Tensions are mounting between the U.S. and Iran, which the Bush administration portrays as a major threat to American war efforts in both Iraq and Afghanistan. The State Department’s annual report on terrorism, released April 30, charged Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guard with providing the Taliban with weapons last year. The U.S. also accuses Iran of training, financing and arming Shiite fighters to kill American servicemen in Iraq.
The USS Lincoln was sent to the Persian Gulf to provide additional air power for strikes, and to serve as a “reminder” to Iran. Is the administration building a case and preparing public opinion for military action against Iran?
Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, in late April said that war with Iran would not be impossible for U.S. forces, although it would be “extremely stressing.” Secretary of Defense Robert Gates added that “the military option must be kept on the table, given the destabilizing policies of the regime and the risks inherent in a future Iranian nuclear threat.”
Tehran has halted its Iraq security talks with Washington. It charges that in their Sadr City offensive, U.S. and Iraqi armies are bombing residential areas, killing women and children, and thus the talks are meaningless.
In 2002, President Bush called Iran, Iraq and North Korea the “axis of evil.” The U.S. accuses Iran of persisting in its efforts to become a nuclear power. Bush has repeatedly called for Tehran to suspend its uranium-enrichment program. Instead, Iran is increasing its production of enriched uranium, which can be used to produce energy but also to make bombs. It is now testing a new generation of faster centrifuges.
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad recently visited India, a country with which Iran has close ties. To curb Iran’s nuclear designs, the U.S. has urged India to push him to suspend Tehran’s uranium enrichment program.
It was Pakistan’s A.Q. Khan, the “father of the Islamic bomb,” who helped Iran with its uranium-enrichment program in the first place. Khan is known for operating a “supermarket” of nuclear technology transfers for sale. In 2001, Iran finally admitted receiving a centrifuge blueprint from Khan as part of a starter kit for its nuclear program.
Because of the close relationship of the U.S. with Pakistan during that period, Khan had been allowed to go free by Dutch authorities, on the intervention of the CIA, after he was arrested twice in 1975 and 1986 on charges of stealing the uranium enrichment technology from a facility in the Netherlands where he worked. India has considered it as a fair assumption that the U.S. knew what Iran and Khan were up to in 1987.
The U.S. insists that it will continue to seek a diplomatic solution to the Iranian situation. On its insistence, the U.N. Security Council has imposed sanctions, most recently in March. But sanctions have not worked. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, along with senior officials from Russia, Britain, France and Germany, agreed in London May 2 to offer a set of new incentives instead.
The administration has put itself in a bind: If neither sanctions nor incentives work, there are very few remaining choices. For now, we can only hope that President Bush does not start a new war before he leaves office, and that the new president is prudent enough to find concerted international action to stop Iran’s nuclear designs through a peaceful accord.
