Something to consider before attacking Iran

by Rami G. Khouri, Daily Star -Oct 27, 2007

The main Middle Eastern issue being discussed in the US these days is not Iraq, Arab-Israeli peacemaking, or Turkish-Kurdish-Iraqi tensions, but rather what to do about Iran and its perceived threat to the region, the US and the world. The Bush administration sets a shrill and aggressive tone on this and is taking action, including this week's new sanctions against the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps, its Quds Force, and several banks.

Possible American moves against Iran should be considered in light of the 2001-2007 lessons of US-led wars to change regimes and remake national governance systems in Afghanistan and Iraq, and more indirectly in Palestine and Lebanon. This is not just a Bush-Cheney problem, but an all-American one, since most presidential candidates in both parties do not stray far from the administration's aggressive policy options.

The post-2001 experience suggests that American military attacks against Iran would probably result in more turmoil in the Middle East and Asia, and greater anti-American sentiments and actions around the world. The American-led wars and aggressive diplomatic stances vis-a-vis Iran, Hamas, Hizbullah and Syria have already generated two specific phenomena: widespread criticism of the US in public opinion around the entire world (see the recent BBC and Pew polls); and, a determination by many Middle Eastern actors to actively resist and defy the US, and militarily fight it (or its Arab and Israeli proxies) when such an opportunity arises in Lebanon and Iraq, rather than to react with the expected acquiescence and compliance.

The six-year-old US-led "global war on terror" has expanded terror networks and their threats, hastened weapons of mass destruction proliferation by assorted regimes, bolstered Arab-Asian dictators, weakened indigenous democracy movements, mangled nascent rule of law traditions, badly isolated and weakened the US diplomatically, and virtually nullified the deterrent power of American-Israeli military might. Attacking Iran will only exacerbate these trends in the short term.

Americans should grasp precisely why a US-led war on global terror has backfired, and isolated the US as much as the terrorists. The main reason, simply, is that every single aspect of Washington's "global war on terror" is perceived by the majority of people in the Arab-Asian region as reviving, reaffirming, expanding and accelerating all the negative Western policies that have devastated the people of the Middle East for nearly a century. Here is a quick summary list of these issues:

* From the days of Napoleon's invasion of Egypt two centuries ago to the birth of the modern Middle East state system at Euro-colonial hands a century ago, a steady stream of Western armies that invade, occupy and seek to remake the Middle East to suit Western strategic aims;

* European and now American policies that blatantly favor Israel at the expense of Arab rights, and turn a blind eye to Israel's continued colonization of Palestinian land;

* Persistent marginalization of Palestinian rights, and collusion in barbaric Israeli policies against the Palestinians, such as this week's Israeli move to cut electricity supplies to civilians in Gaza;

* Supporting autocratic Arab regimes and police states, and showing chronic disdain for the democratic aspirations of Arab citizens;

* Promoting the ethnic and sectarian division of the region in order to enhance American hegemony and Israeli control (why is the US today the only source of apparently serious proposals to divide Iraq into three smaller units?);

* Demonizing Islam and Islamic values, to the point where 75 percent of Arabs and Muslims surveyed recently express an astounding fear that the US actually wants to dominate or destroy Islam itself;

* Attacking any Arab or Islamic power or mass popular force that rises in the region, such as Nasser's Egypt, Baathist Iraq, Iran, Hizbullah, the Muslim Brotherhood, and others;

* Dictating economic, political, social, educational, and religious norms and values that should define Arab-Asian societies, and trying to enforce those values through military power and political force;

* Pursuing blatant double standards in implementing UN resolutions and international law, such as relating to Israeli occupation and colonization of Arab land, Iran's nuclear industry, recognizing or rejecting democratic elections, and other issues;

* Exploiting local leaders and movements to suit Western policies, then dropping these erstwhile allies and friends when they are no longer needed;

* Maintaining control of Arab-Asian natural resources, such as oil, gas and strategic geography.

This is what ordinary Arabs, Iranians and other Middle Easterners see when they hear about American plans possibly to attack Iran. This is not because people in the Middle East have fertile imaginations, but rather because this is the actual history that they have experienced for the past century at the hands of once colonial masters who have now turned into post-colonial and neo-colonial nightmares. They see America's "global war on terror" as a frightening renewal and continuation of foreign threats and predatory intrusions at the hands of powerful Western armies and political demagogues.

Reporter-at-Large: One Man's Terrorist is Another's Diplomat

by Barbara Slavin - Oct 26, 2007

The Bush administration’s decision Thursday to put new sanctions on Iran’s Revolutionary Guards and its elite Quds force is a calculated gamble intended to convince Iran’s leadership to behave better in Iraq and suspend uranium enrichment.

But the step could backfire by arousing a nationalist backlash in Iran and convincing the leadership there that the U.S. government is not interested in negotiations—only in squeezing the Iranian economy until its people rise up and overthrow the regime.

Unfortunately, the chances of regime change remain minimal while oil approaches $100 a barrel. Meanwhile, U.S. actions could eliminate whatever slim chance there is of a diplomatic solution to the Iranian nuclear program and its rising power in the Middle East.

