Classical Values :: Is The US Tooling Up For War With Iran?

May 09, 2008

Is The US Tooling Up For War With Iran?

There is a whole lot to cover on this subject so I'm going to give mostly links and let you make up your own mind. Be sure to read the comments at the links provided as they tend to add information or present countervailing views.

Fleet Positions for War.

We believe the only successful exit strategy from Iraq travels a road through Iran. In general we subscribe to a theory put forth by Stratfor that events will build up towards the brink of war before a peaceful resolution is possible. We don't necessarily believe that is how it has to be, rather we believe that is how our current leadership believes it has to be. Part of that strategy includes the buildup of rhetoric, the shuffling of resources, and the preparation in Iraq for a military action against Iran. We observe these events taking place. Much thanks to Yankee Sailor for his collections regarding the developing time line.

Think Long and Hard as You Contemplate What This Means

There has been a political split in the Pentagon since 2005, when those who wanted to move forward under the cooperative model as opposed to the unilateral model for military action were able to shift the Pentagon position through the release of official strategic papers. Under Gates, the Pentagon has tried to shift to a cooperative phase from what has been a unilateral phase of military action. The cooperative approach is championed by Rice, Gates, and people like Adm. Fallon. Many neo-conservatives, which unfortunately includes a bunch of big blue Navy folks I won't name specifically, form up the unilateral military action side.

Money quote from the piece:

Admiral William Fallon shakes his head slowly, and his eyes say, These guys [Iran] have no idea how much worse it could get for them. I am the reasonable one.

Building a Case for War in Iran - Part 2

News continues to roll in that the United States may be nearing a decision to strike Iran. In my previous installment, I discussed the storm of tough talk currently unleashed from Washington. In this installment I'll lay out some of the other events in the region in recent weeks.

First, an intriguing report was published alleging that Washington authorized the execution and funding of a covert offensive against Iran in recent weeks.
Six weeks ago, President Bush signed a secret finding authorizing a covert offensive against the Iranian regime that, according to those familiar with its contents, "unprecedented in its scope."

Key graph:

All this costs money, which in turn must be authorized by Congress, or at least a by few witting members of the intelligence committees. That has not proved a problem. An initial outlay of $300 million to finance implementation of the finding has been swiftly approved with bipartisan support, apparently regardless of the unpopularity of the current war and the perilous condition of the U.S. economy.

Lee Smith at Michael Totten's writes: Hezbollah's Endgame? Pt. 2

David Wurmser, formerly Vice President Cheney's Middle East adviser, writes in to comment on Iran's role in the Beirut crisis.

"Iran has suffered some pretty serious defeats in Iraq, foremost is that the Shiites there kind of turned on Iran. May they not need to pull back and focus on their role as the champion of the Shiites right now, even at the cost of compromising their efforts to jump the Sunni-Shiite divide? They may actually be in no better a shape among Lebanon's Shiites as they are among Iraq's. Second, there were these really odd nasty exchanges between Zawahiri and Iran, which may have been born of Iran's desire right now to solidify its own role as Shiite champion."

Omar Fadhil of Iraq the Model comments at Pajamas Media. Iranian-Made Rocket Discovered Near Basra Alarms Iraqis

The Iraqi minister of defense pushed the debate with the Iranians over their provision of weapons to Shia militias one more step on Monday. Minister Abdul Qadir Obeidi indirectly confronted the Iranians, without naming them, with new findings that prove their involvement in the arming of Shia militias.

On Monday, state-owned al-Sabah published a statement by the minister in which he spoke of the capture of a certain type of rocket that was never found in militia-held caches until now:
Defense minister Abdul Qadir Mohammed Obeidi revealed that army troops found a 200-mm ground-to-ground rocket manufactured in 2007 during a search operation by the troops north of Basra. Obeidi told al-Sabah in an exclusive interview that, under international laws and norms, this kind of rocket can be traded only with the approval of parliaments and is used only at times of extreme necessity during wars ... and wondered how this rocket entered the country. Obeidi added that this rocket can be launched only from a special platform and by specialized crews.
From what I read in Iraq's two biggest newspapers, it seems that the government is trying to step up the rhetoric against Iranian interference in Iraq and to induce uproar among the Iraqi public.

Noah Pollak.

Hezbollah's thug-in-chief, Hassan Nasrallah, addressed Lebanon today. What he said is not promising. You can read the entire transcript here, but it's not necessary. The following snippet tells you everything you need to know:
I said . . . that any hand that reaches for the resistance [i.e., Hezbollah] and its arms will be cut off. Israel tried that in the July War, and we cut its hand off. We do not advise you to try us. Whoever is going to target us will be targeted by us. Whoever is going to shoot at us will be shot by us.

