Former Saudi Intel Chief Warns Against Iran War Scare 'Hyperbole'

Now a Saudi national security official joins Israeli and U.S. current and former policy-makers charged with defending their countries' security in warning against the current anti-Iran war hype. Everyone who thinks Riyadh wants an Israeli/U.S. war against Iran should pay careful attention to Turki al-Faisal's recent comments.

Former Saudi intel chief Prince Turki al-Faisal just made the following remarks about the current round of U.S./Israeli vs. Iran tensions:

• Two hundred dollars a barrel oil is not going to benefit anyone. What we need to do is get away from the hyperbole and threatening stances.
• We don't want to be sandwiched between a nuclear state, which is Israel, and a potential nuclear state, which is Iran.

In addition, he called for a "weapons of mass destruction free zone” in the Mideast, a reform that would of course totally undermine the core plank (security through superior strength) of Israeli foreign policy.


With these remarks, Turki al-Faisal joins recently retired Mossad chief Meir Dagan and former CIA acting director John McLaughlin in warning against the tendency of U.S., Iranian, and Israeli politicians to whip up a war scare. But of course a disgraced former politician trying to buy the U.S. election on behalf of a casino owner buddy of war politician Netanyahu knows better than former leaders of Saudi intelligence, the CIA, and Mossad.*


One of the main talking points of war party talking heads in the U.S. and Israel has been that Riyadh secretly supports these efforts. The former Saudi security chief's pointed remarks should kill that war party propaganda trial balloon.
__________________________________________________________________________________________
* I do not mean to suggest that anyone should take the word of an intel official as gospel. One obviously cannot, for they do not all agree. Nevertheless, it is in the nature of intelligence officials to overemphasize the "need" to stand up to adversaries and act tough; they are paid to take that position and certainly do not get their budgets by advocating compromise. So when the recently retired (and therefore liberated from censorship) heads of Saudi, Israeli, and U.S. intelligence all simultaneously caution the world against the dangers of precisely the war tensions that are being fomented by politicians in their own countries, a thinking citizen must take that warning very seriously. It follows that politicians who evade and pretend not to hear these warnings either are not thinking or have a private agenda that is not in the interests of the societies they claim they would like to serve. Voters beware.
_______________________
Additional Readings:

• Children Playing With Nuclear Matches

Emerging Economic War Vs. Iran: Worth the Effort?

Iranian legislators are considering an embargo on oil exports to West Europe, in response to the West European decision to embargo oil imports from Iran. Pardon me for failing to take this seriously as economic warfare: I predict the international oil market will turn out to be fungible (take a drop away here, get a drop from somewhere else). As diplomatic repartee, however, Iran scores!

More important than silly score-keeping, however, is the issue of the long-term implications of mutual economic warfare. In the aftermath of the Recession of 2008-????, which I will not consider overcome until wages and levels of employment and home ownership rates return to their pre-recession situation, it is not absolutely clear that serious economic warfare will harm fewer people than actual military warfare. Nor is it absolutely clear that the world's politicians can even separate the one from the other. What is clear is this: economic warfare will generate instability. So, expect to see the background global economic problems exacerbated in unpredictable ways, which certainly won't make life for you or me more pleasant but will equally certainly offer the 1% all sorts of opportunities for a quick buck. (Note that I did not say opportunities to "earn" a quick buck, because we are definitely talking about unearned income here.)

Strategic security is a second area of concern. To the degree that the West promotes economic warfare and Iran responds in kind, Moscow and Beijing will be pushed toward clear-cut decisions about which side they are really on. "Pro-" or "anti-Iran" constitute a categorization that misses the point. Just as Washington's real complaint is that Iran challenges A) Israel's right to regional superiority and a special set of rules, and B) Washington's right to run the global political system and punish all who want to set their own course, the real issue for Moscow and Beijing is also about who makes the rules in the global political system. For those Russians and Chinese who aspire to independence from Washington, Iran is a prize to be relinquished only reluctantly. And Iran is a natural bridge for Chinese and Russians who think anti-American cooperation is the way to achieve national security and independence: China needs Iranian oil, while Russia does not so they can easily cooperate to support Iran as a symbol of the right of states to independence from "Washington rules."

So in addition to more global economic problems, watch for evidence of an emerging coalition of states rejecting Washington rules, with Iran as the glue between Russia and China (normally, not exactly the best of buddies). Putin must be smiling. He has a much smaller country that any Russian leader has had for a long time, but his strategic situation just seems to be getting better and better, without him lifting  his little finger.
___________________
Related Readings:

• Provoking An Oil War Is a Bad Bet for the U.S.
• Democracy Fans Sparks of War
• Children Playing With Nuclear Matches
• IDF: Nuclear Iran Could 'Deter Israel'
• Will Netanyahu's Provocations Backfire?
• Would Defeating Iran Help Israel?
• Assessing Blame for the U.S.-Iranian Conflict
• Pakistan Contemplates Iranian Triumph Over U.S.
• Is Israel Plotting...or Stumbling Toward...Mideast War?
• Smarter Iran Policy Begins With New Attitude

Provoking an Oil War Is a Bad Bet for the U.S.

Perhaps Washington has a secret plan for defeating Tehran in a contest over oil, but Tehran has enormous tactical advantages, while the relevance of Washington's vast military superiority appears questionable. Has anyone in Washington actually thought this out?

Democracy Fans the Sparks of War

Much can be said about the U.S/Israeli conflict with Iran, and unfortunately much--way too much--is being said. The most important thing for the security of all of us right now is to take all the hot air with a grain of salt.




The conflict between the U.S./Israel and Iran is a complicated affair. Security fears, proliferation concerns, clashing ambitions to "run" the Mideast, and of course a host of personal career ambitions in all three countries add up to a real challenge for even the smartest of decision-makers. Then there's that other level: democracy. Each country not only has leaders with constrained abilities (no one is perfect) but a host of legislative branch loud mouths with little foreign policy expertise but a dangerous penchant for talking without thinking. Why is this dangerous? Simply put, they speak as individuals but are all too often heard overseas as representing their government.

Heshmatollah Falahatpisheh, an Iranian legislator, has just pontificated that "In case of threat, the closure of the Strait of Hormuz is one of Iran's rights." Presumably, Falahatpisheh is an expert, at least in his own mind, on international law.Ros-Lehtinen, an American legislator, recently pontificated that "the Administration must not fall into the regime's trap and again pursue the failed policy of dialogue and engagement. Presumably, by "the failed policy of dialogue and engagement" Ros-Lehtinen must be referring to a decade of U.S. and Israeli threats of aggression against Iran backed up by the U.S. naval armada in the Persian Gulf, Israeli nuclear-capable submarines cruising off (or in???) Iranian Indian Ocean waters, and the new string of U.S. military bases along Iran's Iraqi and Afghani borders, along with the anti-Iranian terror campaign that has now murdered five Iranian scientists. Danny Dannon, an Israeli legislator, recently pontificated that only two legitimate options exist "crippling sanctions" or "military action," i.e., war or war. Now that is a man with a real imagination.


