Saturday, September 23, 2006

West bars Arab bid at IAEA to rap Israel atom "threat"

By Mark Heinrich
Reuters
Fri Sep 22, 6:54 PM ET

Western nations foiled a bid by Arab and Islamic states on Friday to declare Israel's reputed nuclear arsenal a threat that must be removed in a politically charged vote at a U.N. atomic watchdog meeting.

Canada sponsored a 45-29 "no-action" ballot that prevented International Atomic Energy Agency member states from voting on a motion demanding Israel use atomic energy only for peaceful purposes and help set up a Middle East nuclear arms-free zone.

But the gathering voted 89-2 for a milder resolution on Israel, also initiated by Arab states, "affirming the urgent need for all states in the Middle East to accept full-scope IAEA safeguards on all their nuclear activities."

Israel neither admits nor denies having atomic weapons but most experts believe it has about 200 nuclear warheads.

Feverish negotiations failed to dissuade Arab delegates from pushing the two resolutions to a vote due to heightened resentment over Israel's battering of south Lebanon in war with Iranian-backed Hizbollah guerrillas.

Diplomats said many Arabs were fuming at the West's perceived slowness to stop Israel's heavy bombing of Lebanon that killed mainly civilians before an August 14 ceasefire imposed by a U.N. Security Council resolution.

ANGER OVER LEBANON

"The (Western) blocking manoeuvre is astonishing when innocent blood has not yet dried in Lebanon," said Syrian delegate Ibrahim Othman. He said Israel's exclusive nuclear might in the region caused a destabilising imbalance of power.

The United States, European and other Western allies combined to stifle the "threat" resolution. They said it was politically divisive and undermined the IAEA's traditional consensual approach.

Israel said a regional nuclear arms-free zone was a noble idea in principle but dangerous for it so long as some neighbors continued not to recognize the Jewish state, with Iran openly calling for its destruction.

"Current realities in the Middle East ... force Israel to entertain no illusions. The fundamental goal as in other regions is attaining peace with security and stability, not arms control per se," said Israel Michaeli, Israel's envoy to the IAEA.

U.S. foes such as Venezuela and Cuba and some developing nations like South Africa joined the unsuccessful Arab-Islamic effort to put it to a floor vote.

Arab and Islamic anger also simmered over "double standards" seen in Western pressure on Iran to shelve its fledgling nuclear energy program while Israel faced none despite a batch of U.N. resolutions urging it to scrap its alleged atomic warheads.

Nineteen nations, including India and Russia, abstained over the "threat" measure, and three in the safeguards vote.

Israel and its closest ally the United States were the sole "no" votes on the IAEA safeguards resolution.

Friday, September 22, 2006

Military Advances Hobbled

By Fred Reed
Washington Times
September 22, 2006

A question I often hear is: How is the most sophisticated, technologically advanced military that ever existed being fought to a standstill in Iraq by a small number of ragtag insurgents with light arms? What is going on? How did we get here?

The U.S. military of today was forged in World War ll, which was won by mass industrial production and technological superiority.

You don't have to be a specialized military historian to realize how much the outcome depended on radar, proximity fuses, sonar, electronic measures and countermeasures.

The Soviet Union, the follow-on enemy to Germany, had the same kind of military. That is, it used tanks, aircraft and submarines. So the U.S. military, until the collapse of the USSR, was essentially an updated World War II military.

Better technology was a crucial part of the mix. The Soviets could field larger numbers of tanks and troops, so the U.S. was going to have better -- more advanced -- tanks. And it did. Despite scare propaganda, U.S. equipment was always far better than the hardware fielded by the Soviets.

Then came Vietnam. From this, the military learned two things: First, Americans were not again going to accept high casualties in remote wars that really meant little to them. Second, young Americans weren't even going to fight wars that didn't matter to them. The draft ended.

Both of these discoveries forced the Pentagon into increasing reliance on technological solutions. It was better to lose machines, which wouldn't upset the public, than men, which would. Anyway, with the volunteer Army, the Pentagon no longer had many men. But cruise missiles would destroy targets without risking pilots. Anti-tank helicopters would eliminate tanks from a distance. This worked, if you wanted to blow up the right kind of targets.

The phrase "force multiplier" became popular in military circles. It meant things such as night-vision gear that let the army kill the enemy at night without being seen, thus reducing casualties. Technically, the equipment worked fine.

All of this aimed at substituting technology for manpower. We had the first but not the second. Around the E-Ring in the Pentagon you heard phrases like "a leaner, meaner, more agile force." This meant a higher-tech, more "Star-Wars"-type force with, crucially, fewer men.

