Michael Schwartz: The Ironies of Conquest

[Gasping4Truth]

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The rise of the Iraqi resistance drastically changed the equation for the Iranian leadership. The threat of an imminent U.S. assault had reduced the long- term Iranian nuclear option to near pointlessness, which was why the Iranian leadership was willing to negotiate it away in exchange for a guarantee of safety from attack. Once the prospect of a protracted guerrilla war in neighboring Iraq arose, however, the Iranian leadership suddenly found itself with an extended time horizon for tactical and strategic planning. Becoming (or at least continually threatening to become) a nuclear power again became a promising path of deterrence against future American threats -- at least if the North Korean experience was any guide. So the Iranians began pushing ahead with their nuclear program; and while no one could be sure whether their work was aimed at the development of peaceful nuclear energy (their claim) or nuclear weapons (as the Bush administration insisted), their moves made it conceivable that they might actually be capable of building a bomb in the many years that it would take -- it now became clear -- for the U.S. to have any chance of pacifying Iraq.


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Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and Iran stand one-two-three in global estimated oil and natural gas reserves. The Iraq invasion, which unsettled world energy politics in unpredictable ways, set in motion portentous activities in China, an undisputed future U.S. economic competitor. China's leaders, in search of energy sources for their burgeoning economy long before the American invasion of Iraq, had already in 1997 negotiated a $1.3 billion contract with Saddam Hussein to develop the Al-Ahdab oil field in central Iraq. By 2001, they were negotiating for rights to develop the much larger Halfayah field. Between them, the two fields might have accounted for almost 400,000 barrels per day, or 13% of China's oil consumption in 2003. However, like Iraq's other oil customers (including Russia, Germany, and France), China was prevented from activating these deals by the UN sanctions then in place, which prohibited all Iraqi oil exports except for emergency sales authorized under the UN's Oil for Food program. Ironically, therefore, China and other potential oil customers had a great stake in the renewed UN inspections that were interrupted by the American invasion. A finding of no WMDs might have allowed for sanctions to be lifted and the lucrative oil deals activated.

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The long-term oil relationship between China and Iran, sparked in part by the American occupation of neighboring Iraq, would soon be complemented by a host of other economic ties, including an $836 million contract for China to build the first stage of the Tehran subway system, an expanding Chinese auto manufacturing presence in Iran, and negotiations around a host of other transportation and energy projects. In 2004, China sought to deepen political ties between the two countries by linking Iran to the Shanghai Cooperative Organization (SCO), a political alliance composed of China, Russia, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. China and Russia soon began shipping Iran advanced missile systems, a decision that generated angry protests from the Bush Administration. According to Asia Times correspondent Jephraim P. Gundzik, these protests made good sense, since the systems shipped were a direct threat to U.S. military operations in the Middle East: "Iran can target US troop positions throughout the Middle East and strike US Navy ships. Iran can also use its weapons to blockade the Straits of Hormuz through which one-third of the world's traded oil is shipped. With the help of Beijing and Moscow, Teheran is becoming an increasingly unappealing military target for the U.S."

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Recently, former CIA official Philip Giraldi asserted in the American Conservative magazine that, as of late summer 2005, the Pentagon, "under instructions from Vice President Dick Cheney's office," was "drawing up a contingency plan to be employed in response to another 9/11-type terrorist attack on the United States. The plan mandates a large-scale air assault on Iran employing both conventional and tactical nuclear weapons…. As in the case of Iraq, the response is not conditional on Iran actually being involved in the act of terrorism directed against the United States." The breadth and depth of the assault, according to Giraldi's Air Force sources, would be quite striking: "Within Iran there are more than 450 major strategic targets, including numerous suspected nuclear-weapons-program development sites. Many of the targets are hardened or are deep underground and could not be taken out by conventional weapons, hence the nuclear option." Since many targets are in populated areas, the havoc and destruction following such an attack would, in all likelihood, be unrivaled by anything since Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

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[femmecahors]

1. Nauseating . . . but thanks for posting! n/t

[teryang]

2. The Pentagon takes orders from the Vice Resident?

I was unaware that Cheney had any constutional powers with respect to the national defense.