Isn't democracy wonderful?

Children Playing With Nuclear Matches

Russian, American, and Israeli national security thinkers warn against launching a war on Iran: do the politicians care?

IDF: Nuclear Iran 'Could Deter' Israel

A senior IDF general has admitted that a nuclear Iran "could deter" Israel. Exactly.

Will Netanyahu's Provocations Backfire?

Netanyahu’s combined efforts to push the U.S. into a war on Iran as a smokescreen for his plan to absorb the West Bank and to manipulate the U.S. presidential election may open the door to an alliance of U.S. and Israeli national security officials who believe in security through peace and justice.

U.S. Policy on Iran Invites Third-Party Provocations

U.S. policy toward Iran is not just designed to fail but designed to hand the initiative to America's enemies.

Washington claims that its goal is to prevent Iran from militarizing its nuclear technology but single-mindedly adheres to a policy designed to avoid achieving that goal. Assuming Washington is sincere in its professed intent but simply confused about how to get there, the policy--which has the obvious practical effects of alienating Iran, whipping up tension, and prolonging the crisis atmosphere--contains the profound hidden danger of creating ideal conditions for third-party provocations designed to trick the two sides into open conflict.

Secretary of State Clinton recently stated:

We reaffirm that our overall goal remains a comprehensive, negotiated solution that restores confidence in the exclusively peaceful nature of Iran's nuclear programme while respecting Iran's right to the peaceful use of nuclear energy consistent with its obligations under the Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT). [IPSNews 1/11/12.]

Nevertheless, Washington carefully avoids any public hint that it might actually be willing to listen to Tehran's perspective or, much less, accommodate reasonable Iranian interests in independence, participation in regional affairs, and national security.

The higher international tensions rise and the deeper the level of mutual distrust, the more difficult it will be for decision-makers on each side to stay calm, restrain radicals, resist popular anger, and investigate calmly whatever incidents may occur. Even for Americans, it is difficult to avoid the automatic assumption that the string of murders of Iranian scientists has been carried out by Washington; how much more difficult must it be for Iranians? Thoughtful American observers, including Juan Cole and Jim Lobe, are suggesting that these murders may be the result of Mossad financing of the MEK, a violent anti-regime Iranian dissident organization, and for purposes of undermining U.S. efforts to settle the nuclear issue. This highly logical hypothesis may well be true, but any number of other scenarios are also quite conceivable - from direct Israeli action [an hypothesis backed by an impressive array of evidence] to private financing by a rich believer in Israeli expansion to a truly cunning plot by al Qua'ida to replace the Iraqi trap, that cost so much American blood and treasure, with a sharper Iranian trap.

Indeed, revelations now just beginning to appear in U.S. and Israeli media about examples of Israeli deceit that directly harms U.S. national security show that the danger of provocations that could trap the U.S. in an undesired war are not just theoretical.

______________________________

Israeli Anti-American Deceit Revealed

Israeli Mossad agents posed as CIA officers in order to recruit members of a Pakistani terror group to carry out assassinations and attacks against the regime in Iran, Foreign Policy revealed on Friday, quoting U.S. intelligence memos. 


Foreign Policy's Mark Perry reported that the Mossad operation was carried out in 2007-2008, behind the back of the U.S. government, and infuriated then U.S. President George W. Bush. [Haaretz 1/13/12.]

______________________________

In the end, it does not matter who the provocateur is. The point is that by designing a policy that is almost certain not to achieve its professed goal, Washington is setting itself up for being trapped by a provocation from a hostile third party. Ironically, it does not even matter if Washington's real goal is to provoke a war that will enable it to colonize Iran, control the global oil market, and buttress its floundering empire. Even if Washington is hoping for war, it is still bad policy to put the initiative in the hands of an unknown hostile party. Just to note one obvious example, letting a hostile force control events means that we will not even know who might be President when the fatal match is struck. By following a policy designed to fail, Washington is, as you read these words, placing U.S. national security in the hands of its enemies.

U.S. Policy on Iran Is Designed to Fail

Intentionally or not, Washington's policy toward Tehran is flawed politically, historically, and psychologically. It is a policy designed to fail.

Never, ever say “please” if you can get away with spitting in someone’s face. That, in this highly civilized new century, has become the essence of American policy toward Iran. Many in Washington will surely defend this approach as “the only language they understand.” Maybe so. One thing is for sure: it is the only language in which they have heard us speak.

In defense of Washington policy makers, they of course do not know how Tehran might respond to a sincere and consistent policy of inviting Tehran policy makers to sit down and reason together. And they can be excused for seeing little likelihood of being able to convince Tehran of sudden American sincerity between now and the Presidential election.

_________________

A Policy Designed to Succeed

A policy designed to persuade Tehran to forgo militarization of nuclear technology would contain at least three shifts in U.S. policy toward Iran and one fundamental shift in the regional context. The policy shifts toward Iran are obvious: respect, inclusion, and security. The regional shift is sufficient movement toward justice for Palestinians to make radical Iranian involvement in the Levant irrelevant. Amazingly, all these U.S. moves, which Washington seems to find so distasteful, are fully consistent with U.S. national security.

___________________

Nevertheless, it is worth considering how Americans would feel if China or Russia  invaded Mexico, set up a string of huge military bases there, and sailed an offensive Armada into the Gulf of Mexico, while loudly discussing the “option” of attacking the U.S. (of course, with “pinpoint accuracy” to avoid civilian casualties…except for scientists working at the Pentagon), and demanded that the U.S. relinquish not just its most powerful weapons but its right even to conduct research toward some future emergency development of such weapons. How many American politicians would bend their knee and disarm in return for nothing more than the “privilege” of being invited to negotiations? How many who did bow down would win reelection?

Even the most reasoned high-level U.S. pronouncements about Iran come out wrong. Consider Defense Secretary Leon Panetta’s recent statement that Iran is only laying the groundwork for a possible future bomb. That would seem to settle the issue in a rational world. Countries have the right to lay the groundwork for future defense. But no…he then continued to point out that even though he admits Iran is not building nuclear arms, “the responsible thing to do right now is to keep putting diplomatic and economic pressure on them to force them to do the right thing.” Leon, you really understand human nature. As long as you can spit in their face, don’t ever say please.

But the mistake is more serious than just egregious American bullying that accomplishes nothing more than to irritate Tehran and make a serious global issue dangerously emotional. Even in rational terms, Panetta is singing off-key. Perhaps in Washington, it seems rational for all countries, even those threatened with aggression, to trust Washington. Elsewhere, "rational" would not be the word for such a naive attitude. On the contrary, given Washington's aggression against Palestine, Lebanon, Afghanistan, and Iraq, its threats against Iran can only be interpreted as making only one policy "rational" for Iranians: maximizing self-defense capabilities. That is not the lesson Washington should be teaching.

In this context of endless bullying without any inducement to compromise, an incident that will inflame passions is almost inevitable.