It wasn't a stupid idea. Under the circumstances, it was probably the only idea. And, of course, you had a huge military industry, with factories and jobs in every state, earning lots of money by making higher- and higher-tech weapons. This added a lot of push for the technology approach.

Unfortunately enemies, not being stupid, figured out what a small extremely advanced military can do, and what it can't do. It can blow up conspicuous and expensive targets, such as tanks. By virtue of phenomenal and well-aimed firepower, it can capture any small place, such as a city or a hill.

But it cannot occupy territory, which takes men, lots of them. It cannot well destroy dispersed, low-value targets, such as men with rifles. In cities or broken territory, its pricey weapons, such as tanks, become vulnerable to fairly cheap commodity anti-tank missiles. Israel just learned this. The United States is still learning.

This is why a superbly equipped, almost magically technological American army struggles with a small number of primitively armed insurgents. The bad guys shoot and fade, plant bombs and fade.

The military does Vietnam style search-and-destroy missions but has nothing to destroy. It's designed for a war that the insurgents won't fight. We are fighting their kind of war, on their terms. That's the problem.

Wednesday, September 20, 2006

Mubarak’s Son Proposes Nuclear Program

By Michael Slackman and Mona El-naggar
New York Times
September 20, 2006

CAIRO, Sept. 19 — Gamal Mubarak, the son of Egypt’s president, proposed Tuesday that his country pursue nuclear energy, drawing strong applause from the nation’s political elite, while raising expectations that Mr. Mubarak is being positioned to replace his father as president.

The carefully crafted political speech raised the prospect of two potentially embarrassing developments for the White House at a time when the region is awash in crisis: a nuclear program in Egypt, recipient of about $2 billion a year in military and development aid from the United States, and Mr. Mubarak succeeding his father, Hosni Mubarak, as president without substantial political challenge.

Simply raising the topic of Egypt’s nuclear ambitions at a time of heightened tensions over Iran’s nuclear activity was received as a calculated effort to raise the younger Mr. Mubarak’s profile and to build public support through a show of defiance toward Washington, political analysts and foreign affairs experts said.

“The whole world — I don’t want to say all, but many developing countries — have proposed and started to execute the issue of alternative energy,” he said. “It is time for Egypt to put forth, and the party will put forth, this proposal for discussion about its future energy policies, the issue of alternative energy, including nuclear energy, as one of the alternatives.”

He also said in a clear reference to the White House: “We do not accept visions from abroad that try to dissolve the Arab identity and the joint Arab efforts within the framework of the so-called Greater Middle East Initiative.”

When President Bush called for promoting democracy in the Middle East, he looked to Egypt as a leader in that effort. But with all the chaos in the region, and with the United States in need of strong allies, the administration has backed off on pressing for democracy here.

Instead, it has witnessed the country reversing earlier gains, arresting political opposition figures, beating street demonstrators, locking up bloggers, blocking creation of new political parties and postponing local elections by two years.

In his speech, Mr. Mubarak, an assistant secretary general of the governing National Democratic Party and head of its powerful policies committee, did not specify what he envisioned for a nuclear program, but there are several potential avenues.

If, for example, Egypt simply purchased nuclear fuel from abroad to power its reactors under international inspection, and then returned the spent fuel to its supplier, it would pose no significant threat of being diverted to a weapons program, nuclear experts said. The Bush administration and the Europeans have proposed a similar arrangement to solve the Iran standoff, though Iran has so far rejected that approach.

The trouble would come if Egypt, like Iran, insisted on developing the capacity to produce the fuel on its own, which would also give it the ability, theoretically, to produce weapons-grade uranium.

Many experts here welcomed Gamal Mubarak’s proposal and dismissed suggestions that it might pose a threat to the West.

“Egypt, and especially the N.D.P., is a strategic ally of the U.S.,” said Hassan Abou Taleb, an analyst with the government-financed Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies in Cairo. “It does not seek confrontation with the U.S. over its nuclear program. Instead, it seeks cooperation. Why should the U.S. assist India in its nuclear program and not Egypt?”

Mr. Mubarak’s speech was delivered during the fourth annual party convention, presented as “New thought and a second leap toward the future.” Thematically, the party has refocused itself on bread-and-butter issues, talking about pensions, jobs and even how to promote soccer, which is a national obsession.

