The neoconservative Bush administration will attack Iran with tactical nuclear weapons, because it is the only way the neocons believe they can rescue their goal of US (and Israeli) hegemony in the Middle East.
There is already talk of retaliation by Iranian attacks on US warships and troops across the Persian Gulf and major Iranian interference with Shia communities in Iraq and Bahrain if this happens — not to mention the possibility of an attack (probably terrorist) on US soil. At least this is what is being talked about in Iran specialist circles.
The recent North Korean nuclear test must have changed the approach to Iran considerably — clearly if you are against Iran developing nuclear weapons (which most estimates say won’t happen for five years to a decade) you would think that the earlier you strike the better. North Korea shows that if I you can develop nuclear weapon, you should and that there’s little that can be done about it — especially if your neighbor/patron is China.
The article has some small factual mistakes and exaggerations — “Our Egyptian puppet sits atop 100 million [sic] Muslims who do not think that Egypt should be a lackey of US hegemony” — but gets the general regional situation quite right. I remain skeptical on whether a tactical nuke would be used, even though the Bush administration’s military doctrine has emphasized the use of tactical nukes for five years now, but I do find something convincing in the argument that the Bush administration, by its own internal (and electoral) logic, has nothing left to do but escalate. It either stands down or muddles along with a recognized failure in Iraq, or ups the ante. Rien ne va plus.
So I read the editorial. I think it’s wrong, and in some deep way that I am probably not knowledgeable enough to explain convincingly…
He says “there is no visible American opposition to Bush legitimizing the use of nuclear weapons in behest of US hegemony.”
I was not aware of this. I live in the US. I read news. I watch TV. I read your blog and others like it. So it’s not like I’m totally uninformed, think Iraq had something to do with 9-11, and can’t locate Iran on a map. And I don’t get the sense that there is no opposition, around here, to a nuclear first strike, nor do I get the sense that it’s imminent or inevitable. It is, at least to me, unthinkable that the US would launch even a “small” nuclear strike on Iran, in October or anytime soon, or even ever. I literally have heard *nothing* about this, and it seems like the sort of thing that, if it were seriously being discussed, would have gotten out somehow. Especially in today’s climate, where everything is contentious and leaks abound, one imagines Wolf Blitzer would be in the Situation Room, intoning about it, if it were so imminent. I know the Bush admin has been stupid about nuclear weapons, funded new development, refused to take it off the table as an option, all that and more — but that’s a far cry from advocating a first strike. And even they would surprise me by launching such a strike in secret, with no deliberation, so quickly, and seemingly without provocation.
The editorialist also says it’s “astounding that such dangerous fanatics have control of the US government and have no organized opposition in American politics.”
And this, along with other things he says, strikes me as too strident a statement, and thus colors (negatively) my opinion of what he said before. I mean, in what is supposed to be a serious piece, serious analysis, to call Egypt a “puppet” and Japan “sycophantic”… if he simplifies our relations to those countries so much, how much must he be simplifying the other things he says? And if he is using the jarring words on purpose, for dramatic effect, might he be doing the same thing in the rest of his analysis? “Puppet” is to “semi-subordinate semi-ally” as “will attack Iran with tactical nuclear weapons” is to, maybe, “some administration hawks, with considerable resistance, insist that Might Is Right and believe there is no option but to attack immediately. However…”
Issandr you’re surely more in the know than me, it being your job to keep track of this stuff and write about it. But this editorial struck me as somehow off (at best), when I read it. And that stands even though there are surely quite a lot of germs of truth in it. Whether the Bush admin will see no option but escalation… well, like you say, that’s kind of a different argument than suggestions of nuclear strikes.
(Oh and, for good measure, let me add that I don’t think the Hezb “defeated” Israel, as he says. In response to which you all feel free to oll your eyes and laugh off everything I say.)
Seymore Hirsch leaked info on planned strikes against Iran months ago in the New Yorker magazine.
Thier’s plenty more where that came from. The strikes are inevitable.
Hirsch’s stuff was about nuclear first strikes?
Having plans and planning to act are different things. The US has a plan to invade Canada, too (or, at least according to the West Wing, it does). That’s not exactly a statement of intent. Even if a few in the admin and around government think a nuclear first strike is the way to go, (and Cheney seems like the sort of guy who would), I find it very hard to imagine they would not encounter serious opposition, widespread, from both parties, from military, from everywhere. The editorial argues the opposite, but it just sounded like humbug, to me. And the only reason I went on at such length about it is because there are probably people reading this blog who don’t know Americans or or watch American media, might read this sort of editorial, and despite Issandr’s comments, be convinced Americans, are, like, writing letters to their representatives asking for nuclear strikes.
Dan,
I see what you’re saying about it not being discussed in the US media. I’ve just arrived in New York and it’s certainly not a mainstream concern right now, but remember that the operation being talked about against Iran is not a full scale invasion like Iraq but a unilateral operation that they would resort to after the UN / European attempts to negotiate with Iran collapses. The deadline for negotiations recently collapsed and Jack Straw recently issued a statement expressing disappointment on behalf on the US + 4 and saying the same offer was still on the table (i.e. they had nothing different to offer).
The nuclear weapons involved are tactical nuclear bunker busters of significantly less power than the Hiroshima type bombs, and they would be used to attack underground armored facilities that might be unreachable by normal ordinance. That being said, it’s still a nuclear weapon and this is what’s being discussed by Seymour Hersh and in the revised US military doctrine in place since 2001.
Also I just read in Harpers’ a similar warning about a nuclear tactical strike on Iran by Daniel Ellsberg, the former Johnson administration guy who released the Pentagon Papers in 1969. This stuff is being seriously discussed at high levels, and not just in contingency plans but rapidly deployable operations plans (which are constantly updated and are quite a different kettle of fish than contingency plans).
I think a strike on Iran is quite likely since Iran is not backing down. Some say Israel will do it, but why should Israel expose itself to serious retaliation from Iran, which has decent intermediate ballistic missile technology that could do much greater damage than Saddam’s scud attacks did in 1991? So a US strike, consistent with reports of major US naval mobilization in the Persian Gulf in recent weeks, is worth considering seriously.
Well. I’ll definitely track down those Hersh and Harpers’ articles. I knew an attack was more likely than it has been, and I knew we (the US, I mean) have those nuclear bunker busters — but I didn’t think the two were going so seriously hand in hand. I can understand calls to strike Iran, though I totally disagree, but any sort of nuclear strike at all would be so damaging. To the US, I mean–this is total self-interest talking here…
Anyway. Welcome to New York.
Now that’s a Surprise! Kim Jong Il actually apologized for North Korea for conducting nuclear testing?!! He said he didn’t have plans to test anymore. Something just doesn’t sound right about that one.