Mahjabeen Islam

December 31, 2004

Nuclear Vacillation and Duplicity

“All the world’s a stage,” said Shakespeare. It is only when the play on the world stage gets suddenly sinister that ordinary citizens must face the inevitable terror of the final act.
Several months ago an Iranian government official stated that Iran’s nuclear ambitions were not toward the development of a nuclear weapon for Islam forbade the manufacture of weapons of mass destruction. Not that the United States was at all coddled by that for just as it is for Iran the Great Satan, Iran for America is evil-incarnate. No loss of international affection there. With four more years of evangelical extremism in the United States the confrontation with the Ayatollahs of Iran is now a level moral playing field.

The lead article “Will Iran be Next” in the current Atlantic Monthly snags one’s attention and with alternating pique and palpitation one reads through the tedium of a war game played out on Power Point. The article states “the presidential candidates did not spend much time on Iran and its nuclear threat. But the winner will have no choice. The decisions will be like Iraq, but much harder”.

The simulated war game is an American assault on Iran. Sam Gardiner, a retired Air Force colonel, has conducted war games at the National War College for two decades. The scenario was set with an imagined meeting of the “Principals Committee” or the most senior national security advisers in the event of Iranian defiance of the IAEA deadline, which was November 22, 2004. In the role of CIA director was David Kay, the chief UN nuclear weapons inspector sent to Iraq after the Gulf war and again in June 2003 to search for WMDs and who after not having found any resigned his position in January this year. Playing Secretary of State were Kenneth Pollack of the Brookings Institution and Reuel Marc Gerecht of the American Enterprise Institute, both also CIA veterans. The simulated White House Chief of Staff was Kenneth Bacon; the chief Pentagon spokesman in the Clinton administration and the Secretary of Defense was Michael Mazarr, a professor of national security strategy at the National War College.

The intelligence dilemma posed is that Iran is probably three years away from a nuclear weapon, that there is a nuclear program that we see and one that we do not see and work is deep underground and may be in cities. The real debate concerned Israel and a pre-emptive attack that it may launch. The Principals all agreed that an Israeli attack needed to be strongly discouraged for not only are the Iranian nuclear installations very clandestine, Israeli planes may get there but the problem would be getting home. Gardiner called for a vote on a specific recommendation to the President: should the United States encourage or discourage Israel in its threat to strike? All urged strong pressure on Israel to back off, for it would serve to stymie European cooperation and because a successful attack was beyond Israel’s technical capability.

Compared to Iraq the Principals acknowledged Iran had three times the population, four times the land area and five times the problems. Additionally US commitment in Iraq is huge and Iran had the capability of making American life in Iraq a worse hell.

After the tedium of simulated ground and air offensives, the conclusion of the war game was that as a tool to slow or stop Iran’s progress toward nuclear weaponry, all available military options are likely to fail. Diplomacy has to work. I felt relieved but only momentarily for after the Iraq fiasco it is plain that the Bush administration does not take the option most likely to succeed, but the one that appeals to its self-righteous myopia.

Trepidation is justified here for not only are the stakes nuclear, the world is more volatile and polarized than ever before. Bush’s “you are either with us or against us” and his crusade against evil have catalyzed our journey to this point.

Besides war games there is a good cop-bad cop game at play here as well. The European trio comprising England, France and Germany had Iran sign the Paris accord on November 15, in which Iran promised to suspend uranium enrichment activities in exchange for potential rewards and in the event of reneging it would be referred to the UN for punitive sanctions. Besides its other self-appointed roles in the world relating to policing all forms of human activity, the United States in this situation is the bad cop and appears to be undercutting diplomacy with a push toward sanctions. The threat of military action need not be verbalized it hangs implicitly in the air.

On November 23 Mohamed El-Baradei the IAEA director said that Iran had frozen nuclear activity and wished to show that its aims are non-weapon based. On November 25 Iran refused to abandon plans to operate uranium enrichment equipment that could be used either for energy or a nuclear bomb. Iran believes it has the sovereign right to develop peaceful nuclear technology.

Well before 9/11 and the war in Iraq the intelligence community in the United States has known that the greatest threat to America was a dirty bomb, a portable nuclear device that could wipe out entire American cities. Instead of steering the world wisely and dealing with this threat, Bush chose to morally bankrupt America by invading Iraq.

Israel is an undeclared nuclear power and has traditionally molded America’s standards such that it always got extra special treatment. The refrain of American policymakers has been that surrounded by despots and kings Israel is the only democracy. America forgets that its greatest nemesis Iran is also a democracy. So is it that a Jewish mind can handle a nuclear weapon but a Muslim mind is incapable? Or is it that the Ayatollahs still dominate and fashion Irani thought and policy and the ultra right cannot but be dangerous? So the question arises: what is Bush himself if not the American ultra-right? Reminds me of that Urdu verse that it is prohibited for you to drink but I can consume with impunity.

North Korea it is believed already has a nuclear weapon. Efforts to stem Iran’s efforts are not succeeding. Powell, Cheney and Bush went on an Iraq-has-WMDs media blitz prior to the Iraq invasion and true to a plan hatched years ago, America barged into a sovereign nation, unprovoked and poorly prepared. The bloodbath there has washed away any credibility that America may have had in the world, especially the Muslim world. And in the face of this what was a real problem is not now going away. America is stretched too thin to make military options viable. The thought is chilling for it is said that Iran’s nuclear facilities may be within cities. The fallout of such an attack especially in the Muslim world is unimaginable.

Mahjabeen Islam is a physician practicing in Toledo Ohio. Her email address is mahjabeenislam@hotmail.com