Both Gamal Mubarak and his father have said that he is not interested in the presidency. But political analysts said that Egypt was serious about nuclear energy and that the speech was clearly aimed at promoting the younger Mr. Mubarak. Afterward, even party members said it appeared that he would be the party’s candidate for president in 2011.

Distance from Washington and pursuit of nuclear power are two actions that could help shore up two of Gamal Mubarak’s perceived shortcomings if he were to run for president: his lack of a military background and the perception that he and his father are Washington’s lackeys. The nuclear program might help him win support among the military and the veiled criticism of Washington might help him restore some credibility with the public.

President Mubarak, 79, has said Egypt, unlike Syria, will not allow the presidency to be inherited. He was elected to a new six-year term in 2004, and that is expected to be his last. Even party members close to the son acknowledge that there are no other candidates on the horizon, either in the party or in what remains of a crushed and disorganized opposition.

“Even if we assume that Gamal Mubarak will run, what is the problem with that?” said Gamal Moussa, a district party leader. “He is an Egyptian citizen. I am one of the people who support him. He is an educated man and he is sensitive to the public. He has ideas and he is loyal to his country. If the party can get him the votes, then why can’t he run?”

Egyptians often joke about the president’s son, watching as he checks off requirements to become president. He recently visited Washington, where he was greeted by President Bush. The party insisted he had gone to the United States only to renew his pilot’s license.

With his nuclear proposal, the younger Mr. Mubarak also appears to be taking a page from the playbook of the Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has turned producing nuclear energy into a matter of national pride.

Today, Egypt has no nuclear reactors for making electricity, nor the means to enrich uranium into atomic fuel. It has conducted atomic research for decades, but appears to have never pursued major programs for making reactors for power or nuclear arms, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Early last year, the agency reported “a number of failures by Egypt to report” on the history of its atomic research program, with most of the violations centering on small research facilities. Egypt has two research reactors.

For the decades ahead, atomic experts foresee strong international growth in the use of nuclear power and expect developing states like Egypt to eventually build reactors. “The N.D.P. has been discussing and deliberating the issue of developing nuclear energy for peaceful purposes for about three months,” said Mr. Abou Taleb of the Ahram Center. “This is not a secret.”

Tuesday, September 19, 2006

Torture Is Torture

Bush's 'Program' Disgraces All Americans
By Eugene Robinson
Washington Post
September 19, 2006

I wish I could turn to cheerier matters, but I just can't get past this torture issue -- the fact that George W. Bush, the president of the United States of America, persists in demanding that Congress give him the right to torture anyone he considers a "high-value" terrorist suspect. The president of the United States. Interrogation by torture. This just can't be happening.

It's past time to stop mincing words. The Decider, or maybe we should now call him the Inquisitor, sticks to anodyne euphemisms. He speaks of "alternative" questioning techniques, and his umbrella term for the whole shop of horrors is "the program." Of course, he won't fully detail the methods that were used in the secret CIA prisons -- and who knows where else? -- but various sources have said they have included not just the infamous "waterboarding," which the administration apparently will reluctantly forswear, but also sleep deprivation, exposure to cold, bombardment with ear-splitting noise and other assaults that cause not just mental duress but physical agony. That is torture, and to call it anything else is a lie.

It is not possible for our elected representatives to hold any sort of honorable "debate" over torture. Bush says he is waging a "struggle for civilization," but civilized nations do not debate slavery or genocide, and they don't debate torture, either. This spectacle insults and dishonors every American.

There is one ray of encouragement: the crystal-clear evidence that the men and women of our armed forces want no part of torturing anybody. The members of the Republican resistance -- Sens. John Warner of Virginia, John McCain of Arizona and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina -- have impeccable Pentagon connections and are not operating in a vacuum. Bush admitted in his news conference Friday that he had spoken to "the professionals" and that they would not carry out "the program" unless Congress specifically told them to.

In support of its torture bill, all the White House could manage to squeeze out of five top Pentagon lawyers was a four-sentence letter of non-objection that had all the enthusiasm of a hostage tape.

Colin Powell's strongly worded rejection of torture should have embarrassed and chastened the White House, but this is a president who refuses to listen to critics of his "war on terrorism" -- even critics who helped design and lead it.

There should be no need to spell out the practical reasons against torture, but, for the record, they are legion. As Powell and others have argued, if the United States unilaterally reinterprets Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions to permit torture, potential adversaries in future conflicts will feel justified in doing the same thing. Does the president want some captured pilot to be subjected to the tortures applied in the CIA prisons?

