U.S. covert ops, which usually make matters worse, have Iran in their sights
Bullets or ballots? Sometimes you get both. In an election year it’s always dangerous to be a country perceived as an enemy by the United States, especially if you happen to be a smaller country we think we can easily beat up. This year the bull’s eye has been painted on the Islamic Republic of Iran, a nation with a lineage that goes back as far as 6,000 years, and about which most Americans know exactly two things: 1. They took hostages at our embassy. 2. They want nukes.
By many definitions, the United States and Iran are already at war. The United States and Israel have all but confessed to planting the Stuxnet bug that wormed its way into Iranian computers and messed with their nuclear facilities. Many suspect that the recent murder of an Iranian scientist in a car bombing in Tehran was, like similar attacks in recent years, the work of U.S. secret agents. Blockades and embargoes are the stuff of war, and we have engaged in or threatened both.
The Iranians, for their part, seem determined to put their worst foot forward before the world. President Mahmoud Ahmedinajad struts the world stage as the perfect foil for Western hawks, when in reality his power is severely limited by the unelected mullahs who rule behind the scenes. The Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khomeini keeps his own plans and policies so secret that they defy analysis.
No thoughtful observers of Middle Eastern and U.S. politics suggest there are easy answers to the problem of Iran potentially acquiring nuclear weapons. But that doesn’t stop the crop of Republican hopefuls from trying to make it seem simple.
The current front-runner, Mitt Romney, has the easiest answer of all. Speaking in a November debate in South Carolina, Romney said that all we have to do to solve the problem is to give him the job. “If we re-elect Barack Obama, Iran will have a nuclear weapon. And if you elect Mitt Romney, Iran will not have a nuclear weapon.” There you go. Obama’s a wimp, I’m a tough guy, case closed. Just downsize Iran like it was a small company and you were a venture capitalist.
Rick Santorum, competing with Romney for the hawk vote, argued for heavy-duty sanctions on Iran. If those sanctions fail, said the former senator from Pennsylvania, “Then we set a deadline and we say if you don’t meet that deadline and open up this facility and begin to dismantle it, we’re going to take it out for you.” (Guys who never served in the military or as hitmen in the mafia love to use phrases like “take it out.”)
“Declare war?” Santorum asked rhetorically. “No,” he replied to the skull in his hand. “But take out {this facility} with tactical strikes. . . just like the Israelis did with the Syrians. Just like the Israelis did to the Iraqis.”
Not so easy, countered Newt Gingrich. “They have huge underground facilities,” said the former speaker of the House of Representatives in a November debate held in Washington, D.C. “Some of the underground facilities are under mosques. Some of them are in cities. The idea that you’re going to wage a bombing campaign that accurately takes out all the Iranian nuclear program, I think, is a fantasy. It would be a gigantic mess, with enormous collateral civilian casualties. . . . There’s no practical scenario in which you can take out their weapons without them rebuilding them.”
Following this brief sojourn in the land of reason, Gingrich goes on to suggest that we keep assassinating Iranian scientists (a violation of U.S. law) and engage in a massive but deniable covert operation campaign to change the regime in Iran, a goal he said he can accomplish within a year.
Regime change, said the one who claims to be a historian. It appears the historian-in-chief has not read the chapter of U.S. or Iranian history labeled “1953.” I’d like to recommend that Gingrich take a look at the book All the Shah’s Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror by Stephen Kinzer of The New York Times (John Wiley and Sons, 2003). Kinzer convincingly argues that our insistence on regime change at that point in Iranian history sowed the seeds for the conflict we now don’t seem capable of avoiding.
Mohammed Mosaddegh was the elected prime minister of Iran. He was Time magazine’s Man of the Year in 1951, but the CIA had him overthrown in 1953 after he nationalized the Iranian oil industry, previously a British-owned operation. Nonetheless, Gingrich and, increasingly, the Obama administration, are cozying to the idea of regime change as a clever policy option.
And what’s that squeaky sound coming from the other corner? Oh, that
guy. “I’m afraid,” said Ron Paul, “that what’s going on right now is
similar to the war propaganda that went on against Iraq.” Very similar.
And that wasn’t even in an election year. Yes, Ron, you should be
afraid. We should all be afraid.
Ed Griffin is not the owner of Fleet Feet Sports. He can be reached at edgriffin@twcny.rr.com.