Whatever you may think of U.S. or Iranian foreign policy, the fact is that every time Tehran underscores its independence and right to self-defense, Washington becomes more aggressive. If this is war, it is a one-sided war. Yes, Iran is insulting, warning, lecturing, posing, and desperately trying both to strengthen itself and to give the appearance of strength: only an unemployed Republican presidential candidate could define that as “aggressive.” Washington, in contrast, is intensifying a crippling campaign of economic warfare within a context of a simultaneously tightening military encirclement.

If Washington is bluffing, it is a convincing bluff, plenty convincing enough to make someone in Tehran’s highly factionalized regime panic. Let us assume, for the purposes of conversation, that Washington’s Masters of the Universe have everything perfectly calibrated to force Tehran to beg for mercy without any risk of a disaster. Let us assume that the disasters of the Iraq invasion, the on-going mess in Afghanistan, and the endless elite-created recession are lessons learned, mistakes never to be repeated. Wiser now, the Masters of the Universe really do know how to run the world, we shall assume.

Still, from Tehran’s perspective, things are starting to look a little scary. What if someone or some faction panics? What if a third party (say, an ambitious Israeli politician or an al Qua’ida type) sets a trap? What if Iranian decision-makers simply decide that Washington needs a slap on the face to wake it up?

What if Tehran calculates that things are getting out of control, that Washington leaders are not “Masters of the Universe” but just provincial politicians wrapped up in their election campaign? What might Tehran do? And how would American politicians, not exactly known for their ability to appreciate how the world looks to Muslims, be likely to react? In the current emotional situation, anything is possible, and almost every conceivable scenario will be bad news for Americans.

People do not respond very well to rude and highly public ultimatums, even when they are persuasive. Any Iranian politician who did so would almost certainly face discharge, arrest, and probably a firing squad for betraying his country. Moreover, how could an Iranian policy maker even defend a proposal to kowtow to the U.S. before his peers? The U.S. over the last decade has fought wars, either itself or via proxies, in Iraq, Somalia, Gaza, Lebanon, and Afghanistan. How many victories did it win?

Psychology suggests Tehran will not accept an ultimatum. History suggests the U.S. will only make matters worse if it starts another war. Both the U.S. secretary of defense and the recently retired Israeli head of Mossad see an attack on Iran’s nuclear establishment as at best a very short-term palliative. The U.S. campaign of economic warfare against Iran is empowering Iranian hardliners, putting the initiative in the hands of Moscow and Beijing, and alienating U.S. allies from Turkey to Japan (both of which are demanding the right to continue buying Iranian oil).

Washington’s policy toward Iran is a policy designed to fail. Why?

Winners and Losers

When you think policy makes no sense, perhaps you just haven't figured out who benefits.

With Washington's humiliating public pressure on Iran pushing Tehran into the proverbial corner, from where it will predictably fight tooth and nail, one can only wonder what Washington's real game is. Clearly, a rational U.S. policy designed to persuade Tehran to relinquish nuclear arms would be designed to demonstrate that Iran would be more secure without the bomb than with it, yet the U.S. policy teaches Iran precisely the opposite. Similarly, if Washington's goal is to get the Iranians to change their regime, then making a hero out of Ahmadinejad is obviously not the way to do it. So exactly what is Washington's goal?

Ask yourself who will benefit from halting Iran's oil trade. Supplies will tighten, prices will go up...and the American people will see their dollars flood into the hands of Big Oil and the Saudis, who, incidentally, don't seem too worried at all about the prospects of a U.S.-Iranian crisis.

Once that has sunk in, here's another question: what would happen if Iran were invited to sell all the oil it wants? Gas prices would drop. Now that would be a financial crisis.

Yelling 'Fire!' in the Nuclear Theater

The issue of Iranian nukes is far too important to be treated with glib soundbites.Those who cannot bring themselves to speak responsibly about such critical issues only reveal their lack of qualifications for national leadership and provoke one to wonder what their real game is. 

Jobs!

Stop whining. There are plenty of jobs.

All you 20 million unemployed Americans should just stop whining. There are plenty of jobs, with far more to come. Everyone who wants to work can get ten offers tomorrow morning. First, that imperial embassy in Baghdad is so big it will never have enough support personnel and security guards. Second, all those Pakistani truck drivers for U.S. forces in Afghanistan need to be replaced. Third, the construction of democracy, in fact the construction of roads, in Afghanistan is literally an endless task, since those who don’t like having Americans in charge of their country destroy everything as fast as it is built…so we need to build faster. And then there is Iran. Once we trash that country, American workers will have a real bonanza. Iran is not Iraq. Iran is big. For unemployed Americans who can’t drive or mix cement or man a security post, well, there’s always a job on the Afghan-Pak border persuading goatherds that cooperation with America is the best way for them to build their personal futures. So instead of sitting suicidal in your basements, start studying Farsi and Dari and Urdu. Your government will take care of you.

Challenge to the War Party

American media are being flooded with calls for aggression against Iran, all replete with glib assumptions and careful avoidance of any deep analysis of what might go wrong. Here is what I want:

an argument for launching a war against Iran that is intellectually honest and profoundly self-critical, an argument that enumerates assumptions and questions them, an argument that searches for what could go wrong and lays out a precise plan for avoiding pitfalls, an argument that shows how war will lead us to a world we can honestly expect to be better than it would have been without war.

I predict that no one can make such an argument. I challenge the smooth-talking, "they will welcome us with flowers" set--those of you who think wars can be managed and long-term dangers avoided--to prove me wrong.

Transparency! Responsibility! Regulation!

America—American society and ruling elite—needs some good, old common sense New Year’s Resolutions. To me, three seem pretty much to sum it up: transparency, responsibility, and regulation.

It is only common sense that a democracy cannot function if officials are allowed to hide what they do from those who hired them; no powerful official can for long resist the temptation in a dark closet to do something he has good reason to hide: the solution is to turn on the lights. Taking responsibility for your behavior is understandable to any well-bred three-year-old. Again, this is common sense: who will consistently behave responsibly when told they do not have to? Finally, not only do most of us fall short of sainthood, there is always a truly evil person in every crowd. For him certainly, but also just to help guide the rest of us to stay on the straight and narrow, it is, once again, only logical that we need regulation.

Transparency by those in power allows democratic political oversight and trains the elite to behave responsibly, while regulation reinforces responsibility. A century ago Lenin won a revolution with the famous slogan “peace, bread, land.” That was a slogan capturing the essence of what Russians thought they should receive from their government. Today, in the U.S., the issue is not about what government should give people but about how the elite that runs both government and corporate power centers behaves. Put briefly, an elite that behaves transparently and accepts responsibility for its actions would revolutionize America but could continue to exist; such an elite would be compatible with democracy. Absent such a revolutionary change in behavior, either the elite or democracy must give way.

Transparency…

In Finance. Four years after the entirely man-made 2008 financial crisis, the carefully concealed government program that rescued both the financial system (justifiable) and the millionaire crooks who almost broke it (unjustifiable) is only now leaking out into the public realm. Someday, a politician must be put on public trial and ordered to explain why bailing out the rich with taxpayer funds should be hidden from the taxpayers.