And, as has been pointed out by experts, torture works -- far too well. Torture victims will tell what they know, and when their knowledge is exhausted they will tell their torturers what they want to hear, even if they have to invent conspiracies. The president says that torturing al-Qaeda kingpins foiled serious plots against America, but how do we know those plots were real? How can we be sure that some of the detainees at Guantanamo aren't shopkeepers or taxi drivers who were snatched because Khalid Sheik Mohammed ran out of real terrorists to implicate and began naming acquaintances so he wouldn't get waterboarded again?

But we shouldn't have to talk about the practicalities of torture, because the real question is moral: What kind of nation are we? What kind of people are we?

Bush's view of the world is based on the idea of American exceptionalism: that this country is unique, that its ideas and values are not just worthy or admirable but superior to any others. This attitude annoys the rest of the world to no end -- a lot of other countries think they're pretty special, too -- but accept for the moment that the American system is in fact the best of all systems and that the great experiment begun by the Founding Fathers was a signal event in the history of mankind. Accept, if you will, Bush's view that the United States is steadfastly blessed by a loving God.

What do you imagine God might think about torture, Mr. President?

Monday, September 18, 2006

What Would War Look Like?

A flurry of military maneuvers in the Middle East increases speculation that conflict with Iran is no longer quite so unthinkable. Here's how the U.S. would fight such a war--and the huge price it would have to pay to win it
By Michael Duffy
Time
September 25, 2006

The first message was routine enough: a "Prepare to Deploy" order sent through naval communications channels to a submarine, an Aegis-class cruiser, two minesweepers and two mine hunters. The orders didn't actually command the ships out of port; they just said to be ready to move by Oct. 1. But inside the Navy those messages generated more buzz than usual last week when a second request, from the Chief of Naval Operations (CNO), asked for fresh eyes on long-standing U.S. plans to blockade two Iranian oil ports on the Persian Gulf. The CNO had asked for a rundown on how a blockade of those strategic targets might work. When he didn't like the analysis he received, he ordered his troops to work the lash up once again.

What's going on? The two orders offered tantalizing clues. There are only a few places in the world where minesweepers top the list of U.S. naval requirements. And every sailor, petroleum engineer and hedge-fund manager knows the name of the most important: the Strait of Hormuz, the 20-mile-wide bottleneck in the Persian Gulf through which roughly 40% of the world's oil needs to pass each day. Coupled with the CNO's request for a blockade review, a deployment of minesweepers to the west coast of Iran would seem to suggest that a much discussed--but until now largely theoretical--prospect has become real: that the U.S. may be preparing for war with Iran.

No one knows whether--let alone when--a military confrontation with Tehran will come to pass. The fact that admirals are reviewing plans for blockades is hardly proof of their intentions. The U.S. military routinely makes plans for scores of scenarios, the vast majority of which will never be put into practice. "Planners always plan," says a Pentagon official. Asked about the orders, a second official said only that the Navy is stepping up its "listening and learning" in the Persian Gulf but nothing more--a prudent step, he added, after Iran tested surface-to-ship missiles there in August during a two-week military exercise. And yet from the State Department to the White House to the highest reaches of the military command, there is a growing sense that a showdown with Iran--over its suspected quest for nuclear weapons, its threats against Israel and its bid for dominance of the world's richest oil region--may be impossible to avoid. The chief of the U.S. Central Command (Centcom), General John Abizaid, has called a commanders conference for later this month in the Persian Gulf--sessions he holds at least quarterly--and Iran is on the agenda.

On its face, of course, the notion of a war with Iran seems absurd. By any rational measure, the last thing the U.S. can afford is another war. Two unfinished wars--one on Iran's eastern border, the other on its western flank--are daily depleting America's treasury and overworked armed forces. Most of Washington's allies in those adventures have made it clear they will not join another gamble overseas. What's more, the Bush team, led by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, has done more diplomatic spadework on Iran than on any other project in its 51/2 years in office. For more than 18 months, Rice has kept the Administration's hard-line faction at bay while leading a coalition that includes four other members of the U.N. Security Council and is trying to force Tehran to halt its suspicious nuclear ambitions. Even Iran's former President, Mohammed Khatami, was in Washington this month calling for a "dialogue" between the two nations.

But superpowers don't always get to choose their enemies or the timing of their confrontations. The fact that all sides would risk losing so much in armed conflict doesn't mean they won't stumble into one anyway. And for all the good arguments against any war now, much less this one, there are just as many indications that a genuine, eyeball-to-eyeball crisis between the U.S. and Iran may be looming, and sooner than many realize. "At the moment," says Ali Ansari, a top Iran authority at London's Chatham House, a foreign-policy think tank, "we are headed for conflict."

