The Bush administration has intensified its rhetoric against Iran in recent weeks, but to what end is uncertain. Officials are straining to make the case that Iran is training Shiite militants inside Iraq and supplying them with sophisticated explosive weapons that imperil American soldiers and Iraqi civilians. Over the weekend, U.S. military and intelligence briefers trotted out what they described as uniquely Iranian hardware along with weapons fragments that have been used in armor-piercing roadside attacks that have killed 170 American soldiers.
The president has backed up the rhetoric by sending a second aircraft carrier to the Persian Gulf and positioning more Patriot anti-missile batteries in the region. He’s ordered the capture or killing of Iranian agents in Iraq, while the Treasury Department has quietly persuaded some investors and banks to stop doing business with a nation Bush has called part of an “axis of evil.”
We don’t doubt for a minute that Iran poses a significant threat in Iraq and elsewhere in the Middle East. But we haven’t heard a word about diplomacy from the Bush administration, and it’s high time. Given Iran’s ailing economy, and the current regime’s loss of popularity due to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s defiance of the U.N. Security Council’s request to halt its uranium enrichment program, now would seem a good opportunity for negotiations.
On Monday, Ahmadinejad denied that Iran is meddling in Iraq and said the U.S. was hectoring Iran in order to obscure its failing efforts across the border.
There are growing concerns that the Bush administration might be hankering for military action. Though Defense Secretary Robert Gates has said that “we have no intentions of attacking Iran,” some analysts believe the administration is hoping to provoke a belligerent act by Tehran that would prompt Bush to order a strike against military or nuclear sites.
Some members of Congress have been skeptical of the evidence against Iran – no surprise given the manipulation of evidence that preceded the 2003 invasion of Iraq. It took weeks of preparation and revisions as U.S. officials put together the package of weapons to prove their case against Iran, and even then the allegations were delivered anonymously as if no one would vouch for its accuracy or even its authenticity. It’s not clear how Iran can be blamed so vociferously for arming Iraqi insurgents when most U.S. fatalities have come at the hands of Sunnis, not Shiites.
Joseph Biden, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has warned the administration not to carry out an attack against Iran without obtaining congressional authorization. Beyond that, Congress needs to take a strong stand in favor of diplomatic efforts to engage Iran on the issues that cry out for resolution.
