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In predicting the outcome of a war or serious conflict scenario in the Middle East, unfortunately the threat of U.S. military presence and western economic sanctions in itself will do nothing to detour Iran from wrapping up its nuclear program. In fact these circumstances and the harm to Iran’s economy seem only to raise Iran’s ire even more. Therefore, I see U.S. moves as nothing more than running down the clock on non-military tactics. Meanwhile, this weekend Iran is starting new military exercises on the ground. What’s interesting about this exercise is that it involves Revolutionary Guards and not Iran’s navy. This tells us the obvious, that Iran will employ asymmetric and non-conventional tactics to close the Strait of Hormuz.
Iranian (and American) politics are also playing a role. In a stacked election coming on March 2, the new Iranian parliament (the Majles) will arrive. With its arrival, all remaining vintages of a moderate faction will be swept out. This is a power consolidation by religious Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei to eliminate all opposition from Ahmadinejad and any surviving moderates. In some respects, Khamenei makes Ahmadinejad seem a bit tame. He is convinced that the West’s political-economic system is decayed and is ripe for a fall, and he seems more than willing to put his theory to the test. He compares the West today to the crumbling Soviet Union of the late 1980s, which was “swept away” because it had “no logic.” ["Khamenei Won't Retreat"]
After the power consolidation, Khamenei will be more than willing to employ the more aggressive asymmetric tactics used by the Revolutionary Guard to try and bait Israel and the U.S. into some accident or retaliation, even before a strike against Iran’s facilities. Daring a strike would be a way of flipping a big middle finger and demonstrating to all that Iran’s nukes were buried safely underground. If that doesn’t work, he will provoke. After all, the U.S. was recently warned by Iran about its presence in its home court, the Persian Gulf. The U.S. responded by employing three aircraft carrier groups.
Post March 2, Iran will become even more hardline and will literally bunker down. At this point, Iran and its nuke capability will become a central topic of U.S. elections. Republican presidential candidates are going to play to the idea that potentially secular and democratic voices are being suppressed by a tyrannical regime in Tehran and Obama is not lifting a finger. There is going to be saber-rattling calls in the U.S. to “support the Green Movement,” and for “regime change” in Iran. Once sanctions fizzle and this heats up, Obama will be more and more on the defensive politically.
As a variable to all this, Israel could strike before these March 2 elections in a somewhat wild gamble to rattle the cage in Iran and hope for a different internal outcome other than the table that is now being set. But for real opposition to materialize within Iran — and given that the Green Movement was hung out to dry by the world in 2009 — the U.S. would also have to be heavily engaged militarily, taking out the Revolutionary Guard, the hardline cleric leadership in addition to the nuke facilities. That’s a tall order.
On the other hand, the huge dilemma for Israel is that the Iranians have enough enriched uranium in deep underground facilities to make a weapon. Israel has serious doubts about that. The immediate tactical variable driving Israel’s apparent push toward strikes is the ongoing installation of centrifuges in the new enrichment facility at Fordo near Qom [Iran nuclear work at underground bunker confirmed]. The Fordo facility is located inside a small mountain, making it very difficult to destroy from the air, at least not without using nuclear weapons. That would force Israel into using the dreaded and devastating “N” word against Iran, which would be far more disastrous in terms of worldwide opinion than a more conventional preemptive strike right now. Even if Israel used its conventional capabilities of precision bombing and Israeli commandos, this will be a difficult and possibly inadequate mission. Further, the odds of tactical success are dropping by the day.
With the rise of the Arab Spring and the threat of more unfriendly regimes in places like Egypt, Israel may be tempted to make it known that they will reestablish the credibility of what Israeli elites like to call their “deterrent edge.” If Israel gets talked out of using preemptive deterrence against a nuke facility deep inside an Iranian mountain, what credibility would they have for much of anything that involved risk or cost in that neck of the woods? Israeli journalist Rachel Wood in a New York Times interview calls the atmosphere in Israel ”afflicted with anxiety” with the perception of an “existential threat.” This is translating into unbearable political pressure to do something soon.
I think the press is now being used to leak back-channel threats and decoys. The U.S., and western mainstream media in particular, seem to be more about foreign policy propaganda than real assessment right now. Beyond that, there is a huge amount of pyschops and propaganda on the Internet on this topic — stories such as Iranian women training to be ninjas, etc. — making research very difficult. My instincts tell me something is up.
For example, the Turkish media reports that Israel denies a story out of the Herald of London that states Israel would do a flyover of Turkey and would even use the U.S. base in Turkey to hit Iran. The Herald story is nonsense and is used to put Turkey on notice. Turkey might try to engage this flight. The flyover of Saudi Arabia would be destabilizing to the House of Saud and would be a very poor choice. Yet the Times of London ran a story claiming a deal with the Saudis was made. As Max Keiser puts it, the problem is that the U.S./UK/Israel only know what Murdoch feeds them. Even Hillary Clinton admitted recently that “we are losing the information war.”
With the U.S. occupation of Iraq concluded and its air space returned, Jordan and Iraq would become the gateway for the Israeli flyover, rendering the routes on this map obsolete. Nevertheless, this route would imply a green light from the U.S. Meanwhile, Defense Secretary Panetta is using April to June as the strike period to both create a decoy and as an attempt to claim plausible deniability when the strike comes early. In conclusion, I think the strike will come in February, and before the March 02 Iranian house cleaning.
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