So what would it look like? Interviews with dozens of experts and government officials in Washington, Tehran and elsewhere in the Middle East paint a sobering picture: military action against Iran's nuclear facilities would have a decent chance of succeeding, but at a staggering cost. And therein lies the excruciating calculus facing the U.S. and its allies: Is the cost of confronting Iran greater than the dangers of living with a nuclear Iran? And can anything short of war persuade Tehran's fundamentalist regime to give up its dangerous game?

Road to war

The crisis with Iran has been years in the making. Over the past decade, Iran has acquired many of the pieces, parts and plants needed to make a nuclear device. Although Iranian officials insist that Iran's ambitions are limited to nuclear energy, the regime has asserted its right to develop nuclear power and enrich uranium that could be used in bombs as an end in itself--a symbol of sovereign pride, not to mention a useful prop for politicking. Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has crisscrossed the country in recent months making Iran's right to a nuclear program a national cause and trying to solidify his base of hard-line support in the Revolutionary Guards. The nuclear program is popular with average Iranians and the élites as well. "Iranian leaders have this sense of past glory, this belief that Iran should play a lofty role in the world," says Nasser Hadian, professor of political science at Tehran University.

But the nuclear program isn't Washington's only worry about Iran. While stoking nationalism at home, Tehran has dramatically consolidated its reach in the region. Since the 1979 Islamic revolution, Iran has sponsored terrorist groups in a handful of countries, but its backing of Hizballah, the militant group that took Lebanon to war with Israel this summer, seems to be changing the Middle East balance of power. There is circumstantial evidence that Iran ordered Hizballah to provoke this summer's war, in part to demonstrate that Tehran can stir up big trouble if pushed to the brink. The precise extent of coordination between Hizballah and Tehran is unknown. But no longer in dispute after the standoff in July is Iran's ability to project power right up to the borders of Israel. It is no coincidence that the talk in Washington about what to do with Iran became more focused after Hizballah fought the Israeli army to a virtual standstill this summer.

And yet the West has been unable to compel Iran to comply with its demands. Despite all the work Rice has put into her coalition, diplomatic efforts are moving too slowly, some believe, to stop the Iranians before they acquire the makings of a nuclear device. And Iran has played its hand shrewdly so far. Tehran took weeks to reply to a formal proposal from the U.N. Security Council calling on a halt to uranium enrichment. When it did, its official response was a mosaic of half-steps, conditions and boilerplate that suggested Tehran has little intention of backing down. "The Iranians," says a Western diplomat in Washington, "are very able negotiators."

That doesn't make war inevitable. But at some point the U.S. and its allies may have to confront the ultimate choice. The Bush Administration has said it won't tolerate Iran having a nuclear weapon. Once it does, the regime will have the capacity to carry out Ahmadinejad's threats to eliminate Israel. And in practical terms, the U.S. would have to consider military action long before Iran had an actual bomb. In military circles, there is a debate about where--and when--to draw that line. U.S. intelligence chief John Negroponte told TIME in April that Iran is five years away from having a nuclear weapon. But some nonproliferation experts worry about a different moment: when Iran is able to enrich enough uranium to fuel a bomb--a point that comes well before engineers actually assemble a nuclear device. Many believe that is when a country becomes a nuclear power. That red line, experts say, could be just a year away.

Would an attack work?

The answer is yes and no.

No one is talking about a ground invasion of Iran. Too many U.S. troops are tied down elsewhere to make it possible, and besides, it isn't necessary. If the U.S. goal is simply to stunt Iran's nuclear program, it can be done better and more safely by air. An attack limited to Iran's nuclear facilities would nonetheless require a massive campaign. Experts say that Iran has between 18 and 30 nuclear-related facilities. The sites are dispersed around the country--some in the open, some cloaked in the guise of conventional factories, some buried deep underground.

A Pentagon official says that among the known sites there are 1,500 different "aim points," which means the campaign could well require the involvement of almost every type of aircraft in the U.S. arsenal: Stealth bombers and fighters, B-1s and B-2s, as well as F-15s and F-16s operating from land and F-18s from aircraft carriers.