_________________________________________________

Lack of Financial Regulation

…thanks largely to the fact that credit default swaps existed in a totally unregulated area of the financial universe—this was the result of that 2000 law, the Commodity Futures Modernization Act, sponsored by then-senator Phil Gramm and supported by then-Treasury chief Larry Summers and his predecessor Bob Rubin—Cassano could sell as much credit protection as he wanted without having to post any real money at all. So he sold hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of protection to all the big players on Wall Street, despite the fact that he didn’t have any money to cover those bets. [Matt Taibi, Griftopia, (Speigel and Grau Trade Paperbacks, 2011), 101.]

____________________________________________________________

Who led the fight to keep taxpayers in the dark? Naturally, it was the Fed, that so-called Federal regulator complicit in the creation of the financial crisis by its cosy (read: “corrupt,” as in, “don’t forget to give me a nice Wall Street management position after my years in the government, now, good buddy”) relationship with those it was assigned to regulate plus…the banks it was supposed to have been regulating. This is really not very hard to understand: if you were a billionaire who became a billionaire by cheating investors by persuading them to purchase what you knew to be bad investments and the government handed you free money from the pockets of American workers after you got in trouble, wouldn’t you want to keep it secret?!? To find out what Washington was doing with taxpayer money behind the backs of taxpayers, Bloomberg had to file Freedom of Information requests! What was the bottom line?

banks reaped an estimated $13 billion of income by taking advantage of the Fed’s below-market rates

Either the Fed was so irresponsible and just plain stupid that it threw away $13B of taxpayer money or…this constitutes outright corruption.

…in Foreign Affairs. Two countries today are responsible for generating a decade-long crisis that could provoke a disastrous war, perhaps even a nuclear war, by their game-playing over the concept of nuclear transparency: Israel and Iran. Regional nuclear monopolist Israel plays the “don’t ask-don’t tell” charade, while Iran appears to be playing exactly the game that got Saddam killed: pretending for short-term status to have the ability to militarize nuclear technology overnight. Both Tel Aviv and Tehran need to grow up and support regional nuclear transparency as the first step toward the establishment of a shared security regime.

As for Washington, it should--as sole superpower--defend the interests of mankind and--as the elected government--defend U.S. national security: both obligations would be better served by promoted stability founded on mutual security than by getting into the middle of a squabble between foreign politicians playing games for personal advantage. Yes, moves to lower regional tensions would put the careers of Ahmadinejad and Netanyahu at risk. So what?

Responsibility…

…in Domestic Affairs.

When corporations are either 1) permitted by a society that provides them a business-friendly environment to enrich themselves or 2) are even assisted by corporate welfare to enrich themselves and their business behavior subsequently endangers the welfare of society, then that society must have a legal process for holding such corporations as entities and the managers of such corporations and their government friends personally responsible. Goldman Sachs executives, despite appearing to have engineered the collapse of AIG only to profit further from that disaster via a monstrous taxpayer bailout [Taibi, 118; Nouriel Roubini and Stephen Mihm, Crisis Economics (Penguin Books: 2010), 228-9], remain free and rich while the millions who have lost homes and jobs remain homeless and unemployed.

________________________________________________________

Responsibility in Financial Affairs

Even though they weren’t really in danger of losing any money by holding on to [WM: AIG executive] Neuger’s securities, they were returning them anyway, just to force AIG into a crisis. [Taibi, 116] …In essence, the partners of Goldman Sachs held the thousands of AIG policyholders hostage, all in order to recover a few billion bucks they’d bet on [WM: AIG executive] Joe Cassano’s plainly crooked sweetheart CDS deals. [Taibi, 118.]

______________________________

…in Foreign Affairs. The war party infamous for the savaging of Iraq, Lebanon, Gaza, Somalia (using Ethiopian troops), Afghanistan, Pakistan should be held legally responsible in open court not only for what it did to foreigners but for the resultant American deaths and the harm to American principles. Were crimes committed (e.g., lying to the American people about the reasons for invading Iraq, illegal wiretapping, Abu Ghraib, war against civilian populations in such places as Fallujah)? Let the system of justice reach a decision. Throwing a rug of political denial over the rotten foundation of American democracy is not the way to prepare for the future.

 _______________________________________________________

Responsibility in Foreign Affairs

At the height of what looked like success in Iraq and Afghanistan, American officials fretted endlessly about how, in the condescending phrase of the moment, to put an “Afghan face” or “Iraqi face” on America’s wars.  Now, at a nadir moment in the Greater Middle East, perhaps it’s finally time to put an American face on America’s wars, to see them clearly for the imperial debacles they have been -- and act accordingly.  [Tom Dispatch 1/3/12.]

________________________________________________________

Regulation…

…in Domestic Affairs. In 2010 a meek and vague new financial regulatory bill was signed into law, leaving the crucial details to be determined by the very regulatory foxes (e.g., in the Fed) whose irresponsibility and collusion brought us the financial crisis in the first place. We are being conned.

________________________________________________________

Regulation in Financial Affairs

We are now in the worst of all worlds, where many TBTF institutions have been bailed out and expect to be bailed out in any number of future crises. They have as yet faced no sustained regulatory scrutiny, and no system is in place to put them into insolvency should the need arise. Even worse, many of these institutions—starting with Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase—are starting to engage once more in “proprietary trading strategies,”… [Roubini, 224].

______________________________

…in Foreign Affairs. Regulation is relevant to foreign policy in two ways: the establishment of international law, which U.S. presidents have shamefully made careers out of violating in recent years, and domestic efforts to hold politicians to account for the foreign policy they implement. Regarding the latter—the idea of holding senior officials personally responsible for their foreign policy actions--the most egregious trend is the rising ability of the President to make war without the consent of Congress. (Yes, there is something in the Constitution about this.)

What Could Obama Do? Everyone, conservative or liberal, is now aware that Obama has yet to respond to the hopes of Americans for a savior to rescue the country from the combination of the neo-con orgy of empire and government-facilitated financial crime. Yet he can yet become an above-average president in his first term, opening the door to greatness in his second. No, he does not have the power to pass significant new laws; any conversation he has with Republicans in 2012 will be doomed to failure; the stumbling gait of the elite-crippled American giant gives him little power to change the world. All this is sad but true.

Nevertheless, Obama is President. He has the power to defend the 99%. He can, for example, urge the Attorney General to start seriously investigating both corporate crime and corrupt politicians who were either on the take to corporations or exploiting their positions for private gain. There is plenty of time before Election Day to bring some of the obvious suspects--who wrote laws to facilitate bank fraud and then bailed their buddies out or who invaded other countries on false pretensions--to trial. That is just an example. It comes under the heading “Responsibility.”

