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Iran - Efter præsidentvalget:Targeting IranPaul Rogers, 7. juli 2005 How does the election of Iran’s new president affect the likelihood of a United States – or an Israeli – attack? The election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as president of Iran on 24
June is not an easy event for Washington to digest. The more convinced
neo-conservatives find it especially difficult. The assumption on the American
right has been that Iran is ripe for internally fomented regime change, with all
that is required to bring people onto the streets being a perceived chance of
success. The United States can plausibly present Ahmadinejad as a hardline theocrat,
and the Iran he leads as more dangerous than it would have been under the canny
pragmatist he defeated, Hashemi Rafsanjani. The problem for the US right is that
Ahmadinejad clearly has extensive popular support, and his sizeable victory
cannot be explained away by any electoral irregularities (see Fred Halliday’s openDemocracy
article, “Iran’s
revolutionary spasm”). Ahmadinejad has defended Iran’s right to develop its civil nuclear-power
programme, and in this too he is supported by much of the Iranian population (see
“Confident Iran”, 10
March 2005). The reported resignation of Iran’s nuclear negotiator, Hassan
Rowhani, makes it more likely that talks with the “EU3”
(France, Germany and Britain) will not produce a solution acceptable to
Washington. In that case, any subsequent referral of the issue to the United Nations
Security Council will face Chinese support for Iran, evidenced in the
increasingly close economic links between the two countries (see “Iran’s
nuclear politics”, 2
December 2004). Moreover, Tony Blair’s domestic political pressures would
make it difficult for him to support another war. As a result, the United States
would have to go it alone. The US neo-conservatives would be unfazed: their clear-cut view (virtually
synonymous with that of the Israelis) is that Iran cannot be allowed to develop
a civil nuclear-power programme, let alone nuclear weapons; Tehran must be
stopped, by military means if necessary. America’s temptation It is a difficult decision for the Bush administration, already mired in
troubles in Iraq and Afghanistan,
and facing the challenge of preparing American opinion for yet another conflict.
But other factors work in its favour. The Iranian hostage crisis in 1980 is
still etched into the American psyche; it would be easy enough to represent Iran
as a potential nuclear threat and to condemn its support for terrorism; and
there remains a deep well of support for Israel in the United States –
reinforced by their shared views over Iran’s military ambitions. What all this means is that the risk of a US confrontation with Iran remains.
It may even be time-limited by the need to act well before next year’s
mid-term elections to Congress and before the Bushehr
nuclear power station begins to get its uranium fuel rods – with the
consequent risk of a Chernobyl-type disaster from a subsequent bombing raid. The US neocons still talk about the need for wholesale regime change in Iran,
but they also recognise that military action to such an end would have to be
substantial. It would involve attacks on the leadership, and the bombing of
economic targets as well as destruction of a range of nuclear facilities,
airfields, air defences, missile production plants and missiles already deployed.
It would also even involve US troops on the ground, given the presumption that
this time they really would be welcomed by cheering crowds in Tehran. The political realities of Iraq make this prospect seem absurd, but it is
worth noting that the more hawkish US commentators believe Iraq went wrong
because the US military has been too constrained from using force
against the insurgents. During the second Fallujah assault in November 2004,
Mackubin Thomas Owens of the Naval War College, wrote that the Fallujah tactics
had to be applied to all major urban centres of insurgency if it was to be
brought under control (Mackubin Thomas Owens, “Two, Three, Many Fallujas”, The
Weekly Standard, 6 December 2004). Some on the American right certainly advocate regime change in Iran, but
post-election realities in Iran and Bush’s troubles in Washington make a
narrower military option more likely: concerted attacks against Iranian nuclear
facilities, missiles, air defences and air fields, together with any anti-ship
missiles currently deployed close to the key oil shipment route through the
Straits of Hormuz. This might not lead to regime change but it would set back Iran’s military
developments by several years. At the same time, some kind of Iranian military
response would be almost inevitable and this would enable the United States to
escalate an air war against a much wider range of targets. What has to be factored in is that the US air force and the US navy are not
experiencing the strains and tension that exist in the army and marine corps
through the “overstretch” caused by Iraq and Afghanistan. Substantial
elements of the air force and also the navy’s carrier-based air power are
readily available for action against Iran. They do not currently have sufficient
forces available in the region, but these could be deployed within perhaps six
weeks of an attack being ordered. Israel’s determination All this means that US action against Iran is still possible, is made rather
more likely by Ahmadinejad’s election, and could come at any time in the next
