[Peace-discuss] Avnery on war with Iran

[Brussel Morton K.]

A hopeful(?) analysis…

Why Not?

July, 17 2008

By Uri Avnery

Uri Avnery's ZSpace Page



IF YOU want to understand the policy of a country, look at the map -  
as Napoleon recommended.

Anyone who wants to guess whether Israel and/or the United States are  
going to attack Iran should look at the map of the Strait of Hormuz  
between Iran and the Arabian Peninsula.

Through this narrow waterway, only 34 km wide, pass the ships that  
carry between a fifth and a third of the world's oil, including that  
from Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar and Bahrain.

MOST OF the commentators who talk about the inevitable American and  
Israeli attack on Iran do not take account of this map.

There is talk about a "sterile", a "surgical" air strike. The mighty  
air fleet of the United States will take off from the aircraft  
carriers already stationed in the Persian Gulf and the American air  
bases dispersed throughout the region and bomb all the nuclear sites  
of Iran - and on this happy occasion also bomb government  
institutions, army installations, industrial centers and anything  
else they might fancy. They will use bombs that can penetrate deep  
into the ground.

Simple, quick and elegant - one blow and bye-bye Iran, bye-bye  
ayatollahs, bye-bye Ahmadinejad.

If Israel attacks alone, the blow will be more modest. The most the  
attackers can hope for is the destruction of the main nuclear sites  
and a safe return.

I have a modest request: before you start, please look at the map  
once more, at the Strait named (probably) after the god of Zarathustra.


THE INEVITABLE reaction to the bombing of Iran will be the blocking  
of this Strait. That should have been self-evident even without the  
explicit declaration by one of Iran's highest ranking generals a few  
days ago.

Iran dominates the whole length of the Strait. They can seal it  
hermetically with their missiles and artillery, both land based and  
naval.

If that happens, the price of oil will skyrocket - far beyond the 200  
dollars-per-barrel that pessimists dread now. That will cause a chain  
reaction: a world-wide depression, the collapse of whole industries  
and a catastrophic rise in unemployment in America, Europe and Japan.

In order to avert this danger, the Americans would need to conquer  
parts of Iran - perhaps the whole of this large country. The US does  
not have at its disposal even a small part of the forces they would  
need. Practically all their land forces are tied down in Iraq and  
Afghanistan.

The mighty American navy is menacing Iran - but the moment the Strait  
is closed, it will itself resemble those model ships in bottles.  
Perhaps it is this danger that made the navy chiefs extricate the  
nuclear-powered aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln from the Persian  
Gulf this week, ostensibly because of the situation in Pakistan.

This leaves the possibility that the US will act by proxy. Israel  
will attack, and this will not officially involve the US, which will  
deny any responsibility.

Indeed? Iran has already announced that it would consider an Israeli  
attack as an American operation, and act as if it had been directly  
attacked by the US. That is logical.


NO ISRAELI government would ever consider the possibility of starting  
such an operation without the explicit and unreserved agreement of  
the US. Such a confirmation will not be forthcoming.

So what are all these exercises, which generate such dramatic  
headlines in the international media?

The Israeli Air Force has held exercises at a distance of 1500 km  
from our shores. The Iranians have responded with test firings of  
their Shihab missiles, which have a similar range. Once, such  
activities were called "saber rattling", nowadays the preferred term  
is "psychological warfare". They are good for failed politicians with  
domestic needs, to divert attention, to scare citizens. They also  
make excellent television. But simple common sense tells us that  
whoever plans a surprise strike does not proclaim this from the  
rooftops. Menachem Begin did not stage public exercises before  
sending the bombers to destroy the Iraqi reactor, and even Ehud  
Olmert did not make a speech about his intention to bomb a mysterious  
building in Syria.


SINCE KING Cyrus the Great, the founder of the Persian Empire some  
2500 years ago, who allowed the Israelite exiles in Babylon to return  
to Jerusalem and build a temple there, Israeli-Persian relations have  
their ups and downs.

Until the Khomeini revolution, there was a close alliance between  
them. Israel trained the Shah's dreaded secret police ("Savak"). The  
Shah was a partner in the Eilat-Ashkelon oil pipeline which was  
designed to bypass the Suez Canal. (Iran is still trying to enforce  
payment for the oil it supplied then.)