Captain Ed.

Iraqi soldiers have begun evacuating families from portions of Sadr City, a sign that a large offensive will start shortly against the Mahdi Army militia that have long controlled the sector of Baghdad. Two stadiums have been secured for sheltering the evacuees as the government of Nouri al-Maliki attempts to break Moqtada al-Sadr's last stronghold and end mortar attacks on the Green Zone. Maliki also wants to end Iran's influence in Iraq, which caused Iran to cut off security talks with Maliki and the US:

Gateway Pundit has: A Gift From Tehran-- ARMED HEZBOLLAH THUGS Roam Beirut ...Update: 1 Dead- Saudis Warn Hezbollah

Beirut Spring posted this photo of a bridge banner in Beirut that reads: "A gift from the municipality of Tehran to the righteous, resisting Lebanese people."
Yup. That sums it up.

All in all I'd say something was up. Namely a show down with Iran. I'd take the movement of the fleet as a sign of readiness for contingencies as opposed to the US initiating an attack. The question is: what will the Iranian response be to the dismantling of their proxies?

Update 09 May 008 1217z

Hezbollah's Subtle Takeover

Hezbollah has taken control of the media in Lebanon, and their propaganda campaign has already begun. They are currently presenting themselves as liberators of Lebanon, and allies of the Lebanese Army against a corrupt government supported by pro-government snipers and brigrands.

Hezbollah's militant takeover of Beirut and its systematic destruction of the authority of the state and freedom of the press suggests a sophisticated and planned campaign to take power. There is no hiding the violence Hezbollah used to seize Beirut and cut it off from the rest of the country. But as their media campaign is already showing, Hezbollah is employing subtle and sophisticated mechanisms to take over the rest of Lebanon. All news which could be construed as negative behaviors, such as the blatant destruction and corruption of Lebanese institutions, is hidden beneath a Hezbollah-dominated media blackout.

No one knows if Hezbollah is currently occupying government building, re-routing the telecommunications networks, placing weapons in areas they could not gain access to before, and more. If Hezbollah wins this battle, this information will never be made public.

Instapundit says:

I GET AN EMAIL NEWSLETTER from an oil trader and today it includes this tidbit: "In an interesting twist of OPEC news - in the folder titled 'Adequate Supply' - Iran has chartered an armada of supertankers to act as floating storage for as many as 28 million barrels of crude oil that is backing up on them. Analysts are blaming worldwide refineries yet to recover from maintenance programs. It's not the first time that Iran has had trouble finding buyers; they temporarily floated 20 million barrels in 2006. No, I can't explain this in light of record oil prices and continual cries for more release of OPEC crude oil. "

U.S. crude stocks are up, too. This is unlikely to be the case, but here's a thought: If I were, say, the United States government, and I anticipated military action in the mideast that might interrupt oil supplies, I wouldn't want to stockpile directly because that would be a tipoff. But if I manipulated markets into running up stocks, I wouldn't have to. . . . Nah. They're not that smart.

Note that 28 million barrels of oil is $3 bn dollars worth at current prices give or take. I wonder if Iran is expecting a strike on their refineries or oil fields?

Many links from Instapundit

Cross Posted at Power and Control

posted by Simon on 05.09.08 at 07:56 AM

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Comments

Iran will wait until after the elections.

If McCain is elected, they'll either back down or they'll test him, and lose.

If Obama is elected, they'll continue to escalate, while publicly pursuing peace talks.

Loren Heal · May 9, 2008 08:16 AM

I agree with Loren Heal. Unfortunately, politics plays a role in the defense of the nation, any nation really. Iran will have to wait until after the election, even if the Iranian government doesn't see it that way. President Bush's approval rating is in the 30's, he is an outgoing President, I really do not think that he is willing to invade Iran at this late date.

I'm not a big McCain fan, but he is the best of the three. Of course if the Republican Party does not recognize that it takes more than a President to wrest the nation from the brink of disaster, then maybe we are lost.

John · May 9, 2008 09:18 AM

Part of the showdown inside Iran is the Mullahs vs. IRGC leadership. It is strange to say, but the IRGC have been positioning themselves as the next form of government in Iran. They have been working to marginalize the clerics and put the entire military under their control for years and have moved into the Praetorian Guards role from 'protectors of the Revolution' to the ones running it.