twelve months. More immediately, though, an attack by Israel is becoming
relatively more likely. Ariel Sharon’s government is simply not prepared to have Iran get anywhere
near a nuclear-weapons capability, nor is it prepared to allow Iran to develop
an integrated civil nuclear-power fuel cycle. It is also increasingly concerned
over Iran’s recent developments in missile technology, especially the reported
testing of a solid-fuel rocket motor for the Shahab-3 medium-range missile (see
David Isenberg, “Iran’s missiles on a solid footing”, Asia Times,
10
June 2005). All of Iran’s current medium-range missiles are essentially 1950s-vintage
Scud derivatives with liquid fuel motors that are difficult to prepare and even
more difficult to maintain in a condition to launch. Solid-fuel rockets are far
more reliable, can be stored in remote places away from fuelling points and can
be maintained at a high state of readiness. They are therefore difficult to find
and destroy. In combination with any kind of nuclear-weapons programme, Iran
could develop a deterrent capability that would make it very difficult for
either the United States or Israel to interfere in its affairs. The problem for Israel is that destroying Iran’s nuclear and missile
facilities is a much bigger military operation than the single air raid on
Iraq’s Osiraq
nuclear research reactor back in June 1981. What would be involved now would be
several days of raids against targets in many parts of the country. On the other
hand, their military strategy could be more limited than anything the more
powerful United States military might envisage yet still have a useful effect
from Israel’s perspective. For a start, the Israelis would be far less concerned about the Straits of
Hormuz, calculating that if Iran tried to close the straits in response to an
Israeli attack, the United States would take vigorous counter-action against any
threatening Iranian forces. Neither do the Israelis anticipate any kind of
regime change in Iran in response to attacks from themselves or the Americans.
They are far more realistic about internal Iranian politics and are aware that
any military action would increase Iranian nationalist fervour, as well as
support for the existing regime. Israel has altogether more modest aims – the destruction of any facilities
that could contribute to the development of nuclear weapons and the destruction
of Iranian missiles and their production facilities. There is no expectation
that any attacks would have long-term effects – all they would be seeking is a
few years of delay, with the possibility of further attacks in the future. From
their perspective, though, they might also have the added bonus of the Iranians
retaliating against US facilities in the region, bringing the United States into
a bigger conflict and at least ending up with substantial damage to the Iranian
economy. Until recently, the Israeli air force would have been hard pressed to even
consider an attack on Iran, given that this would involve air strikes over a
number of days at a range far greater than that of the Osiraq raid. What has
changed is the systematic re-equipping of the Israeli air force with new
longer-range US-built strike aircraft. One of these is the F-15I, a derivative
of the American F-15E Strike Eagle. Israel has around twenty-five of
these large and powerful planes that have a combat radius of 2,225 kilometres.
Israel is also building up a fleet of over 100 of the smaller F-16I strike
aircraft, a variant fitted with large conformal fuel tanks that give it a combat
radius of 2,100 kilometres. Most of the potential targets in Iran are within 1,500 kilometres of Israel
and almost all are within 2,000 kilometres. Furthermore, Israel has a fleet of
US C-130 Hercules transport aircraft modified for air-to-air refuelling and
there are reports that it has been loaned some US KC-135 tanker aircraft. Israel
also has a substantial number of redundant F-4 Phantom aircraft and some of
these may have been modified to produce pilot-less strike aircraft. All in all,
Israel certainly has the capability for sustained air strikes against Iran, with
the great majority of the equipment being of US origin. In any case, it would be
impossible for Israel to attack Iran without US knowledge and approval, given
that the United States has almost total control of the air space between Israel
and Iran. There are two further reasons why we should look to Israel rather than the
United States. One is that any raid on Iran would be a massive and politically
desirable diversion away from the internal upheavals being caused by the
withdrawal from Gaza. The other is that a raid on Iran would almost certainly
result in attacks by Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, giving the Israeli air force
every excuse for a whole series of air raids against Hezbollah facilities,
potentially setting it back years as a threat to Israel’s northern territory. What all this means is that it is dangerous to assume that the increasing
problems being experienced by the United States in Afghanistan, and the much
greater problems now evident in Iraq mean that Iran is no longer a potential
focus for conflict. What may have changed is that the lead candidate for
attacking Iran may well have shifted in the past three months from the United
States to Israel, and it is just possible that Israeli military action could
happen a lot quicker than most people expect.
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