One of the greatest failures of the Obama Administration was the absence of a clear, public denunciation of the recent practice of giving the finger to international law, a crucial shield defending democracy. Obama does not need an act of Congress to stand up before the American people and speak to us of the principles conducive not to the long-term security of the U.S. empire but of American democracy. Lying to the American people about the reasons for war, making nuclear threats against non-nuclear powers, advocating preventive war as a regular policy option, hiring mercenaries and pushing open-ended authorizations for unilateral presidential action to facilitate presidential wars without Congressional declarations of war are great ways to defend the militarist heart of an imperial garrison state; they are not so good for defending the security of a democratic society of free citizens. This is just a second example; it comes under the heading “Regulation.” A great President is one who will inform the naïve American people that he too must bow before the law; in a word, like those of us who elect the President, he too must be regulated, and a great President would wish to leave behind such a legacy.

The U.S. Government needs three New Year’s Resolutions: transparency, responsibility, regulation. If Obama wants to lead the U.S. proudly into the 21^st century, he can start now.

Reforms to Rebuild America

The absurdity of some ambitious politicians and the timidity of the rest makes me wonder if the U.S. may need revolutionary reform in order to survive, i.e., a legal, non-violent movement (imagine Occupy gone nationwide minus police brutality) so profound that it generates revolutionary restructuring of the political and financial system. OK, nice dream, right? But what might the policy goals be?

1. If corporations are "persons," arrest them. If you can't figure out how to arrest a criminal corporation, then obviously corporations are not persons, so let's get over this nonsense.

2. Ban unearned income. The super-rich got that way through government welfare in the form of what is literally called "unearned income." That means just what it says - you get something without working for it! Obviously, the money comes from somewhere, and since they did not earn it, one way or the other, it came out of the pockets of those who do work. Worse, having been spoiled by their government handout at your expense, the super-rich now want to avoid taxes on the unearned income. They get a huge gift free from the hard-working taxpayers and still are not satisfied! Why? Simple - the super-rich are not patriotic; they do not think they owe anything to the country that gave them the gift of unearned income. How selfish can you get??? Now of course we could deny them the right to be defended by the U.S. Armed Forces, and we could deny them the right to drive their Mercedes on the national highways, and we could deny them the right to drink from the public water supply, but it would be a lot simpler just to ban unearned income. If you don't earn it, you don't deserve it.

3. Ban mercenaries. Ever since Caesar Augustus used his private palace guard to destroy the Roman Republic and found the Roman Empire, the danger of mercenaries to the state that hires them has been clear. Today, the U.S. has a massive mercenary military force essentially free from Congressional oversight or judicial restraint. This highly dangerous way of subverting the will of the people and its elected representatives to fight foreign wars will eventually come back to haunt us. If a war is worth fighting, then uniformed U.S. soldiers should do the fighting.

4. Welfare for corporations in return for giving corporate profits to the people. If a great corporation encounters adversity, by all means give it welfare - call it a bailout, call it opening the Fed's discount window, or just call it socialism. Socialism means using government to help people, and the people working at great corporations of course deserve charity just as much as everyone else. But corporations are NOT PEOPLE! Corporations are abstract legal/financial entities, and they do not deserve anything. A corporation may be judged too big to fail because it is of value to society, but that is the only reason - we do not "owe" corporations anything any more than we "owe" kindness to the cement blocks their headquarters are resting on. So here's the bargain: if the members of a corporation desire Federal welfare, in return we the people desire their profits, and we will consider paying the CEO at a rate commensurate with that of all other employees.

5. One-Term Leaders. No one should be allowed to be president for more than one term: the temptation to start a war just to get reelected is just too strong. Similarly, Congressfolk should similarly be restricted to one term, with no post-term benefits. Of course, no one is in it for the money, but still the temptation to think about the money rather than about how to help the country is distracting. Anyone who wants a life in government can work his or her way up through the bureaucracy. Seriously - don't you know thousands of people who would make better legislators than the clowns we currently have?

Bottom line: real reform to sustain American democracy requires simultaneous reform of the political system, the economic system, and foreign policy to place all three on a consistent foundation of empowerment of the 99%, i.e., the weaker individuals, groups, and societies.
Additional reform proposals would be welcome.

Iraqi Lessons

The Washington elite decision to invade Iraq occurred for reasons that thinking Americans will bitterly debate for much of the rest of this century. Like it or not, the influence of that decision will be heavy on the shoulders of every person alive on earth for the rest of that person’s life. The question now centers on the lessons we all learn.

Lesson #1: War does not create democracy. If Washington invaded Iraq to defend freedom, the invasion was a disaster. The behavior of the U.S. toward occupied Iraq, the behavior of U.S.forces in Iraq, and the behavior of Iraqi politicians during the occupation have all tarnished the reputation of that ever out-of-reach ideal known as “democracy.”

Lessson #2: The American way of war destroys societies rather than saving them. If Washington invaded Iraq to save the Arab people, its destruction of the most advanced middle class society in the Arab world makes the failure of that goal crystal clear.

Lesson #3: A flashy war somewhere else will trick the American people every time. If Washington invaded Iraq to keep Bush-Cheney in office, the plan worked brilliantly, rescuing an apparently doomed administration. Perhaps the worst president in American history was able to preside over what was, in moral terms, perhaps the most immoral decade in American history, step nimbly over the thousands of dead civilians, ignore the tattered remnants of U.S. Constitutional guarantees of civil liberties, and announce with a grin that being president had been “fun.”

Lesson #4. Empires feast on war. If Washington invaded Iraq to build empire, the lesson to be derived from the perspective of the American people is quite different from the lesson that an empire-builder would derive. Despite being fought to a draw by “rag-tag extremists”—many of whom were in fact genuine nationalists and having its uniformed forces essentially kicked out, the empire-builders have much to savor: Iraq remains, sort of, in the U.S. orbit, with huge and dangerous U.S. mercenary forces evidently planning to remain. Then there’s that monster fortress embassy in the Green Zone. As for the ring of real fortresses, the U.S. military bases, just exactly what is happening to them? More significantly for empire-builders, the war facilitated the establishment of a larger ring of U.S. bases throughout the region, not just surrounding Iran but making clear that, for the moment, the U.S. is the winner of the Central Asian Great Game that Russia and Great Britain used to fight. Of course, the small matter of how to avoid a second embarrassing “victory”—in Afghanistan—remains to be worked out; some of our brilliant strategists are now suggesting the (to empire-builders) obvious solution: expand the failed Afghan adventure to Pakistan.

Lesson #5. Even winning a war can harm your security. OK, maybe the U.S. did not exactly “win” the Iraq war, but it certainly conquered the place and invented its current government. Yet who in the U.S. feels more secure? The war empowered bin Laden for years, multiplied anti-U.S. feeling worldwide, contributed greatly to a continuing U.S. economic mess, left the country profoundly divided, and left the U.S. embarrassingly irrelevant in the Arab world, as became obvious when the White House sat on the sidelines during the heady days of Tahrir Square. Meanwhile, Iran, which empire-builders and Likudniks so love to criticize, is manifestly more significant on the world stage than it was a decade ago. Much more seriously for real strategic thinkers, Russia and China are steadily moving forward with low-cost economic development projects to expand their global influence while being pushed more and more warmly into a strategic embrace by the squeeze the U.S. is putting on them.