With whom exactly is the United States supposed to negotiate such a solution? The Iranian ambassador to Baghdad, Hassan Kazemi-Qomi, is a Quds force commander, according to Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. military man in Iraq. Does that mean that U.S. ambassador Ryan Crocker,­ who has met twice with Kazemi-Qomi, cannot speak to him again? Or just that Crocker can’t lend him money?

One man's terrorist is another's diplomat.

Petraeus seemed surprised that Iran would send a military man to Baghdad as its ambassador. Given Iran’s security concerns about its neighbor and the perilous state that Iraq is in, it would be surprising if Iran sent someone who was not a member or veteran of the Guards or its Quds branch.

Far from being the rogue operation the Bush administration portrays it to be, the Quds or Jerusalem force is an elite unit, from the Iranian government perspective, that has been a key element in Iran's security and defense policy for more than a quarter century. Kazemi-Qomi is among scores of members and veterans of the Quds force and the Guards who hold senior positions in the Iranian government. Hopes of stabilizing Iraq, Lebanon and to some extent, the Palestinian territories and Afghanistan, could rely on the U.S. ability to deal with these people and to acknowledge their growing role, for better or worse, in the Middle East.

U.S. military and intelligence have a long and mostly bitter history of tangling with the Quds force and Guards and the Arab militant organizations they have spawned. Hezbollah was such a creation, formed by the Guards after the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982. In 1983, Hezbollah staged suicide attacks against U.S. and European forces who had intervened in support of a pro-Israel Lebanese government. Attacks on the U.S. Embassy, the Marine barracks and a French military compound killed 361 people, including 258 Americans.

The Quds Force is said to have helped train a Saudi Shiite group, Saudi Hezbollah, which blew up a U.S. Air Force barracks in Saudi Arabia in 1996, killing 19 Americans and wounding hundreds, after the Clinton administration slapped a comprehensive economic embargo on Iran.

In Iraq, the Quds force has forged links with a variety of Shiite militant groups, beginning long before the U.S. invasion. One such organization, the Badr Brigades—like Hezbollah, an Iranian creation in the 1980s—formed from Iraqi Shiites fleeing Saddam Hussein. Since Saddam's overthrow, Iran has spread its bets by offering arms and training to the Mahdi Army and other Shiite factions. The United States alleges that Iran is the source of powerful explosives that have killed dozens of American troops.

However, the Quds force and the United States have not always worked at cross purposes. The Bush administration is also close to the Supreme Islamic Council in Iraq, the political party affiliated with the Badr Brigades. Iran backed the Northern Alliance, an anti-Taliban Afghan group, long before the Bush administration threw its support behind the militia after 9/11. Senior Quds force officers were present as advisers when the alliance captured Kabul in November 2001.

Mohsen Rezaie, who commanded the Guards from 1981 to 1997 and who helped found the Quds force as the Guards' external arm, described the Iranian role in Afghanistan to me in 2005—an account that was confirmed by the CIA. Rezaie has been trying to broker negotiations between the United States and Iran at least since 2003, when he proposed the creation of a new security organization in the Middle East.

Rezaie was among four candidates with Guards backgrounds who ran for president of Iran in 2005. The others were the victor, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Mahmoud Qalibaf, currently the mayor of Tehran, and Ali Larijani, until this week, Iran’s top nuclear negotiator. Does Thursday’s designation that Guards Corps is an “entity of proliferation concern” mean that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice could not meet with Larijani if Iran were to accept U.S. preconditions for talks?

The military component of Iran's government has historically been strong and has gotten bigger since Ahmadinejad's election. Quds and Guards veterans head about half the ministries in his cabinet and hold a third of the seats in parliament. They run Islamic foundations that control a significant portion of Iran’s wealth and chair corporations in charge of major construction projects. Many perform diplomatic roles. In 2006, a deputy national security adviser and former Quds force commander, Mohammad Javad Jaffari, sought backchannel talks with the Bush administration. Not only was he rebuffed but in January, the U.S. military tried to arrest him when he visited the Kurdish city of Irbil. Jaffari escaped but five others—consular officials according to the Kurds and Iran; arms providers according to Washington—were apprehended and remain in U.S. custody without formal charge.

Jaffari—Iran’s premier expert on Iraq—turned up at a meeting Rice attended in Egypt last May about how Iraq’s neighbors might help stabilize the country. He will presumably attend a meeting scheduled early next month in Istanbul about the same subject. Does the Bush Administration want the Turks to arrest him instead?

Targeting the Quds force and the Guards has become popular within the Bush administration and among some prominent Democrats, including Hillary Clinton, who supported the recent non-binding Senate resolution declaring the Guards a terrorist group. Assuming that the United States cannot overthrow the Iranian government, however, some U.S. administration will eventually have to deal with the regime as a whole. Only a settlement supported by the entire leadership of Iran can ease the U.S. predicament in Iraq and help stabilize a troubled Middle East.