The Shah helped to infiltrate Israeli army officers into the Kurdish  
part of Iraq, where they assisted Mustafa Barzani's revolt against  
Saddam Hussein. That operation came to an end when the Shah betrayed  
the Iraqi Kurds and made a deal with Saddam. But Israeli-Iranian  
cooperation was almost restored after Saddam attacked Iran. In the  
course of that long and cruel war (1980-1988), Israel secretly  
supported the Iran of the ayatollahs. The Irangate affair was only a  
small part of that story.

That did not prevent Ariel Sharon from planning to conquer Iran, as I  
have already disclosed in the past. When I was writing an in-depth  
article about him in 1981, after his appointment as Minister of  
Defense, he told me in confidence about this daring idea: after the  
death of Khomeini, Israel would forestall the Soviet Union in the  
race to Iran. The Israeli army would occupy Iran in a few days and  
turn the country over to the much slower Americans, who would have  
supplied Israel well in advance with large quantities of  
sophisticated arms for this express purpose.

He also showed me the maps he intended to take with him to the annual  
strategic consultations in Washington. They looked very impressive.  
It seems, however, that the Americans were not so impressed.

All this indicates that by itself, the idea of an Israeli military  
intervention in Iran is not so revolutionary. But a prior condition  
is close cooperation with the US. This will not be forthcoming,  
because the US would be the primary victim of the consequences.


IRAN IS now a regional power. It makes no sense to deny that.

The irony of the matter is that for this they must thank their  
foremost benefactor in recent times: George W. Bush. If they had even  
a modicum of gratitude, they would erect a statue to him in Tehran's  
central square.

For many generations, Iraq was the gatekeeper of the Arab region. It  
was the wall of the Arab world against the Persian Shiites. It should  
be remembered that during the Iraqi-Iranian war, Arab Shiite Iraqis  
fought with great enthusiasm against Persian Shiite Iranians.

When President Bush invaded Iraq and destroyed it, he opened the  
whole region to the growing might of Iran. In future generations,  
historians will wonder about this action, which deserves a chapter to  
itself in "The March of Folly".

Today it is already clear that the real American aim (as I have  
asserted in this column right from the beginning) was to take  
possession of the Caspian Sea/Persian Gulf oil region and station a  
permanent American garrison at its center. This aim was indeed  
achieved - the Americans are now talking about their forces remaining  
in Iraq "for a hundred years", and they are now busily engaged in  
dividing Iraq's huge oil reserves among the four or five giant  
American oil companies.

But this war was started without wider strategic thinking and without  
looking at the geopolitical map. It was not decided who is the main  
enemy of the US in the region, neither was it clear where the main  
effort should be. The advantage of dominating Iraq may well be  
outweighed by the rise of Iran as a nuclear, military and political  
power that will overshadow America's allies in the Arab world.


WHERE DO we Israelis stand in this game?

For years now, we have been bombarded by a propaganda campaign that  
depicts the Iranian nuclear effort as an existential threat to  
Israel. Forget the Palestinians, forget Hamas and Hizbullah, forget  
Syria - the sole danger that threatens the very existence of the  
State of Israel is the Iranian nuclear bomb.

I repeat what I have said before: I am not prey to this existential  
Angst. True, life is more pleasant without an Iranian nuclear bomb,  
and Ahmadinejad is not very nice either. But if the worst comes to  
the worst, we will have a "balance of terror" between the two  
nations, much like the American-Soviet balance of terror that saved  
mankind from World War III, or the Indian-Pakistani balance of terror  
that provides a framework for a rapprochement between those two  
countries that hate each other's guts.


ON THE basis of all these considerations, I dare to predict that  
there will  be no military attack on Iran this year - not by the  
Americans, not by the Israelis.

As I write these lines, a little red light turns on in my head. It is  
related to a memory: in my youth I was an avid reader of Vladimir  
Jabotinsky's weekly articles, which impressed me with their cold  
logic and clear style. In August 1939, Jabotinsky wrote an article in  
which he asserted categorically that no war would break out, in spite  
of all the rumors to the contrary. His reasoning: modern weapons are  
so terrible, that no country would dare to start a war.

A few days later Germany invaded Poland, starting the most terrible  
war in human history (until now), which ended with the Americans  
dropping atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Since then, for 63  
years, nobody has used nuclear weapons in a war.

President Bush is about to end his career in disgrace. The same fate  
is waiting impatiently for Ehud Olmert. For politicians of this kind,  
it is easy to be tempted by a last adventure, a last chance for a  
decent place in history after all.

All the same, I stick to my prognosis: it will not happen.



From:
Z Net - The Spirit Of Resistance Lives
URL:
http://www.zcommunications.org/znet/viewArticle/18208



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