At the time of writing, the US President, Donald Trump, has cancelled US military plans for strikes on Iran, in response to the Iranian downing of a US drone and attacks on merchant shipping. On any view, the Iranian regime has been behaving badly. There are good arguments for and against striking Iran. There are very few if any good arguments for a policy of passivity. There is even less reason for viewing this as a problem of Trump or Obama, rather than simply as the enduring "Persian Puzzle".
This Iranian challenge has, since the fall of the Shah in February 1979, been a problem for every US President since Jimmy Carter. It was not always so. Prior to 1979, the Shia monarchical and unified Iran and its 'white revolution' had been a model of how a modernising state could also keep its Muslim faith – esp Shiism which in Iran has historically been accommodating of Jews and Christians. The last Shah was not the best of rulers, to be sure, but he was a good ally of the West, and of Israel, and the Shah also had created an Islamic monarchy that was capable of developing into the constitutional monarchy that had been the object of Iranian reformers almost a century prior. The Iran under the Shah was considered the ‘gendarme of the Middle East’. Instead, the Kerenskyite combination of liberals and Islamists protesting from 1977-1979 ensured that the liberals could do enough to bring down the Shah and not enough to prevent the rise of the Mullahs. The downfall of the Shah and his replacement in 1979 by Khomeini’s Islamic republic – and the Mullahs’ rule of Iran - marked more than a regime change but a civilizational turning point. Since 1979, and especially since the Iran hostage crisis of 1979-1981 and the Beirut bombings of 1983, the Islamic Republic of Iran has been a pariah state, deservedly so.
There are, thus, good reasons for the West to take a confrontational policy towards Iran.
Firstly, as a matter of realpolitik, Iran is the adversarial regional hegemon of a crucial part of Eurasia. It is impossible to fully grasp the historical centrality of what is now Iran without understanding Iran is in the heartland of what Sir Halford Mackinder called the ‘world island’.
Iran is approximately 80 million people occupying the most historically vital land routes to and from Europe and Asia, and is a provider (like Russia) of vital air travel corridors. An aggressive Iran pursuing a policy to deny the West access to and influence in this critical part of the world cannot go unresponded to, at least not without the running of grave risk.
Moreover, as I have written elsewhere some years ago, Iran is the natural hegemon of a region that spans from Kabul to Kobane. Iran has a military history and military culture that is at least 3000 years old, and a commensurate antiquity of brain. Iran is, as I am fond of saying, a "real country", and it also has, despite its proliferation of ethnicities and religions, in addition to its Persian Shia core, a strong sense of Iranian nationhood that all Iranians share, and a capacity to mobilise a population for war - and then endure war and struggle for a significant period of time. As enduring strategic cultures go, Iran can be compared to Russia and China, with geography and history determining Iran's responses no less than do seapower realities fashion the responses of the British imperial nations and the United States. The Iranian military infrastructure includes a very large and self-sufficient Iranian armaments industry, built out of necessity after the Shah fell, but which has only gone ahead in leaps and bounds, such that Iran's capacity to sustain itself in war, and respond asymmetrically cannot be taken lightly. During the Iran-Iraq War, Iran had the support of few countries, and its most reliable arms and ammunition suppliers were itself, North Korea, and, when realpolitik demanded, Israel. Iran's own military resources are supplemented by Russian weaponry. Iran's own military posture and its willingness to both support militant proxies and both Shia and Sunni jihadis, as well as use Greater Khorasan to provide strategic depth, is probably one of the most important and yet under-reported stories of our time. Moreover, viewed from Tehran, the Persian Gulf is called thus for very good and well-founded historical reasons.
Secondly, Iran is the world’s major state sponsor of terrorism. Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-Qods Force (IRGC-QF) are a veritable ‘best practice leader’ in sponsoring terrorism, from the training and ‘mentoring’ of terrorists to their arming and equipping over years. Where some terrorist organisations struggle to effect mass casualty attacks, Iran’s proxies have veritable campaign plans. Iran has not only helped create Hezbollah in Lebanon, which has developed, also, into its own terrorism for export business, but Iran has also assisted Sunni jihadi groups as well, even without exercising operational control, such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad. The ability of senior Al Qaeda fighters to move permissively between Afghanistan and Iraq/Syria, ie through Iran and its near abroad, cannot be by accident. The Iranian regime, also, has had a demonstrated capacity to engage in murder and terrorism, far from home, as former senior officials of the Shah’s regime found out to their peril.