GPS-guided munitions and laser-targeted bombs--sighted by satellite, spotter aircraft and unmanned vehicles--would do most of the bunker busting. But because many of the targets are hardened under several feet of reinforced concrete, most would have to be hit over and over to ensure that they were destroyed or sufficiently damaged. The U.S. would have to mount the usual aerial ballet, refueling tankers as well as search-and-rescue helicopters in case pilots were shot down by Iran's aging but possibly still effective air defenses. U.S. submarines and ships could launch cruise missiles as well, but their warheads are generally too small to do much damage to reinforced concrete--and might be used for secondary targets. An operation of that size would hardly be surgical. Many sites are in highly populated areas, so civilian casualties would be a certainty.

Whatever the order of battle, a U.S. strike would have a lasting impression on Iran's rulers. U.S. officials believe that a campaign of several days, involving hundreds or even thousands of sorties, could set back Iran's nuclear program by two to three years. Hit hard enough, some believe, Iranians might develop second thoughts about their government's designs as a regional nuclear power. Some U.S. foes of Iran's regime believe that the crisis of legitimacy that the ruling clerics would face in the wake of a U.S. attack could trigger their downfall, although others are convinced it would unite the population with the government in anti-American rage.

But it is also likely that the U.S. could carry out a massive attack and still leave Iran with some part of its nuclear program intact. It's possible that U.S. warplanes could destroy every known nuclear site--while Tehran's nuclear wizards, operating at other, undiscovered sites even deeper underground, continued their work. "We don't know where it all is," said a White House official, "so we can't get it all."

What would come next?

No one who has spent any time thinking about an attack on Iran doubts that a U.S. operation would reap a whirlwind. The only mystery is what kind. "It's not a question of whether we can do a strike or not and whether the strike could be effective," says retired Marine General Anthony Zinni. "It certainly would be, to some degree. But are you prepared for all that follows?"

Retired Air Force Colonel Sam Gardiner, who taught strategy at the National War College, has been conducting a mock U.S.-Iran war game for American policymakers for the past five years. Virtually every time he runs the game, Gardiner says, a similar nightmare scenario unfolds: the U.S. attack, no matter how successful, spawns a variety of asymmetrical retaliations by Tehran. First comes terrorism: Iran's initial reaction to air strikes might be to authorize a Hizballah attack on Israel, in order to draw Israel into the war and rally public support at home.

Next, Iran might try to foment as much mayhem as possible inside the two nations on its flanks, Afghanistan and Iraq, where more than 160,000 U.S. troops hold a tenuous grip on local populations. Iran has already dabbled in partnership with warlords in western Afghanistan, where U.S. military authority has never been strong; it would be a small step to lend aid to Taliban forces gaining strength in the south. Meanwhile, Tehran has links to the main factions in Iraq, which would welcome a boost in money and weapons, if just to strengthen their hand against rivals. Analysts generally believe that Iran could in a short time orchestrate a dramatic increase in the number and severity of attacks on U.S. troops in Iraq. As Syed Ayad, a secular Shi'ite cleric and Iraqi Member of Parliament says, "America owns the sky of Iraq with their Apaches, but Iran owns the ground."

Next, there is oil. The Persian Gulf, a traffic jam on good days, would become a parking lot. Iran could plant mines and launch dozens of armed boats into the bottleneck, choking off the shipping lanes in the Strait of Hormuz and causing a massive disruption of oil-tanker traffic. A low-key Iranian mining operation in 1987 forced the U.S. to reflag Kuwaiti oil tankers and escort them, in slow-moving files of one and two, up and down the Persian Gulf. A more intense operation would probably send oil prices soaring above $100 per bbl.--which may explain why the Navy wants to be sure its small fleet of minesweepers is ready to go into action at a moment's notice. It is unlikely that Iran would turn off its own oil spigot or halt its exports through pipelines overland, but it could direct its proxies in Iraq and Saudi Arabia to attack pipelines, wells and shipment points inside those countries, further choking supply and driving up prices.

That kind of retaliation could quickly transform a relatively limited U.S. mission in Iran into a much more complicated one involving regime change. An Iran determined to use all its available weapons to counterattack the U.S. and its allies would present a challenge to American prestige that no Commander in Chief would be likely to tolerate for long. Zinni, for one, believes an attack on Iran could eventually lead to U.S. troops on the ground. "You've got to be careful with your assumptions," he says. "In Iraq, the assumption was that it would be a liberation, not an occupation. You've got to be prepared for the worst case, and the worst case involving Iran takes you down to boots on the ground." All that, he says, makes an attack on Iran a "dumb idea." Abizaid, the current Centcom boss, chose his words carefully last May. "Look, any war with a country that is as big as Iran, that has a terrorist capability along its borders, that has a missile capability that is external to its own borders and that has the ability to affect the world's oil markets is something that everyone needs to contemplate with a great degree of clarity."