Lesson #6. Aggression is complicated. If Washington invaded Iraq to get Iran, well, Washington transformed Iraq from Iran’s main enemy into, shall we say, a very friendly and submissive neighbor: dare we say “Iraq is Persian for Canada”? And now Washington is almost throwing Pakistan as well into Iran’s orbit. In the process, Washington also taught Iranians at least two lessons that will come back to haunt Americans. First, Iranian efforts to work with the Bush Administration were accepted briefly when desperately needed to construct a new Afghan regime, after which Bush immediately insulted Iran (remember “Axis of Evil”???). Second, tensions with Iran have greatly empowered Iran’s own militaristic, super-nationalistic “neo-cons.” Iranians have learned that hostility toward the U.S. pays a lot more than cooperation.

Lesson #7. War enriches the rich. This one is harder to contemplate; it's a real conspiracy theory and surely must impute more deviousness to certain factions than they deserve, but if some of those who supported the invasion of Iraq did so to blind the 99.9% to the accelerating shift of power and wealth into the hands of the 0.1%, they certainly achieved what they wanted. One one level, the shift of wealth to the uber-rich occurred directly through the enormous benefits handed to CEOs profitting from the war. On a second level, war tensions distracted Americans. Linking the levels together was an insidious dynamic of rising impoverishment of the 99%, facilitating the task of persuading some of them to sacrifice their lives on the battlefields of empire. That this in fact worked and did so on at least two crucial levels is pretty much beyond dispute; that it was planned from Day 1 is less clear. Nonetheless, now they own it all.

The American people (not the Occupiers; that courageous minority understands the need to defend democracy) are right: a self-satisfied if embarrassed grin followed by firm denial and a trip to the mall is the only way to deal with this mess. Face up to reality and we will all need psychiatrists.

Pakistani Academic Warns of U.S. Threat

Opinion and policy emerge not just from the politicians but also from informed society. If a recent Pakistani academic's assessment of the U.S. as a threat that Pakistan must counter by cooperation with Iran and Russia becomes representative of Pakistani public opinion, the U.S. is likely to face a significant diplomatic and strategic defeat.

At a recent meeting with an Iranian delegation, Punjab University Vice-Chancellor Prof Dr Mujahid Kamran articulated an outspoken perspective on Pakistan's role in the U.S.-centric global political system that Washington decision-makers would do well to contemplate [University of the Punjab Press Release 12/19/11]:

Dr Kamran said that Iran was a great source of inspiration and had set a standard for all the Muslim countries to take stand against the powers who want to control the world. He said that American people were not our enemy but a cabal of international bankers had manipulated wars and brought governments under debt. He said that US Congress and other institutions were their agent and don’t represent the aspirations of American people. He said that through National Defense Authorization, police state conditions would formulize [sic] in the US. He said that elite wanted to take control of Iran but Iranians had a government which represented people and it would not be easy for them to run over Iran. Iran stood like a rock, he said.  “A grim bulletin of Russian Ministry of Defense issued to Prime Minister Putin and President Medvedev states that the Chinese President Hu Jintao has agreed in principle that the only way to stop the West’s aggression led by the United States is through direct and immediate military action. Russian General Nikolai Makarov said he did not rule out local and regional armed conflicts developing into a large-scale war including nuclear weapons,” the Vice-Chancellor added. He said according to Chinese Rear Admiral Zang Zhong [sic], China would not hesitate to protect Iran even with a Third World War. He said that Pakistan should join Iran, China and Russia to expel US from the region.

A Chinese admiral allegedly recently issued an extraordinary warning to the U.S. about attacking Iran:

On Dec. 4, according to a report in Press TV, a news network owned by the Iranian government, Chinese rear admiral and prominent military commentator Zhang Zhaozhong said, “China will not hesitate to protect Iran even with a third world war.”
It is not clear when the statement was made or in what context. Once reported, the statement went viral in China and elsewhere.

Whether this remark was accurately translated or not, the point is clear: an attack on Iran could easily spark a broader war.

Reports of a Russian Ministry of Defense bulletin underscored the point:

A grim Ministry of Defense bulletin issued to Prime Minister Putin and President Medvedev today states that President Hu has “agreed in principal” that the only way to stop the West’s aggression led by the United States is through “direct and immediate military action” and that the Chinese leader has ordered his Naval Forces to “prepare for warfare.” [EU Times 12/7/11.]

American pressure appears to be generating broad global movement toward anti-American cooperation. Empires provoke the rise of opposing coalitions.

Shooting Ourselves in the Foot

Human nature creates crises: the safer, smoother, more stable things are, the more risk people will take, sooner or later wrecking all that stability. Despite the outpouring of analyses of the 2008 Financial Crisis, it remains unlikely that society has internalized this lesson about the ever-present threat of human nature even as regards economic crises, however obvious the message may be. How much less likely is it that we are anywhere close to protecting ourselves from self-inflicted political crises?

We all are now aware that the shortsighted, selfish behavior of a few millionaires on Wall Street, a few politicians, some compliant regulators, and--truth be told--more than a few of the "other 99%" looking to cheat their neighbors for a quick buck can combine to generate a financial tsunami. It's not about foreigners. We are our own worst enemy. What most complacent and confused Americans fail to understand is the degree to which we make our own international political crises as well. From the American War in Vietnam to the Global War on Terror to the looming war against Iran (backed by Russia, China, and maybe Pakistan), the U.S. has the power to take the initiative and create these disasters but lacks the power to resolve them in a beneficial manner.

Note clearly that this discussion concerns “self-inflicted crises,” those resulting from the conscious choice to engage in unnecessarily greedy behavior. A crisis caused by an external force, human or natural, lies outside the discussion. Here the concern is on a class of crisis caused by perfectly avoidable human greed leading to obviously risky behavior (in effect, investing in a chain letter). To put it differently, the class of crises of interest here is a class for which one should expect the guilty to be named and punished (both by the judicial system for crime and by God for their sins).

Since everyone is now thinking about utterly unnecessary and egregiously man-made financial crises even as we are hit by repeated utterly unnecessary and egregiously man-made political crises, a question that seems timely and useful flows from the above paragraphs:

Can our recently learned lessons about financial crises help us to avoid political crises?

In The Black Swan, Taleb reports an alleged pattern of economic risk-taking:

The economist Hyman Minsky sees the cycles of risk taking in the economy as following a pattern: stability and absence of crises encourage risk taking, complacency, and lowered awareness of the possibility of problems. [78.]

