Iran

07/18/2006

America and Iran

Opening a Second Front

By Georg Mascolo in Washington

Ostensibly Israel and Hezbollah are the two sides battling each other in renewed fighting in the Middle East. But in Washington the conviction is growing that Iran is trying to deflect attention from its dispute with the United States by stoking the conflict.

Everything had been prepared: At the G-8 summit in St. Petersburg, US President George W. Bush wanted to lay the groundwork for the delicate matter of economic sanctions against Iran. In spite of international pressure, the mullahs in Tehran still weren't giving a clear answer to the proposals from Germany, France, Great Britain, and the United States to resolve the dispute over Iran's controversial nuclear program.

Anything besides a clear 'yes' would be taken as a rejection, according to a promise Bush had received from his European partners, and the pressure was rising every day. Even UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, in an interview with SPIEGEL, called on Iran to make a decision.

But instead of the expected diplomatic answer, Iran's long arm in Lebanon, the militant Islamic group Hezbollah, took the initiative and kidnapped two Israeli soldiers. An escalation -- as both Hezbollah as well as the Iranian government knew -- was unavoidable. Kidnappings and the deals they lead to have a tradition in the Middle East, and the exchange of prisoners and wounded soldiers has often been brokered by Germans. The last swap mediated by Berlin took place in early 2004 at an air base in Cologne -- and even then Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, in a gravelly voice, warned that the next kidnapping of an Israeli soldier would be answered with massive force. "There are measures to which we didn't resort," he said at a ceremony in Israel welcoming those prisoners home. "But if, God forbid, the circumstances change, we won't hesitate to use them. That's a promise."

Washington's war too

But why now? The Bush administration thinks Iran wants to spark a dangerous conflict to mask the diplomatic tug-of-war over its nuclear ambitions. Iran wants "chaos," says President Bush. American experts believe the Tehran government -- with the aid of its allies in Syria -- has fired a warning shot for Israel and the United States to see: "You can't threaten us, you can't stop us," is the supposed message. "Look what we're ready to do." If this theory is right, then Tehran has already answered the Western powers' nuclear proposal.

And the mullahs have made a risky calculation: Any further crisis, of course, would raise the price of oil, which would fatten coffers in Iran -- but the regime also seem convinced that the Iraq-war debacle will keep the US from intervening militarily. Bush looks helpless and harmless to them. However, provoking even a wounded superpower is never a good idea. In Washington these days the opinion is rising that Iran can only be made to see reason through violence. They argue that a conflict where one party just tries to get whatever it wants can't be solved by negotiation. "Iran's Proxy War," is what the neoconservative Weekly Standard calls the current conflict in the Middle East. "This is our war too," the magazine argues.

This view also seems to dominate the White House, or at least that's one way to interpret President Bush's behavior so far: He may have warned Israel to act "with restraint" around Lebanese civilian targets, but he refused to call for a ceasefire, as Kofi Annan and other world leaders wanted him to do. At the G-8 summit in St. Petersburg Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair were overheard on an open microphone discussing what Bush thought of Annan's suggestion: "His attitude is basically ceasefire, and everything else happens."

Crisis as opportunity?

Bush sees a big test of wills on the horizon. His government sits on one side, still hoping to bring peace to the Middle East; Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas, and Syria have joined forces on the other side to keep him from accomplishing his historic task. In a recent interview with US magazine Newsweek, Bush said one part of Iran's strategy was to "create conditions" which would force moderate governments to "step back in fear, and the vacuum would then be filled by the proponents of an aggressive ideology." Giving up the fight now would only delay the problem, the White House believes, not solve it. So if Israelis now try to put down Hezbollah with airstrikes, that's only in Bush's interest -- another phase in the "War on Terror" and the simmering contest with Iran.

Where the world sees nothing but death and destruction, Washington seems inclined to view the current flare-up in the Middle East as an opportunity. Since Arab regimes fear Iran's claim to leadership in the Muslim world at least as much as Washington, they should -- theoretically -- help the Americans frustrate Iranian dreams of hegemony. This strategy has achieved at least one small early success. Condoleezza Rice pointed proudly to a statement released by the Arab League on Saturday: Instead of the usual unanimous Israel-bashing, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Egypt criticized Hezbollah for its "unexpected, inappropriate, and irresponsible acts."

"Mr. Big Satan," and "Ms. Axis of Evil," as Washington Post columnist David Ignatius has labelled the United States and Iran, are busy sizing each other up. How will things progress? "It doesn't help to speculate about kind of apocalyptic scenarios," said Rice while she was in Germany last week. She's expected to travel soon for urgent talks in the Middle East.

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