Thirdly, Iran has sought and seeks weapons of mass destruction, especially a nuclear capability, and Iran has been a close ally of North Korea for almost 40 years. It is impossible to discuss North Korea sensibly without any discussion of Iran’s role as a funder, customer, and energy supplier, of North Korea. It is also impossible to discuss the threat posed by an Iranian hunger for a nuclear weapon without discussing Tehran’s use of North Korea as a weapons laboratory, and that any capabilities possessed by North Korea will be readily assimilated by Iran. One does not have to be a neoconservative to appreciate there is a real ‘axis of evil’ between Tehran and Pyongyang. The North Koreans, too, are no strangers to supporting terrorism. On these grounds alone, planning for a strong military response to Iranian misconduct should always be considered, reviewed, and updated.
Fourthly, the Strait of Hormuz is a vital waterway through which approximately 21 million barrels of oil per day is shipped, composing roughly 21% of global petroleum, especially for the benefit of Asia and Europe. To be sure, this raises the questions as to why the Chinese and Europeans less alarmed by Iranian behaviour than the US. There is an assumption that the US (and Allies) will police the Gulf, which, to the degree it means a reluctance to challenge the Persian Gulf as an ‘allied lake’, then this is no bad thing. A more dangerous Strait of Hormuz only guarantees new methods of delivery, including pipelines avoiding the Hormuz strait problem altogether, will be found.
Fifthly, per the above, the West, especially the Anglophone states, have enduring security obligations to their Arab allies, all of whom worry about the hegemonic ambitions of the Iranian regime. Since at least the fall of the Ottomans, there has been a successive as well as complementary understanding that the British and the Americans would help guarantee the security to the Arabian peninsular in return for conferring rights on the British and the Americans in respect of resource extraction and the steady flow of oil from the Persian Gulf. In respect of Jordan and Egypt, this Anglo-American security understanding has included significant local military support in return for Arab support against Saddam’s Iraq and to help secure the State of Israel. The Arab allies have been reliable partners on a range of issues since at least World War II. It is difficult, in particular, to overstate the support provided by Saudi Arabia to the West during the Cold War, not just in the period concerning the Shah’s fall, but also in helping facilitate the sort of diplomacy that is not officially acknowledged. The fear that the Iranian regime’s capabilities and demonstrated expeditionary capacity generate cannot be exaggerated, particularly in an era when Qatar is, also, alienating its former allies. The view from the Gulf Arab states of their security position, with Iran and its proxies forming an arc from Damascus through Baghdad, through the Gulf, south to Yemen, demonstrates a concerted Iranian campaign to encircle, strategically, the West's closest Gulf Arab allies. Moreover, in a very real sense, the West's alliance with the Gulf Arabs is the historic penance due to the sin of letting the Shah fall in 1978-1979. The Shah of Iran was the West's closest ally and was a vital support against the Soviets to the north, and a check on Arab nationalism to the west, and a monitor of events in Afghanistan to the east. When the Shah of Iran fell, so, too, did much of the post-WWII security architecture on which much of Western security relied. Given the importance of the region and of the Gulf itself, it would have been folly of the highest order if Western powers had not more closely engaged and strengthened, as well as militarily fortified, the friendly Gulf Arabs. That the Gulf Arabs may not as yet be 'Scandinavia with camels' is neither here nor there - geopolitics does not care about your feelings.
However, there are also very good reasons for the West, led by the US, to, for now, anyway, step back and not escalate the tense situation.
The primary consideration, which goes entirely unmentioned by the, “Whither the liberal international order?” crowd bloviating from their cable TV green rooms and think-tanks - but which consideration is not missed by anyone with any sort of military intelligence and planning background – is that there are still almost 20,000 Allied troops in neighbouring Afghanistan. Any attack by the US on Iran would, almost certainly, see Iranian-backed attacks on Allied forces in Afghanistan only increase. Afghanistan, especially the once Persian areas of western Afghanistan such as Herat, are not just neighbouring Iran but are seen by Iran, whether under the Shah or under the Mullahs, as security frontiers. There is almost no way that a strike on Iran would not endanger Allied troops in Afghanistan. Moreover, there would be even greater threats to the supply of Allied troops, already positioned at some distance from closely allies’ territories, over the coming Afghan winter, as well as endangerment of any future extraction of the Allied position.
