What Are They Smoking?

'One former defense official, who still deals with sensitive issues for the Bush Administration, told me that the military planning was premised on a belief that “a sustained bombing campaign in Iran will humiliate the religious leadership and lead the public to rise up and overthrow the government.” He added, “I was shocked when I heard it, and asked myself, ‘What are they smoking?’ ” '

"The Iran Plans," Seymour M. Hersh's article in the April 17 New Yorker, is a frightening account of the increasingly unstable conditions surrounding Iran's development of nuclear capabilities and this administration's blind approach to address it. Though most estimates put Iran 5-10 years from developing a nuclear weapon, Ahmadinejad, in an act of obvious defiance, announced last week that Iranian scientists have completed the nuclear fuel cycle, allowing for the creation of nuclear energy (see Iran Declares Key Nuclear Advance). The possibility of the development of nuclear weapons under this regime is certainly a threat to U.S. interests, but it must be dealt with cautiously. Another military attack in the region is certainly going to contribute to anti-American hostilities, particularly so if it is approached in the high handed, unilateral way that Iraq was. This time, it is even more essential that we make all diplomatic efforts to secure cooperation from the Iranian authorities.

It seems unlikely that this will ever happen though, since this administration seems committed to military action as the only viable course. Amidst the clamor among high ranking military officials of the incompetence of the U.S. Secretary of Defense, it seems that civilian administration at various levels are once again pushing for military action as the only serious option. Despite their lip service to diplomacy and sanctions in their effort to address the nuclear issue, the saber rattling is too reminiscent of the run-up to the war in Iraq. It seems almost intuitive at this point that there exist administrative memos with timelines for the beginning of a war in Iran that have yet to be leaked. The major problem with a military approach unfortunately comes as a result of aggressive action in Iraq. The hostilities and well justified suspicion of U.S. imperial maneuvering in the region among Muslims makes an attack on Iran at this point a dangerous hypothesis. "What will 1.2 Billion Muslims think the day we attack Iran?" says one Pentagon adviser to Hersh. The move would undoubtedly provoke a strong response from Iran, other Muslim nations, and better organized terrorist groups like Hezbollah, which has remained neutral thus far in the U.S. war on terror. Such results make it crucial that any military action be carefully considered and weighed against multilateral diplomatic soutions, not only for their economic effects on oil availability, but on their effect on the minds of the Muslim world.

Unfortunately, the military plan is the one which seems to be given the most energy among those in the administration. And it is not just a conventional war that is being planned. The major controversy does not even surround the unilateral dedication to military action. It is the recommendations for the use of tactical nuclear weapons circling among the civilian planners. Hersh cites a lack of intelligence regarding the underground nuclear facilities in Iran. Such vagary makes nuclear weapons an almost necessary option according to a former senior intelligence official. In order to hit targets whose exact location is not certain, the nuclear option, they argue, would yield the best results. It seems the civilian leadership is blissfully unaware of the devastating after-effects of nuclear weapons. Hersh cites the Defense Science Board, a panel selected by Rumsfeld as "telling the Pentagon that we can build the B61 [tactical nuclear weapon] with more blast and less radiation." This board has "recommended treating tactical nuclear weapons as an essential part of the U.S. arsenal."

Despite the threat of alienating 1.2 Muslims from our anti-terror stance, the Bush administration is pursuing a nuclear policy that would do more to mobilize the Middle East against our imperial encroachment than the civilian leadership seems capable of imagining. There are millions of young people in the Middle East who are drawn to western culture. The U.S. should be nurturing that fascination, not threatening them with nukes. By employing this horrific double standard, using our nuclear capability to suppress theirs, the administration is simply widening the gap. A military threat gives Iran no motivation for compliance. There is no carrot. "Give up your nuclear ambitions or go to war," the administration seems to be saying. Under threat of attack, the best option, it must seem to Ahmadinejad, would be to hurry the program. Developing nuclear weapons as fast as possible is the only solution when viewed from their side. This view is not given the weight it deserves, for reasons not so vocally espoused.

Of course, the entire mobilization goes much further than simply curtailing the nuclear problem. It is, like Iraq, essentially a maneuver for greater control of the oil rich regions in the run-up to the peak in world oil production. The ultimate goal in this misadventure is regime change, the battle cry of the of the Bush administration. His messianic mission "to deliver democracy to the Middle East," which very subtly replaced WMDs as our rationale for the war in Iraq will undoubtedly become attached to this plan as well. And if any potential evidence of real nuclear capability in Iran gets destroyed in the nuclear annihilation, so be it. At least that failure won’t be able haunt Bush's rationale. It will all be consumed in the nuclear flames of Armageddon. Of course, Armageddon would render our imperial control of Middle East oil irredeemably moot.