Nouriel Roubini, the economics professor who predicted the 2008 Financial Crisis in brilliant detail, described the “vicious cycle” of economic crises as consisting of [once I delete the economic adjectives] the following steps [Nouriel Roubini and Stephen Mihm, Crisis Economics 18.]:

1. Worries drop;
2. Costs fall;
3. The bubble drives growth;
4. Increasingly risky ventures are undertaken.

Applying this abstract vicious cycle (to which I would simple add the obvious final step—collapse, i.e., the point at which the cycle ends...with a bang) derived from economics to international relations is suggestive. Whether in economics or politics, the dynamics of the bubble of greed are frequently equivalent. In the aftermath of 2008, the point as regards economics must be obvious to all, whether they have read Marx, Keynes, Minsky, and Roubini or not. Every poor, naïve, uneducated (or just greedy) homeowner who took out a mortgage that he or she obviously could not afford and has now lost that home is today an expert in bubble economics and the danger to us all posed by unregulated capitalism.

But international politics is harder to see clearly through the fog of greedy politicians who classify information to prevent the voters from learning the truth and who wave the bloody shirt of foreign “menace” to promote their careers. Language too helps to obfuscate. We do not talk of “imperialist bubbles.” But if one abstracts to clear away the clutter of detail, the dynamics of greed, willful denial, moral hazard, and willingness to risk—even promote—“collateral damage” in so-called Global War on Terror looks like nothing so much as the 2008 Financial Crisis. Leaders became increasingly confident that they could not be stopped, with their appetites for new victories, new wealth, and new power rising apace. As the new policy—be it the issuance of new securities based on sub-prime mortgages or military adventures in yet another Muslim society—proceeded without major defeat, each new venture seemed less and less costly. Every small gain was used to justify a larger gain, every small risk to justify a larger risk. Even when the risks were seen, they were dismissed; after all, it was the poor who would suffer from unemployment and foreclosure…or death on the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan, and in the case of the wars, most of those poor were foreigners. Moreover, like the Wall Street firms bailed out by politicians generous with taxpayer funds, the White House was “too big to fail.” Like Wall Street megabanks, the White House knew it and took advantage of it: moral hazard gone wild. Like big bank CEOs, presidents and vice presidents are almost never held criminally accountable in court for their sins. And then suddenly, the financial/imperial party was over, and the victims were left to clean up the mess.

In the abstract the pattern of failure is clear: failure of the people to carry out their democratic responsibility to monitor their leaders, arrogance, abuse of power, denial about the risks, corruption, lack of concern about collateral damage, and moral hazard.

As long as society trusts those in power, the powerful will abuse that trust for personal advantage, be it the selling of bad securities or the selling of bad wars. The more society is willing to countenance collateral damage to workers driven into unemployment and homeowners foreclosed, or Muslim wedding parties bombed and Muslim societies denied the right to civil liberties and national independence from the globalization avalanche, the more the rich and powerful will hold parties at the expense of everyone else. Bubbles are very good business for those who create them. “They” will never stop doing so until “we” put in place the moral strictures, legal regulations, and judicial holding to account necessary to stop them. But it is not that simple, for many of “us” were tempted to buy houses we judged we could flip into the hands of a more naïve neighbor to skim an unfair profit; many of “us” looked the other way while innocent Muslims across the globe were slaughtered in the name of global war to retain all the undeserved special privileges that make possible a rich life in a poor world. So in the end, the old saying is true: we get the government we deserve.

Pakistan Resists U.S. Energy Interference

In view of the current lust of Republican politicians for the environmentally dangerous Keystone Pipeline that would pour filthy shale oil from Canada into the U.S., one can only imagine how those same politicians would react if a foreign country tried to prevent the U.S. from solving its energy problems. But that is exactly what Washington appears to be doing to poverty-stricken Pakistani efforts to emerge from its energy crisis.

The lead paragraph in the Pakistan's English-language daily The Nation says it all:

Notwithstanding the US threats, [my emphasis] Pakistan has not only conveyed its willingness to Iran, it has also stepped up the pace of work on Pak-Iran Gas Pipeline Project. [The Nation 12/20/11.]

Pakistan has many reasons to improve relations with Iran at the expense of the U.S., about which most of official Washington appears oblivious. Indeed, the trend appears very much in the direction of Pakistani-Iranian detente. Pakistan's decision to accelerate construction of a long-planned gas pipeline from Iran, which would represent a huge battlefield defeat for Washington's economic war against the Islamic Republic,will--if not overturned--also accelerate Pakistani-Iranian detente. Combined with separate efforts to construct a joint electricity network, it could make Iran an essential part of Pakistan's future. [A regional perspective on Pakistani-Iranian electricity cooperation is provided by Pakistan's Frontier Post.] Creative U.S. diplomacy might theoretically transform a burgeoning Pakistani-Iranian detente into an opportunity for a trilateral dialogue, perhaps led by Pakistan, which desperately needs cooperative relations with both countries, but little sign of diplomatic creativity has been seen in Washington since Obama's now long-forgotten Cairo address.

The reality seems much grimmer. Unidentified "sources," according to the Pakistani report, claim that Washington has "gone to the extent of threatening President Zardari of economic sanctions if work is not stopped immediately." The minister cut to the chase:

Asked how Pakistan would sustain unprecedented American pressure against this project, the minister said: “Come what may, we will have to learn to live on our own.”

Muslim states simply are not to be allowed to engage in bilateral economic projects that interfere with global superpower strategy. One wonders if anyone in Washington can see how all this, so conveniently for American adversaries in Iran, neatly places Iran and Pakistan in the same box: two innocents suffering from U.S. economic warfare.

The potential size of the U.S. blunder in shoving Pakistan into that box with Iran is suggested by a comment by none other than Pakistan's petroleum minister, who noted that Iran's eager trade partner China would be serving as financial adviser to the project. Can anyone in Washington see the strategic implications of defining the U.S. role as spoiler? If Washington fails in its spoiler role, it nevertheless alienates both Pakistan and China and confirms in their minds the need to work closely with Iran and any other candidate to resist U.S. pressure. If it succeeds in its spoiler role, same outcome. A no-win policy is great policy.

Assessing Blame for the U.S.-Iranian Conflict

The U.S.-Iranian contest for status appears highly dangerous: even if the players are in the game for purposes short of war (e.g., national status, personal career), miscalculation is an ever-present threat. Moreover, the game is expensive on numerous levels, not least the waste of oil powering all those U.S. ships in the Persian Gulf. Therefore, assessing who is to blame is critical. It's not about punishing the irresponsible but about discovering a solution.

Washington has placed more obstacles in the way of U.S.-Iranian rapprochement that has Tehran, judging from a simple list, though policy makers seem curiously oblivious to their own actions. The list suffices to illustrate that Washington bears some of the responsibility for the conflict, and recognition of even that simple fact on the part of U.S. decision makers would constitute progress, but a serious assessment of where blame lies requires moving past mere lists, and a straightforward weighting scheme is the next step. The approach might clarify far more than just U.S.-Iranian relations.

Parsimony is the key to designing an unbiased weighting scheme.  All can probably agree that existential threats are the worst, lesser national security threats a bit lower on the scale of severity, threats to the regime (but not the state, much less the population) yet less severe. Insults, despite the propensity of politicians on the make to treat them as worth their weight in gold, are far less significant than military or diplomatic moves. Preparations are more difficult to score, but since every country feels that it has the right to prepare (to research, to arm, to train), it is hard to see how legally permitted preparations can be ranked as very seriously. By now it should be clear that the business of weighting schemes, albeit useful for measuring the significance of behavior, can get messy very quickly.