The ongoing vulnerability of the Allied position in Afghanistan makes clear, also, the illogic of not just attacking Iran but, also, poking the adjacent and hyper-aggressive Russian bear, to any serious person trying to appreciate, militarily, the current situation. All that the Afghanistan War has managed in almost 20 years to achieve, at considerable cost in precious lives and national treasures, is to position a permanently exposed Allied expeditionary force close to Iran and Russia, in addition to its regular combat with the Taliban and like enemies. It is hard to conceive of a more strategically reckless misallocation of precious military resources than the Afghan War, as I have argued here.
A secondary, if more sublime, consideration that militates against striking Iran is that a strike sufficient to have any effect on the Iranian regime would likely bond average Iranians to an unpopular Mullahs’ regime. It would provide a ready Western scapegoat for the Iranian Regime’s corruption, brutality, and its inability to supply its citizens’ most basic needs. The Iranian people are a brilliant people and are now often protesting the regime. Their great King, Cyrus, is central to the Biblical story of the Jews’ return to Zion in Ezra and Nehemiah. The ancient history of Greece, Rome, and Byzantium, as well as the history of the Ottomans and the Russians, is filled with their wars and diplomacy with the Persians. This history is a testimony not just to the historic geopolitical importance of Iran’s territory but also to the dynamism and will of the Persian and Iranian peoples across millennia. There are ample reasons given by Persian and Iranian history for believing that the Mullahs regime will fall, perhaps by a popular revolt building on the 2009 protests, perhaps by a successful military coup. The West should do its best to contain the Iranian regime’s worst external manifestations, especially that of its sponsorship of terrorism and the threat to both Persian and Omani Gulfs. But, in respect of the internal dynamics of Iran, the West should do as little as it possibly can to make everyday Iranians feel any sort of loyalty to the Mullahs’ regime, of the kind that a military assault on Iran would inevitably provoke. Instead, consistent with the West’s ongoing containment of an aggressive Iran, measures should be taken to aid the Iranian civil society and, especially, those Iranians who seek a future of constitutional government, under the rule of law, and honouring the finest traditions of Iran as a pluralist and prosperous nation.
All in all, there are no really good options in 2019 with respect to Iran. It is an ancient civilisation, it is a hegemonic power, it is a sponsor of terrorism, it is a maker of bad into much worse situations. Iran constitutes a challenge that prudence dictates must be taken very seriously. At the same time, Iran is simply too large for a comprehensive military response short of a full-scale war – and on any view, we are not yet at that juncture.
As I often counsel here, and elsewhere, it is always good to see things as they are and to keep even the gravest of matters in perspective. Iran has been subject to severe sanctions and these will likely get only worse as a result of the regime’s behaviour. The living standards of the average Iranian are poor and getting worse. The regime is already paying a high price for its transgressions in terms of isolation and the impoverishment of its people. For now, to borrow from the great American diplomat George Kennan, in the context of the now defunct Soviet Union, the main element of the West’s policy towards Iran must be that of a “long-term patient but firm and vigilant containment of [Iran’s aggressive] tendencies.” Such a policy has yielded benefits in the past and will do so in the future. Iran is too great a nation to continue, for long, under the rule of such a squalid regime, and the West should do all it can to help promote, peacefully, the possibility of an alternative Iranian future, which builds on its long tradition, especially in Shiism, of the importance of law, and a historic Iranian thirst for constitutional government.
For now, the West should prepare for any eventuality, and rattle the sabre, if necessary and productive, but always be under no illusion that drawing it for the purposes of military action will not see it soon recovered to its scabbard. The wisest course is to keep our powder dry while maintaining the closest watch on the Iranian regime while, also, trusting the Iranian people, and doing all we can to encourage a peaceful and lasting 'regime change'. The Iranians, after all of the suffering of the last 40 years, certainly deserve no less.
No comments:
Post a Comment