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Washington Post
May 1, 2008
William M. Arkin on National and Homeland Security
There was a moment in April 1990, when Saddam Hussein was appearing on the covers of all of the news magazines, threatening to "burn" half of Israel and brandishing new chemical and biological weapons, when we should have known that the United States would eventually go to war with Iraq. It was almost four months before Iraq's invasion of Kuwait and most people hadn't thought much about the country, but war gamers and planners in the Pentagon began shifting their attention.
We are now at a similar moment with Iran. Short of Iran invading one of its neighbors or attacking U.S. forces in some obvious and gross way, the Iran war isn't going to be Dick Cheney's war. It will be waged by Hillary Clinton, John McCain or Barack Obama.
I know this statement seems to contradict earlier posts I've written about why the United States is not going to war with Iran this year. But it dawns on me that all of the signs are coming together that parallel our Iraq history.
A "strategic" justification is accumulating: weapons of mass destruction, rogue state, supporter of terrorism, enemy of Israel. Diplomats and cooler heads could prevail, and Tehran could even change course, but there is no doubt that the momentum is building for war, and with each accumulating justification and change in circumstance, tensions propel a further set of bad decisions that just add to the momentum.
Just look at the facts:
* The Iraq war itself is winding down, just as the Cold War was winding down in 1990. Whether residual American forces are maintained in Iraq for "counter-terrorism" or permanent bases are maintained, the U.S. military has a full war-making infrastructure in the region: in Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, Oman and the other Gulf states. What is more, the U.S. is building up its forces in Afghanistan (Iran's neighbor) and will likely continue to do so in the coming months. The purpose of the Afghanistan surge may not be to threaten Iran, but it will have that effect.
* Tehran is continuing to develop nuclear weapons. The ever-cautious Secretary of Defense Robert Gates characterizes Iran as "hell-bent" on acquiring nuclear weapons. I don't think Iran will ever get to the point of ever possessing a nuclear bomb (just as Saddam never was close to his own dream). But there will be months and years ahead of unsatisfying inspections and diplomatic wrangling and Washington -- with its view that WMD is the most important issue and that nuclear weapons justify preemption (even Obama says so) -- will eventually grow weary. Weariness will turn to tension and Iran will either feel like it has no incentive to cooperate (that is, that "regime change" is coming anyhow even if it cooperates) or it will burrow its clandestine program even deeper. The end product is confrontation.
* Iran has now been designated terrorism's No. 1 ally, leading the world in the support for terrorism. That's what the State Department said yesterday in its annual terrorism report. Iran is not only the world's "most active" state sponsor, supporting terrorists in the Palestinian territories and Hezbollah in Lebanon, but in Afghanistan and Iraq, Iran's Revolutionary Guards give weapons and training that directly results in the death of American soldiers.
* An increasingly active covert action program exists with Iranian expatriate "democratic" groups, monarchists, and a wide variety of self-interested scoundrels to foment regime change in Tehran. Much of this activity is related to collecting intelligence from inside the country, on WMD and the regime and its connections to terrorism. Can anyone say Chalabi, or Curveball? The parallels with Iraq are eerie indeed.
* The U.S. military continues to build war plans for Iran, from small scale "response options" relating to attack on WMD infrastructure and retaliations for Iranian acts to full scale "over-the-beach" invasions. These plans go back to 1970s plans to defend Iran from a Soviet invasion and have gone through generations of changes since then, both to account for the changed political circumstances and the changes in the U.S. military and its capabilities. By late 2006, my sources tell me, response options and plans had been drafted in response to Bush administration directives to address a variety of possible contingencies. Now they are being constantly updated.
Gates, during a visit to Mexico on Tuesday, denied that the United States was preparing for military attacks on Iran. And Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell said, "I just want to be abundantly clear that there are no new directives, there are no new plans in the works, there is no new effort to prepare for a possible war with Iran."
In other words, there are no orders and no new war planning. Sounds like Iraq -- right up to the eleventh hour.
It isn't a second aircraft carrier or the deployment of a B-1 bomber unit that is going to signal war with Iran. And mark my words, there isn't going to be a war this year. But there is clearly an accumulating sense in the Pentagon and the national security community, both inside and outside government, that war with Iran may be in the future. And who better to be at the helm for the new president than Gen. David Petraeus, the savior of the United States in Iraq?
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