In an attempt to avoid such messiness, then, the following parsimonious weighting scheme is proposed, with a score of 8 for "Existential Attack" down to 1 for "Rhetorical Attack:"

• Existential Attack - war that could destroy the society
• Attack on State - war that could destroy the military but takes care to avoid destruction of society
• Regime Overthrow Attempt
• Lesser Military Moves - repositioning forces, arming adversaries
• Non-military Use of Force - economic sanctions
• Official Threat to Use Force
• Diplomatic Campaign to Weaken Adversary
• Rhetorical Attack - insults carrying no clear implication of action.

Much is of course overlooked. For example, is an official threat to attack by a nuclear state by definition an "existential threat" that should be scored higher than threats by states that possess no weapons of mass destruction? This weighting scheme is a short step on the road to placing blame, yet it already seems to improve our understanding by demonstrating how ridiculous glib protestations of innocence are.

The "Assessing Blame" table, scoring once if either state has even once done the relevant act, generates a much higher score for the U.S. than for Iran. Note that the issue of whether the U.S. has actually done anything to overthrow the Iranian regime is scored "0," arguably introducing a pro-U.S. bias. Moreover, each state gets the same score of "5" for lesser military move, which again seems to introduce a pro-U.S. bias since it leaves the host of threatening U.S. and Israeli military moves scoring no more than the relatively minor Iranian military moves in Iraq and Lebanon. Third, each is scored "3" for conducting a hostile diplomatic campaign, but again consider the reality: while the Iranian campaign is for reform of the global political system to "cut the U.S. down to size" the U.S. campaign is arguably a far more serious effort to marginalize Iran. Iran's call for reform is not only quite reasonable on the face of it (a pro-U.S. bias does obviously exist in the governance of the world and U.S. management of the world is fraught with errors), but Iran's campaign calls for new leadership not the exclusion of the U.S. from world affairs.

The substantive elephant in the methodological room that is left untreated in the above analysis is the charge that Iran's alleged policy of nuclear opacity may be designed to enable Iran to sneak up to a breakout capacity that would enable it to create a handful of nuclear bombs with which to threaten Israel, which has an official policy of nuclear opacity and is commonly thought to possess 200-400 nuclear bombs, not to mention a variety of delivery systems, all under a one-sided U.S. defensive umbrella. Since even a lopsidedly weak nuclear breakout is still something of a game changer, Iran's apparent inability to present clear evidence that it is not traveling down this road deserves consideration...but only in the context of a vastly superior Israeli nuclear capability. Israel cannot, legitimately, have it both ways: either ignore the nukes and nuclear aspirations of both sides or pay attention to the nukes and nuclear aspirations of both sides. The contribution of a clear method is how clearly it brings such issues into focus.


In short, even a simplistic weighting scheme further reveals the degree to which blame for the U.S.-Iranian conflict lies not just partly but mostly on the U.S. side.

Impediments to U.S.-Iranian Reconciliation

The Obama Administration's stance toward Iran, while at least refreshingly nuanced, remains caught in the overall grip of provincialism and absence of creativity that has characterized U.S. policy since the Islamic Revolution. Recent remarks by General Martin Dempsey, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, reflect this disturbing combination of insights amid blindness.

The U.S. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs made important remarks on Iran this Friday which included both realistic caution and continuing evidence of the profound and dangerous degree of self-delusion in Washington. To his credit, General Dempsey supported Panetta's attitude that war is not the answer, but other comments suggested that Washington remains deeply disconnected from reality. Asked if Washington was making efforts to reach an agreement with Iran to avoid accidental incidents that might lead to an undesired conflict, Dempsey said:

We have discussed this but have not come to a decision about opening up links or a hotline to seek an option to de- escalate any incident. It's not our behaviour that's the impediment to progress here. 

While this may well have just been a thoughtless and casual response, such lack of sensitivity to a longstanding adversary's perception of reality betrays an astounding degree of provincialism, suggesting that an undesired war is indeed a very real possibility. Evidently the general and, almost surely, the rest of the Administration, would benefit from deeper consideration of which side's behavior constitutes "the impediment to progress."


U.S. and allied behavior includes the following impediments:

• introduction of nuclear arms into the region (Israel);
• threats of aggression;
• establishment of a ring of military bases surrounding Iran;
• highly public economic warfare against Iran;
• sailing of nuclear-capable submarines off Iran's territory waters (Israel);
• a long violent invasion and occupation of Iraq designed to put Iraq firmly in the U.S. camp;
• the belligerent sailing of a powerful U.S. attack fleet in the Persian Gulf.

Iranian behavior includes the following impediments:

• impolite rhetoric demonstrating a lack of sensitivity to Israelis;
• defensive aid to Hezbollah;
• murky nuclear transparency designed to get away with as much as possible without clearly violating Iran's nonproliferation commitments;
• military and financial aid to Iraqi political allies to facilitate resistance to the U.S. invasion;
• a political campaign to promote regional resistance to Israel;
• a political campaign to promote the restructuring of the global political system away from its current U.S.-centric position toward a more "democratic" system that would deny the U.S. its current position of supremacy.

Examine the two lists. While both sides are playing tough, there can hardly be any doubt that U.S./Israeli behavior is vastly more provocative than Iran's. After all, Iran's impediments mostly add up to perfectly legitimate defensive moves and calls for global political reform, while Washington's impediments are focused on the application of force (even if one does not count the appearance of a U.S.-Israeli terrorist campaign to murder Iranian nuclear scientists). Add the overwhelming preponderance of force on the U.S./Israeli side, and the mountain of U.S. impediments to improved relations emerges clearly. Those U.S. impediments may or may not bother Iranian hardliners, who benefit enormously from being able to scare their people into support or submission simply by letting them see what Washington is doing, but they are great cause for concern on the part of anyone hoping for regional peace.


If Washington ever decides that it wants to solve the U.S.-Iranian conflict, at this point, it probably has no effective short-term option; through short-sighted animosity, it has boxed itself into a corner and ceded its freedom of maneuver to the Israeli war party extremists. Over the long term, however, Washington does have an option that would be low-risk since it requires no strategic weakening of the fundamental U.S. power position but which might pull the rug out from under Iranian hardliners: offering Iran a bargain including respect, inclusion, and security in return for cooperation in moving toward a regional nuclear regime based on transparency on the part of all countries either in the region or with military forces in the region. Such words would not ever impress all Iranians (how could they, given the history of U.S. duplicity toward Iranian democratic aspirations?), but over time might well impress enough Iranian national security officials to change Iranian policy. The real impediment is this: as the side with the power, it is up to the U.S. to come to the realization that the first move is up to Washington, not to a weak--if noisy--Tehran that sits nervously in a defensive crouch.