[NYTr] Alex Cockburn: Will the US Really Bomb Iran?

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

Counterpunch - Sep 8, 2007
http://www.counterpunch.org/cockburn09082007.html

CounterPunch Diary

Will the US Really Bomb Iran?

By ALEXANDER COCKBURN

"They're about taking out the entire Iranian military."

This particular spine-chiller comes from Alexis Debat, excitingly
identified as "director of terrorism and national security" at the
Nixon Center. According to Debat, the big takeout is what the U.S. Air
Force has in store, as opposed to mere "pinprick strikes" against the
infamous nuclear facilities.

Predicting imminent war on Iran has been one of the top two items in
Cassandra's repertoire for a couple of years now, rivaled only by
global warming as a sure-fire way to sell newspapers and boost website
hits.

Debat was re-roasting that well-scorched chestnut, the "Shock and Awe"
strategy, whereby-back in March of 2003-the U.S. Air Force proposed to
reduce Iraq's entire military to smoldering ruins. In the event, "Shock
and Awe" was a resounding failure, like all such pledges by Air Force
commanders to destroy the enemy's military since the birth of aerial
bombardments nearly a century ago. Such failures have never stopped the
US Air Force from trying once again, and there are no doubt vivid
attack plans now circulating the government.

Will it come to pass? In his memoirs, "I Claud" (which I'm happy to say
CounterPunch Books/AK Press will be republishing next spring,) my
father offers a useful recipe on this matter of prediction.

    One morning, as we at length relaxed at breakfast by a brazier on
the terrace of the Café du Dôme, he [Robert Dell, the diplomatic
correspondent of the Manchester Guardian] said to me: "Do you want to
get what used to be called a 'scoop' for your horrid little paper every
day?" (The "horrid little paper" was, of course, the Daily Worker,
whose diplomatic correspondent I then was.)

    "That would be nice."

    "Well then, all you have to do is to read all the continental
papers available every morning, take lunch with one or more of Europe's
leading politicians or diplomats, make up your mind what is the vilest
action that, in the circumstances, the French, British, Italian or
German government could undertake, and then, in the leisure of the
afternoon, sit down at your typewriter and write a dispatch announcing
that that is just what they are going to do. You can't miss. Your news
will be denied two hours after it is published and confirmed after
twenty four."

So, whether in 24 hours or 24 days or at some point before the end of
his term, we should predict Bush will send the bombers on their way to
Teheran to destroy the usual targets--power stations and kindred
civilian infrastructure, hospitals, maybe a few bomb shelters crammed
with women and children.

But will it really come to pass?

Despite the unending stream of stories across the months announcing
that an attack on Iran is on the way, I've had my doubts. Amid the
housing slump here, with the possibility of an inflationary surge as
the credit balloon threatens to explode, would the US government really
want to see the price of gas at the pump go over $5? What would Hugo
Chavez do? Even a hiccup in flows from Venezuela would paralyze
refineries here, specifically designed for Venezuelan crude. China has
a big stake in Iran. It's also Uncle Sam's banker. The Chinese don't
have to destroy the dollar, merely squeeze its windpipe, or revalue
their currency enough to double retail prices in Wal-Mart. The
Republicans and the presidential candidates wouldn't want that on the
edge of an election year.

The Joint Chiefs of Staff know the Iraq War has almost broken the US
Army. Wouldn't they adamantly oppose the notion of an attack on Iran,
which would see Shiite resistance groups in Iraq cut US supply convoys
from Kuwait bringing fuel and water to the big US bases? Wouldn't
Shiite forces as a whole finally commence a campaign of eviction of the
American occupier? Wouldn't this puncture the fantasy that General
Petraeus' "surge" is working?

The other side of the ledger isn't hard to fill in either. The oil
companies like a crisis that sends up the price of their commodity. The
Chinese are a prudent lot and don't want to rock the world economy.
Politically, both they and Russia would like to see the US compound the
disaster in Iraq and get into a long-term mess in Iran. Israel wants an
attack on Iran, and the Israel lobby calls the shots in US foreign
policy. What Israel wants, Israel gets. The US peace movement is in
disarray, and sizable chunks of it would be delighted to see bombs
shower down on the woman-hating ayatollahs and Ahmadinejad, the
holocaust denier.

Amid the disaster of their Middle Eastern strategy Bush and his
advisors may hype themselves into one last desperate throw, emboldened
by the fact that the selling of the surge has been a success even
though all the Democrats need to do is cite the UN, which says the
number of Iraqis fleeing their homes has gone from 50,000 to 60,000 a
month. Or quote Associated Press which counted 1,809 Iraqi civilians
killed in August, compared with 1,760 in July. The Sunni split in Anbar
province is not one likely to be replicated in Baghdad or elsewhere and
anyway had nothing to do with the hike in US troop levels. Bush didn't
dare go to Baghdad.

Weigh it all up, and you'd be foolish to bet that an attack on Iran
won't happen. I knew Noam Chomsky used to be dubious about the
likelihood of a U.S. attack and emailed him last week to ask if he is
still of that opinion. Here's his answer.

    Yes, I was quite sceptical. Less so over the years. They're
desperate. Everything they touch is in ruins. They're even in danger of
losing control over Middle Eastern oil -- to China, the topic that's
rarely discussed but is on every planner or corporation exec's mind, if
they're sane. Iran already has observer status at the Shanghai
Cooperation Organization -- from which the US was pointedly excluded.
Chinese trade with Saudi Arabia, even military sales, is growing fast.
With the Bush administration in danger of losing Shiite Iraq, where
most of the oil is (and most Saudi oil in regions with a harshly
oppressed Shiite population), they may be in real trouble.

    Under these circumstances, they're unpredictable. They might go for
broke, and hope they can salvage something from the wreckage. If they
do bomb, I suspect it will be accompanied by a ground assault in
Khuzestan, near the Gulf, where the oil is (and an Arab population --
there already is an Ahwazi liberation front, probably organized by the
CIA, which the US can "defend" from the evil Persians), and then they
can bomb the rest of the country to rubble. And show who's boss.

The peace movement had better pull itself together, remembering that
should the bombs start to fall on Tehran, most of the Democrats in
Congress will be on their feet, cheering.

[Note: A shorter version of this column ran in The Nation last
Wednesday.]