Can it be stopped?

Given the chaos that a war might unleash, what options does the world have to avoid it? One approach would be for the U.S. to accept Iran as a nuclear power and learn to live with an Iranian bomb, focusing its efforts on deterrence rather than pre-emption. The risk is that a nuclear-armed Iran would use its regional primacy to become the dominant foreign power in Iraq, threaten Israel and make it harder for Washington to exert its will in the region. And it could provoke Sunni countries in the region, like Saudi Arabia and Egypt, to start nuclear programs of their own to contain rising Shi'ite power.

Those equally unappetizing prospects--war or a new arms race in the Middle East--explain why the White House is kicking up its efforts to resolve the Iran problem before it gets that far. Washington is doing everything it can to make Iran think twice about its ongoing game of stonewall. It is a measure of the Administration's unity on Iran that confrontationalists like Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld have lately not wandered off the rhetorical reservation. Everyone has been careful--for now--to stick to Rice's diplomatic emphasis. "Nobody is considering a military option at this point," says an Administration official. "We're trying to prevent a situation in which the President finds himself having to decide between a nuclear-armed Iran or going to war. The best hope of avoiding that dilemma is hard-nosed diplomacy, one that has serious consequences."

Rice continues to try for that. This week in New York City, she will push her partners to get behind a new sanctions resolution that would ban Iranian imports of dual-use technologies, like parts for its centrifuge cascades for uranium enrichment, and bar travel overseas by certain government officials. The next step would be restrictions on government purchases of computer software and hardware, office supplies, tires and auto parts--steps Russia and China have signaled some reluctance to endorse. But even Rice's advisers don't believe that Iran can be persuaded to completely abandon its ambitions. Instead, they hope to tie Iran up in a series of suspensions, delays and negotiations until a more pragmatic faction of leadership in Tehran gains the upper hand.

At the moment, that sounds as much like a prayer as a strategy. A former CIA director, asked not long ago whether a moderate faction will ever emerge in Tehran, quipped, "I don't think I've ever met an Iranian moderate--not at the top of the government, anyway." But if sanctions don't work, what might? Outside the Administration, a growing group of foreign-policy hands from both parties have called on the U.S. to bring Tehran into direct negotiations in the hope of striking a grand bargain. Under that formula, the U.S. might offer Iran some security guarantees-- such as forswearing efforts to topple Iran's theocratic regime--in exchange for Iran's agreeing to open its facilities to international inspectors and abandon weapons-related projects. It would be painful for any U.S. Administration to recognize the legitimacy of a regime that sponsors terrorism and calls for Israel's destruction--but the time may come when that's the only bargaining chip short of war the U.S. has left. And still that may not be enough. "[The Iranians] would give up nuclear power if they truly believed the U.S. would accept Iran as it is," says a university professor in Tehran who asked not to be identified. "But the mistrust runs too deep for them to believe that is possible."

Such distrust runs both ways and is getting deeper. Unless the U.S., its allies and Iran can find a way to make diplomacy work, the whispers of blockades and minesweepers in the Persian Gulf may soon be drowned out by the cries of war. And if the U.S. has learned anything over the past five years, it's that war in the Middle East rarely goes according to plan.

Reported by Brian Bennett/Baghdad, James Graff/Paris, Scott MacLeod/Cairo, J.F.O. McAllister/London, Tim McGirk/Jerusalem, Azadeh Moaveni/Tehran, Mike Allen, Sally B. Donnelly, Elaine Shannon, Mark Thompson, Douglas Waller, Michael Weisskopf, Adam Zagorin/Washington

Sunday, September 17, 2006

Called From Diplomatic Reserve

Former Secretary of State Leads Attempt to Salvage Iraq Mission
By Michael Abramowitz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, September 17, 2006; A23

Is Jim Baker bailing out the Bushes once again?

The former secretary of state, James A. Baker III, a confidant of President George H.W. Bush, visited Baghdad two weeks ago to take a look at the vexing political and military situation. He was there as co-chairman of the bipartisan Iraq Study Group, put together by top think tanks at the behest of Congress to come up with ideas about the way forward in Iraq.

The group has attracted little attention beyond foreign policy elites since its formation this year. But it is widely viewed within that small world as perhaps the last hope for a midcourse correction in a venture they generally agree has been a disaster.

