Columns

Anyone who thinks the Bush administration is too far down in the polls to even contemplate attacking Iran should consider the following developments: 

First, the reason British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw was dumped was not because of a “cabinet shuffle” following the recent shellacking the Labor Party took in local elections. The real reason was that Washington demanded his head following a statement by Straw that an attack on Iran “was not on the agenda,” would be a violation of international law, and that any talk of using nuclear weapons against Teheran was “nuts.” 

According to David Clark, special advisor to former Foreign Secretary Robin Cook, Prime Minister Tony Blair sacked Cook back in 2001 because Washington thought he was wishy washy on using military force. Writing in the Guardian, Cook argues that Straw’s lack of enthusiasm for a military solution to the Iran crisis doomed him. “It wouldn’t be the first time the Bush Administration played an important role in persuading Tony Blair to sack his foreign minister,” writes Clark. 

The new Foreign Secretary, Margaret Beckett, voted against the Iraq war, but her nickname—The Great Survivor—suggests that she will do whatever Blair wants her to. And according to Ewan MacAskill of the Guardian, Tony is actually more hawkish on Iran than Bush. 

Second, Vice-President Dick Cheney’s recent broadside at Russia over using gas and oil as “tools of intimidation and blackmail,” and for the Kremlin’s anti-democratic turn, seemed almost designed to torpedo any United States-Russian cooperation in the U.N. Security Council on Iran. 

While some of Cheney’s attack was aimed at trying to undermine Russian and Chinese interests in Central Asian oil by re-routing Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan hydrocarbons through Turkey, the tone was reminiscent of the 1950s. Indeed, the Moscow press called it a “new Cold War,” and one paper even compared it to Winston Churchill’s 1946 Fulton, Missouri speech that launched the last one. 

The White House is unhappy about the recent $100 billion gas deal between Iran and China and is fearful that, in the scramble for Central Asian oil, Washington is losing out. Last month Iran, India, Pakistan and Mongolia were asked the join the Shanghai Cooperation Group, an intergovernmental formation launched back in 2001 by Russia, China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. 

Iranian Foreign Minister Manuchehr Mohammadi said that the Group would “make the world more fair,” and allow Russia and Iran to build a “gas and oil arc” and coordinate their activities. 

All of which argues that the White House doesn’t think there is a snowball’s chance in the Kara Kum desert that China and Russia will vote to declare Iran in violation of Chapter VII of the UN Charter, which would declare Iran a threat to international peace and security, and almost guarantee a war by September. 

So why would the administration turn its designated berserker loose at this delicate time? To launch a new Cold War on Russia and China, sideline the UN and, damn the torpedoes, on to Teheran. 

Third was Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s coup against the CIA. All intelligence will now be controlled by the military, the same people that cooked the information that launched the war on Iraq. 

Fourth: Reza Pahlavi, son of the former Shah, is organizing a “front” of Iranian ex-patriots to overthrow the present regime in Teheran. 

And fifth, The Herald (Scotland) reported May 16 that the Pentagon is ramping up two plans for bombing Iran.  

Plan No. 1 calls for a five-day bombing campaign against 400 key targets, including 24 nuclear related sites, 14 military airfields, and Revolutionary Guard headquarters. Attackers would use GBU-28 bunker-busters on underground targets. Tomahawk cruise missiles and aircraft carrier-launched fighter-bombers would whack radar and anti-aircraft sites. 

Plan No. 2 calls for “demonstration” bombing raids on the uranium enrichment facility at Natanz and the hexafluoride plant at Isfahan. 

No one is talking about sending in ground troops. Not even the White House is that crazy. 

Former Army intelligence analyst William Arkin, the man who first blew the whistle on the possible use of nuclear weapons on Iran, recently commented in the Washington Post, “The United States military is really, really getting ready, building war plans and options, studying maps, shifting its thinking.” 

So the pieces are in place: a complacent ally, a provocative VP, the military in charge, a plan, and Ahmed Chalabi—sorry, Reza Pahlavi—ready to gather in the rose petals. 

If the Nepalese parliament ever gets around to examining the role played by other nations in fueling the civil war that has claimed some 13,000 lives over the past decade, there are going to be some red faces in Washington, London and New Delhi.  

The British gave combat helicopters to the Royal Nepal Army, and India supplied FN submachine guns and advisors. The United States, however, bears most of the blame for not only encouraging the Nepalese monarchy to seek a military victory over the Communist party of Nepal-Maoist (CPNM), but also providing over 8,000 M-16 assault rifles, night fighting equipment, and military advisors.  

Former U.S. Ambassador, Michael R. Malinowski—an old Pakistan and Afghanistan hand—compared CPNM leader Baburam Bhattarai to Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels and said that the insurgents “literally have to be bent back to the table.” King Gyanendra took that advice, dissolved parliament and went on the offensive. The outcome was predictable: a massive jump in deaths and disappearances and the eventual collapse of the throne’s attempt to rule by decree and “win” the civil war. 

For the time being, Parliament is back in charge, but the Royal Nepal Army is 72,000 strong and, thanks to the United States, British, and Indians, very well armed. The situation is still extremely dangerous. 

The United States will also have some answering to do in Somalia, where it is backing a coalition of warlords who call themselves the “Alliance for the Restoration of Peace and Counter Terrorism.” Add those two last words to your title and the U.S. turns on the money spigot.  

The Bush Administration is mum on the charge, but the government of President Abdullahi Yusuf has been quite forthright. 

“The U.S. funded the warlords in the recent battle in Mogadishu, there is not doubt about that,” Somali government spokesman Abdirahman Dinari told Reuters May 4. “The warlords, though U.S. support, have caused so many deaths of innocent civilians … it only fuels civil war.” 

Washington has long had its eye on Somalia because of its proximity to the Gulf of Aden, gateway to the Red Sea. The United States presently has 1,600 troops north of Somalia in Djibouti, and has scattered bases and Special Forces all across North Africa, supposedly because the region is rife with terrorists. With the possible exception of Morocco and Southern Algeria, there is no evidence for this.  

The ostensible reason for backing the Somalian warlords is a rumored al Qaeda presence. But even a Pentagon study found no sign of the group (which is, in any case, more a point of view than an organization). It is no coincidence that “terrorism” always seems to crop up in places that have lots of oil and gas, or happen to be located in critical choke points like the Gulf of Aden. 

At least 160 people have been killed in the Mogadishu fighting, the vast majority of them civilians caught in the crossfire.