It was only in 2005 that the IRGC gained control of the regular Army, which no one has seen hide nor hair of since the Iran-Iraq war. Instead it has been the IRGC, Baseej and hired mid-asian thugs from the lower ex-soviet republics. To counter that alienation the IRGC has attempted an 'outreach campaign' of sorts within the population, but their ties to the regime make it difficult to push an even more radical agenda outwards.

As to what is coming, I speculated on that way back when via two diffrent views. The first a extension of NetWar that we had practiced in Afghanistan and Iraq (which is adapting into COIN), which is not a fight like either Afghanistan or Iraq. Iran has majority Persian population, but four distinct minorities, each of which feel oppressed by the leadership: Kurds (those familial and cultural cross-border contacts have made Iranian incursions into Iraqi Kurdish regions into mini-quagmires), Azeris (Kurdish neighbors who have had it with the regime, by and large), Arab Shia in the SE (with cultural affinity to Iraqi Arab Shia and a cause for concern of Iraqis) and Baluchs in the west. That is not in order of problems for the Iranians, as the Kurds and Baluchs are the ones they cannot find a way to deal with effectively... both Kurdish and Baluch terror groups have proven to be a constant irritant to Iran. The main idea is to cause a change in leadership at the top, while supporting the multi-ethnic population in the isolation and removal of such.

Scenario two posits that Iran has developed but not tested a nuclear device. I developed that in response to Jerry Pournelle's question of why wouldn't 'containment' work? It is a darker look at the leadership itself (Mullahs and IRGC) as they do not have to have an announced nuclear device to have an effective counter to their internal problems. Unlike rational States, the leadership in Iran has a fantastical belief system that can utilize just enough rational thought in an irrational system to utilize a weapon like that to remove internal problems. A nuclear WMD is a weapon of mass destruction and we forget that is a utilitarian term: it will destroy a mass. If you get the right mass in its destructive zone, it will destroy it. Iran does not see these things like the US and USSR did as 'bargaining chips' but actual weapons with useful design to them. That is not a good nor even bright thing to consider, and yet it points to an internally systemic consistent approach to such devices that appear insane to those outside of it. Yet that outcome would be calculated to play upon Western degenerate views which will buy the Iranian story for such a use just long enough to rally external support, save for Iraqis which *know better* from first hand experience.

What we are now seeing is a form of economic warfare from a declining base: Iran is going into a 'use it or lose it' mode due to inefficient petroleum management since 1979. Any half-way decently run petroleum state with relatively small population base (in a ratio to reserves) shouldn't need to import refined petroleum products. The US and other developed nations have a high ratio of need per person, while the actual production nations do not. Iran should have zero problem supplying natural gas and refined gasoline to its own people, and yet has to purchase external supplies of both. No matter how much money is made in the high price crude market, it is not going into maintenance, marginal expansion and production of useful products *internal* to Iran. 'Lining up tankers' is not, of necessity, a war indicator, but can also be an indicator of a collapse of the internal petroleum system and the leadership laying up reserves for when it flees or turns its own forces upon its own population in a serious manner. A shift from authoritarian to repressive totalitarian regime is slight in concept, but has deep and profound repercussions for the nation involved. It has indicators indistinguishable, from the outside, of preparations for war since there are war preparations going on... against their own population. The logic of repressive regimes losing control is not more openness but more control. And as little word of the regular Army of Iran has been heard from, movments by the IRGC/Qods, Hezbollah, Baseej and various mercenaries indicates that regular warfare is not the objective.

In fighting in Iraq, Iran is losing the final round of the Iran-Iraq war: the cultural side of it. It was in stasis while the two sides had repressive regimes of the authoritarian sort. Now one side has disappeared and is being replaced by something unseen in that part of the world: a democratic government with accountable internal forces. Even Turkey doesn't have *that* as its society requires the military to topple radical governments. What is rising in Iraq is a complete unknown to them and to us... and it is blowing the sand out from millenia of stasis there. And the folks at home are starting to see that and say 'why not here, too'?

ajacksonian · May 9, 2008 10:59 AM

I agree as well. McCain will be a disaster for the us, particularly in immigration policy. But he will only be a disaster, we can survive that. Obama will be a catastrophe.

I suspect they Iranians are floating the oil because 1) they don't have anywhere else to put it and 2) they know the US won't sink sitting duck tankers and spill all that oil. We might, however, land crews and drive them away.

Richard R · May 9, 2008 11:35 AM