Next
Target: Iran?
By
Jim Lobe
7 May, 2003
With Iraq under U.S. occupation and Syria shaken by a series of high-level
threats from the administration here, Iran is now looming as a major
target for U.S. pressure.
With officials in Washington
talking darkly about ''Iranian agents'' crossing the border into Iraq
to foment trouble for the U.S. occupation, a leading neo-conservative
strategist Monday said the United States is already in a ''death struggle''
with Teheran, and he urged the administration of President George W.
Bush to ''take the fight to Iran'', through ''covert operations'', among
other measures.
The appeal by the chief editor
of 'The Weekly Standard', William Kristol, followed last week's surprise
announcement that U.S. military forces had signed a surrender agreement
with rebel Iranian forces based in Iraq that permits them to retain
their weapons and equipment, including tanks, despite their formal designation
by the State Department as a terrorist group.
The agreement between the
military and the Mujahadeen Khalq sparked speculation that Washington
may deploy the group, which had been supported by Baghdad for more than
20 years, against Teheran or its allies in Iraq, despite its terrorist
tactics.
Women fighters of the People's Mujahideen practice artillery gun drills
at the Ashraf base, the Iranian militia's largest compound in Iraq,
100 kilometers from the border with Iran, May 2, 2003. The U.S. military
bombed Mujahideen at the beginning of its war to oust Saddam Hussein
but has now signed a cease-fire with the group that it labels a 'terrorist
organization'. REUTERS/Petr Josek
''The liberation of Iraq was the first great battle for the future of
the Middle East,'' wrote Kristol in the Standard's latest issue. ''The
next great battle - not, we hope, a military battle - will be for Iran.
We are already in a death struggle with Iran over the future of Iraq,''
added the editor, who is closely associated with Richard Perle and other
neo-conservatives in the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board (DPB).
Kristol's blast reflects
the ongoing and increasingly intense policy debate within the administration
between hawks centred in the Defense Department and Vice President Dick
Cheney's office on the one hand and ''realists'' in the State Department
and Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) on the other.
The Islamic government in
Teheran, long accused by Washington of being the word's most active
supporter of international terrorism, primarily due to its backing for
Lebanon's Hezbollah, has been a particular target for neo-conservatives
like Kristol, who see it as the greatest long-term threat to Israel,
especially now that Baghdad is in U.S. hands.
In an open letter to Bush
sent on Sep. 20, 2001 - just nine days after the Sep. 11 terrorist attacks
on New York and the Pentagon, the influential Project for the New American
Century (PNAC), chaired by Kristol, called for Washington to deliver
an ultimatum to both Syria and Iran demanding a halt to their support
for Hezbollah.
''Should Iran and Syria refuse
to comply, the administration should consider appropriate measures of
retaliation against these known state sponsors of terrorism,'' urged
the letter, whose agenda for the anti-terrorist campaign so far has
been followed in virtually each detail, from the ouster of the Taliban
in Afghanistan and Saddam in Iraq, to the cutting off of U.S. support
for Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.
In fact, intelligence reports
claim that supplies to Hezbollah have fallen off fairly sharply in the
last year, but the neo-conservatives and other hawks are now claiming
that Teheran is determined to make Washington's stay in Iraq difficult.
Despite informal but relatively
high-level diplomatic contacts between the two countries - which broke
off formal ties after the U.S. embassy seizure in Teheran in late 1979
- in the run-up to the war, the hawks are claiming that Iran failed
to co-operate during the actual hostilities and is now actively undermining
U.S. efforts to stabilize Iraq.
In an article appearing in
last week's 'The New Republic', Eli Lake, a reporter with close ties
to administration hardliners, claimed that Iran has not only provided
safe haven to a number of Iraqi and Islamist fugitives wanted by Washington,
but has also planned to infiltrate its own paramilitary units to create
confusion on the ground.
In addition, U.S. media reports
for the past two weeks have been filled with assertions about ''Iranian
agents'' in the Shiite community in Iraq whose goal is to back local
clerics in a bid to create an ''Iranian-style Islamic Republic''. Shiites
constitute about 60 percent of Iraq's population.
Their main instrument for
this effort, according to the accounts, is the Teheran-based Supreme
Council for the Islamic Revolution of Iraq (SCIRI) headed by Abdulaziz
Hakim and his brother Ayatollah Mohammed Bakir Hakim. They have been
coy about their participation in U.S. efforts to establish an Iraqi
governing council over the next month.
Kristol's article reflects
the thinking of a number of neo-conservative strategists who have been
arguing virtually since Sep. 11 that the Iranian people, especially
the youth, are ready to rise up against the mullahs, including the reformists
led by President Mohammed Khatami, the minute Washington installs a
secular, democratic government next door in Iraq.
The theocrats ruling
Iran understand that the stakes are now double or nothing,'' according
to Kristol. ''They can stay in power by disrupting efforts to create
a pluralist, non-theocratic, Shia-majority state next door - or they
can fail, as success in Iraq sounds the death knell for the Iranian
revolution.''
The hawks have been encouraged
in that view by much of the Iranian exile community, according to Gary
Sick, a Columbia University expert who served on the National Security
Council under the Carter administration.
''The argument among the
American ayatollahs (of conservatism) is that the only solution for
Iran is to get rid of the regime,'' says Sick.
They say that the Iranian
people are ready to rise up, the regime is about to collapse, but people
in Iran say this is just nonsense. The situation in Iran was far more
unsettled in 1999 than it is now,'' added Sick, who noted that suspicions
among Iranians that Washington is already trying to manipulate the internal
situation is complicating the life of (Iran's) reformers''.
The fact that prominent neo-conservatives
closely tied to administration hawks are now calling for covert action
against Teheran, combined with the surrender accord with the Mujahadeen,
is likely to fuel those suspicions and will, in any case, make it far
more difficult for forces with influence in Iran to press for co-operation
with Washington.
Sick said he was ''totally
surprised'' by the surrender accord, whose details have still not been
released. ''The notion that we would join forces with (the Mujahadeen)
really undercuts the whole idea of our war on terrorism,'' he noted,
and will preclude ''any kind of working arrangement with Iran''.
But Kristol and his comrades
in and out of the administration insist that there is no point in working
with Teheran anyway and much to be gained by helping oust the ''theocrats''.
''Iran is the tipping point
in the war on proliferation, the war on terror, and the effort to reshape
the Middle East. If Iran goes pro-Western and anti-terror, positive
changes in Syria and Saudi Arabia will follow much more easily. And
the chances for an Israeli-Palestinian settlement will greatly improve,''
wrote Kristol.