The reason, by and large, is the involvement of Baker, 76, the legendary troubleshooter who remains close to the first President Bush and cordial with the second. Many policy experts think that if anyone can forge bipartisan consensus on a plan for extricating the United States from Iraq -- and then successfully pitch that plan to a president who has so far seemed impervious to outside pressure -- it is the man who put together the first Gulf War coalition, which evicted Saddam Hussein from Kuwait in 1991.

Rep. Frank R. Wolf (R-Va.), who came up with the idea for the study group and pushed for its formation, said he thinks the administration is "waiting anxiously" for the group's recommendations. He cited the "impeccable credentials" of the 10-member group, which also includes former Supreme Court justice Sandra Day O'Connor, former New York mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, investment banker and Bill Clinton adviser Vernon E. Jordan Jr., and former White House chief of staff Leon E. Panetta. The other co-chairman is the Democratic former Indiana congressman Lee H. Hamilton, who also co-chaired the commission that investigated the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

"Their recommendations will carry a lot of weight," said Wolf. "If they come up with a unanimous opinion, the administration, Congress and the American people will have to listen."

Baker is not revealing much of his hand. He has indicated that recommendations will not be forthcoming until after the November elections, in an effort to keep the group above the political fray. He has also asked those involved in the study group -- members and staffers alike -- not to talk to the media, so most of those interviewed for this article spoke only on the condition of anonymity. Baker's assistant said the co-chairman would not be available to be interviewed.

Baker has offered some hints of his thinking -- and his dismay with the way the Iraq occupation has been handled by the administration.

"The difficulty of winning the peace was severely underestimated," Baker wrote in a recent memoir, citing "costly mistakes" by the Pentagon. These included, he wrote, disbanding the Iraqi army, not securing weapons depots and "perhaps never having committed enough troops to successfully pacify the country."

But in an interview in the current issue of Texas Monthly, Baker dashed the idea of "just picking up and pulling out" of Iraq. "Even though it's something we need to find a way out of, the worst thing in the world we could do would be to pick up our marbles and go home," he said, "because then we will trigger, without a doubt, a huge civil war. And every one of the regional actors -- the Iranians and everybody else -- will come in and do their thing."

The study group appears to be struggling to find some middle ground between such a pullout and the administration's strategy of keeping a heavy American troop presence until the Iraqi government can maintain security on its own.

"If this war is consumed by partisan attacks, if the choice is presented as simply one between 'stay the course' or 'cut and run,' we will never be able to do what is right," panel member Panetta wrote following the group's trip to Iraq in an article for his hometown paper, the Monterey County Herald in California.

Baker and panel members have been exploring different ideas, such as a greater degree of regional autonomy for Kurdish, Sunni and Shiite regions. But those familiar with the group's work said there is far from a consensus yet on what to do. One well-placed source said panel members came away from their trip sobered, with "a sense that we can't continue to do what we have been doing," adding that Baker was not simply looking to protect the administration.

"I think he basically wants to call it the way he sees it," said this source, a critic of the administration's approach to Iraq. "He's also been frustrated by the mistakes that have been made. In many ways, it has damaged the legacy he established as secretary of state."

Some are skeptical that the president will be open to advice seeming to come from one of his father's top advisers. In some ways, Bush has distanced himself from the people and policies of the first Bush administration -- though Baker has been called on occasion to perform sensitive missions, such as heading the Bush campaign's efforts in the 2000 Florida recount and leading negotiations to provide debt relief to Iraq.

The administration's more hawkish supporters, meanwhile, are nervous about Baker's involvement, counting him as one of the "realist" foreign policy proponents they see as having allowed threats against the United States to grow in the '80s and '90s. Gary J. Schmitt of the American Enterprise Institute voiced concern that the Iraq group was not listening to those advocating a more muscular military strategy to defeat the insurgency.

But Schmitt added: "People can worry about what Baker is going to say, but the president has a way of doing what he is going to do. There could be a lot of wishful thinking on the part of the older Bush crowd that the son got into trouble and now he's going to listen to Baker the strategist."

Publicly, the administration is supportive, though inside the foreign policy apparatus there appears to be skepticism that the Iraq Study Group will come up with any breakthroughs. At first, the administration was divided about whether to cooperate with the panel. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice gave her support only after being assured by officials with the federally funded U.S. Institute of Peace, under whose aegis the group was formed, and other think tanks involved in the project that the venture would be a forward-looking exercise and not an examination of past mistakes, according to people familiar with the project.

Baker himself secured the personal approval of President Bush before signing on. "As I always do," Baker told Texas Monthly, "I said . . . I want him to look me in the eye and tell me he wants me to do this."