when Iran terminated the “Additional Protocol” inspections in response to Security Council sanctions.

The IAEA’s position as of today is that, while there are some questions that Iran has not answered satisfactorily, there is no evidence that Iran is conducting any nuclear R&D activities that it is not entitled to conduct under the NPT. When the US House Intelligence Committee issued a report in December 2006 asserting the contrary, the IAEA immediately and publicly rejected this report. According to Seymour Hersh’s reporting in the November 27, 2006 New Yorker, a classified fall 2006 CIA assessment based on satellite and covertly-planted land-based monitoring devices in Iran also produced no evidence of a secret Iranian nuclear program, much to the disgust of the Vice President.

7. If Iran had the bomb, it would not hesitate to launch a first-strike even knowing that its own destruction was assured.

The entry of any new nation into the nuclear club -- as well as the refusal of existing members to resign -- is deplorable. But Iran’s possession of nuclear weapons would not make it a rogue nation. A nuclear-armed Iran would pose an intolerable threat to no-one, including Israel. Iran's bomb would have the same national security implications for Israel that Pakistan’s bomb has for India – eliminating a weapons imparity, and condemning the nuclear pair to live in the same MADness in which the USA and Russia and the USA and China have lived for over fifty years.

Norman Podhoretz asks us to believe Bernard Lewis who asks us to believe that Iran’s leaders would not hesitate to launch a first strike, even knowing this would result in the incineration of the Iranian nation. Lewis’s evidence for this is that Iran’s leaders have shown “time and time again” that they are willing to send large numbers of their people to their death in the belief that they are doing the victims a favor by sending them to martyr’s paradise. Lewis is presumably referring to the legions of young Iranian fighters who were slaughtered in hopelessly exposed charges against entrenched Iraqi positions during the Iran/Iraq war. But if Podhoretz and Lewis believe this is evidence that Iranian leaders would not hesitate to launch a first nuclear strike knowing it would result in Iran’s annihilation, how can they explain why French and English leaders didn’t launch first strikes against the Soviet Union during the Cold War? Did not the French and British leaders send legions of their young people to slaughter against the German lines “time and time again” during WWII?

8. Diplomacy with Iran cannot succeed because its leaders’ professed interest in diplomacy is insincere.

In announcing sanctions against Iran’s Republic Guard on October 26, 2007, Condi Rice said, “Unfortunately the Iranian government continues to spurn our offer of open negotiations.” It is not clear what Rice means by “open” negotiations, but it is clear that America’s offer to negotiate with Iran is not unconditional. The stated condition is that Iran first shut down its enrichment facilities. But the terms on which Iran will be allowed to enrich are supposed to be the subject of the negotiations. Therefore America is offering to negotiate only if Iran first accepts the American position on the issue to be negotiated. The Bush administration calls this “diplomacy.” Rice’s indignation at Iran for spurning the offer is over the top, as is the suggestion that Iran’s refusal to accept proves it’s professed interest in diplomacy to be insincere.

9. The only thing worse than a military strike against Iran is a nuclear-armed Iran .

This statement by John McCain is on a par with Vice President Cheney’s statement in the fall of 2002 that the “dangers of inaction action [against Saddam Hussein] exceed the dangers of action.” Cheney and McCain make the case for war by using the same, time-honored rhetorical trick of posing false choices. Why did Cheney pretend that the only alternatives in 2002 were to do nothing about Saddam Hussein or to invade? Why does McCain pretend that the only choices now for dealing with Iran are to do nothing or invade?

The obvious alternative in both cases was and is “trust but verify.” Cheney’s dismissive assertion that “inspections don’t work” in Iraq has been proven wrong, with calamitous consequences for a nation whose press and politicians decided to embrace a war policy on the basis of his rhetoric. In addressing the problem of Iran’s nuclear program, shame on any member of Congress, the press, or the American public who allows himself to be fooled twice by the claim that inspections won’t work. Inspections are the only way to substitute facts for supposition. And we can be sure that those who oppose inspections do so because they don’t want this to happen.