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Revisiting the 'Axis of Evil' - Part I

By Dilip Hiro - posted Monday, 11 August 2008


As the debate on Iran rages in the United States, the hawks need to examine the 2003 Iraq War and its aftermath, pondering the wisdom of George Santayana: "Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it." Defeating President Saddam Hussein's army was the easy part; what followed proved catastrophic for both the United States and Iraq.

Now, the Pentagon's two aircraft carriers stationed in the Persian Gulf have the co-ordinates for the Iranian targets. So too has the Israeli air force. As for the timing, some hawks see a window of opportunity for US President George Bush to strike Iran between the US presidential election November 4 and the inauguration of his successor on January 20, 2009.

But, no matter when the US or Israel accomplishes its self-appointed mission, the key question remains: What then? The short answer is Iran's response will be intense and all-encompassing.

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The warnings about Tehran's all-out backlash have come from high officials in the US and outside. "I think everybody recognises what the consequences of any kind of conflict [in Iran] would be," said US Defense Secretary Robert Gates. His "everybody" includes Admiral William Fallon, former commander of the Central Command (CENTCOM), in charge of waging wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Fallon's premature retirement in April resulted from an article, based on his interview, in Esquire magazine, which portrayed him as the man standing between Bush and military strikes on Iran.

In his interview, Fallon said that "five or six pots boiling over [in the Middle East], our nation can't afford to be mesmerised by one problem [of Iran]." Earlier, on Al Jazeera satellite channel, he was more direct: "This constant drumbeat of conflict ... is not helpful and not useful,” he said. “I expect that there will be no war, and that is what we ought to be working for."

Tehran's military commanders have reiterated that they would promptly fire missiles not only at Israel but also US targets in the region as well as those of Gulf monarchies complicit in any attack on Iran. With the Pentagon maintaining 32 military bases in the area, its forces are vulnerable to hits by Iran's short-range missiles.

After Iran's immediate military response will come asymmetrical warfare, which would destabilise the US-backed governments in Iraq and Afghanistan, endanger output and shipment of oil in the region, and trigger rocket attacks on Israel by Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

As the first Shiite Islamic state on the planet, the Islamic Republic of Iran enjoys fervent loyalty of most Shiites in the Muslim world. In particular, Shiites in the Middle East and Afghanistan hold Iran's theocratic regime in high esteem. Shiites are 60 per cent of the population in Iraq and 65 per cent in Bahrain, where the US Fifth Fleet is based. In Kuwait, smaller in area than New Jersey, Shiites are 25 per cent of the population. Shiites, though only 10 per cent of Saudi nationals, are concentrated in the oil-rich Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia.

It's widely known that Iran's intelligence service has sleeper cells throughout the Gulf region and Afghanistan and could activate these cells to wreck US military facilities.

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The currently quiescent Shiite militias in Iraq will resume their militant resistance against the US forces in Iraq. The fragile government of Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki, a staunch Shiite, who at crucial moments has journeyed to Tehran for consultations, will find itself struggling to survive. Already the Sunni president of Afghanistan, Hamid Karzai, has opposed the idea of his country being used to attack Iran.

Mohamed ElBaradei, director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, forecast the whole region turning into "a fire zone" following military strikes against Iran. "When one starts such actions in the Middle East, one cannot manage reactions that can spread over years or even decades," warned Syrian President Bashar al Assad.

Then there's oil, the life blood of the world's economies. Iran is the second largest producer in the Organization of Oil Exporting Countries. A military conflict involving Iran, warned OPEC's Secretary General Abdalla Salem El Badri, would see an "unlimited" rise in oil price: any reduction of shipments through the narrow Straits of Hormuz could not be replaced. Hostilities in the Gulf of Hormuz, through which 40 per cent of world oil supplies flow, would sharply reduce oil supplies.

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Reprinted with permission from YaleGlobal Online - www.yaleglobal.yale.edu - (c) 2008 Yale Center for the Study of Globalization.



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About the Author

Dilip Hiro is the author of The Iranian Labyrinth and Secrets and Lies: Operation ‘Iraqi Freedom’ and After and, most recently, Blood of the Earth: The Battle for the World's Vanishing Oil Resources, published by Nation Books.

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