The
Growing Danger of War With Iran
By
Paul R. Pillar
June 30,
2017 "Information
Clearing House"
- A combination of circumstances has increased
the risk that armed conflict will break out
between the United States and Iran. Such a war
is no certainty, but the chance that one will
occur is greater today than it has been in
years. Some of the relevant circumstances, such
as the first two mentioned below, have been
around in some form for a substantial amount of
time, while others are more recent.
Anti-Iranism in American
discourse. The
vocabulary has become so repetitive and widely
used that it rolls off tongues automatically:
Iran is a “theocratic autocracy” and the
“largest state sponsor of terrorism” that
engages in “nefarious,” “malign” and
“destabilizing” behavior as part of its “drive
for regional hegemony,” etc. The verbiage has
become a substitute for thought and for any
careful examination of exactly what Iran is and
is not doing and how it does and does not affect
U.S. interests. Such a commonly accepted mantra
means that anyone making a focused attempt to
stir up trouble with Iran starts with a built-in
advantage in mustering public and political
support.
The lobby pushing hostility
against Iran. There
indeed have been, and still are, focused
attempts to stir up trouble. Politically potent
interests have their own narrow reasons to keep
U.S.-Iranian relations bad and to keep Iran
isolated. Foremost among those interests is the
right-wing government of Israel, for which Iran
as chief bête noire serves to cripple a
competitor for regional influence, to explain
all regional trouble in terms that do not relate
to Israel, to distract attention from matters
(especially the occupation of Palestinian
territory) the Israeli government would rather
not discuss, and to keep the United States
wedded to Israel as supposedly its only reliable
regional partner. Given the obvious impact of
the Israeli government’s preferences on American
politics, this factor weighs greatly on the
current administration’s policies toward Iran.
Donald Trump has tilted heavily to those Israeli
preferences, as reflected in his appointments
and in his rhetoric since midway through the
presidential campaign. Trump still aspires to
achieve an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal, which
would require sharp breaks with the Netanyahu
government’s current course. But that might
make aggressiveness and confrontation with Iran
seem all the more necessary, as a form of
compensation to Netanyahu while pressing him for
concessions toward the Palestinians.
Anti-Obamaism and the nuclear
agreement. The
preceding factor was one of two major reasons
for opposition to the Joint Comprehensive Plan
of Action, the multilateral agreement that
severely restricts Iran’s nuclear program and
closes any possible path to a nuclear weapon.
The other major, and very partisan, reason was
that the accord was probably Barack Obama’s
biggest single achievement in foreign policy.
Trump, who scathingly denounced the accord
during the campaign and whose administration
only grudgingly acknowledges that Iran is
complying with its obligations under the
agreement, still shows a strong inclination to
do the opposite of whatever Obama did. Now that
the Republican effort to undo Obama’s signature
domestic achievement, the Affordable Care Act,
has run aground on the realities of health care,
the urge may be stronger than ever to undo
Obama’s signature foreign policy achievement.
If it can be undone not through direct U.S.
renunciation but as a casualty of some other
confrontation with Iran, then so much the better
from Trump’s point of view.
Weak voices of restraint in the
administration.
There are press reports of debate within the
Trump administration on aspects of policy toward
Iran, and real debate is much better than policy
made through wee-hours tweets. But it is
doubtful whether the sober reasons why armed
conflict with Iran would be folly are getting
adequate attention. This is not only a matter
of the dominance of non-sober voices, such as
that of self-declared Leninist
destroyer-of-worlds Stephen Bannon, who
demonstrated his clout with Trump’s withdrawal
from the Paris climate change agreement. The
problem also is that visceral anti-Iranism
infects even some of those looked to as adults
in the room, most notably
Secretary of Defense James Mattis.
Respectability given to regime
change.
Another of the adults, Secretary of State Rex
Tillerson, recently
told the House Foreign Affairs Committee
that regime change is part of U.S. policy on
Iran. This comment resurrects a malevolent
concept that amply deserves a place on the trash
heap of U.S. foreign policy history, especially
given the disastrous results under the previous
two administrations of regime change in Iraq and
Libya. The concept is no more suitable to Iran,
where there is not some political movement in
our own image that is just waiting to be freed
from the yoke of theocratic autocrats through a
new revolution. Those with other reasons for
promoting hostility toward Iran also have been
promoting the regime change idea. The Sheldon
Adelson-funded Foundation for Defense of
Democracies, for example, shortly after the
inauguration was
pushing a paper
at the National Security Council centered on
regime change. The specific notion usually
being pushed is that forms of subversion short
of armed conflict would do the job, but the
fantasy outcome of a new and attractive regime
in Tehran can easily become an objective of
military operations initiated, or ostensibly
initiated, for other reasons. Meanwhile, the
rhetoric of regime change adds to tension and
distrust between Tehran and Washington that make
destabilizing incidents increasingly likely.
Mission creep in Syria.
The crushing of the so-called Islamic State’s
caliphate is close enough to completion that the
difficult and deferred question of what becomes
of the Syrian territory that had been part of
the caliphate now must be faced directly. Much
commentary on
this question in the United States is advocating
what amounts to a significant expansion of U.S.
objectives in Syria by confronting the Damascus
regime and its Russian and Iranian backers.
U.S. actions on the ground and in the air
already have moved in this direction. Incidents
have included shooting down Iranian drones and a
manned Syrian aircraft, as well as U.S. attacks
on what were described as “Iranian-supported”
militias. It is remarkable how much the mission
in Syria already has creeped and evolved. As
Josh Wood puts
it, “Over the course of his short tenure, Mr.
Trump and his administration went from talking
about potentially partnering with Damascus and
Moscow against [Islamic State], to appearing
absolutely disinterested in the civil war, to
bombing Syrian government targets.” The
evolution of objectives in the next five months
could be just as rapid as in the last five.
Given Iran’s significant role in Syria, and the
expanding U.S. role there, Syria is one of the
places most likely to spark direct warfare
between the United States and Iran..
No Advertising - No Government Grants - This Is Independent Media
|
Displacement from Russia.
Incidents with the Syrian regime’s other major
backer, Russia, certainly are worth worrying
about along with incidents involving Iran. But
some of the very reasons for special worry about
direct armed conflict with Russia—a
nuclear-armed ex-superpower—are also reasons to
expect special restraint, along lines similar to
what the United States and the USSR displayed
throughout the Cold War. Moreover, under the
Trump administration Russia does not play the
sort of automatic,
take-for-granted-as-an-adversary role that Iran
plays. We have yet to fathom the full reasons
for Trump’s more qualified and even benign
posture toward Russia, but there clearly are
such reasons. If the administration needs to
strike at one of the beasts involved in the
Syrian war, that beast will be Iran, even though
Russian support probably has been at least as
important as Iranian support in shoring up the
Assad regime.
Delegation to the military.
Trump’s practice of delegating to the Pentagon
major decisions, even of a more strategic than
tactical nature, involving deployment or use of
military forces could in some circumstances be
an encouragement of restraint, given the
disinclination of experienced military officers
to be thrust into new conflicts in which the
United States is not already involved. But the
United States is already involved in
places such as Syria and the Persian Gulf where
confrontation with the Iranians is possible, and
with such involvement the military bias is in
the direction of doing more rather than doing
less. The bias is toward being more aggressive
to accomplish presumed objectives and especially
to protect American forces. At least one U.S.
attack so far in Syria has been justified in
terms of protection of U.S. forces. Military
decisions taken for military reasons may spark
an expanded conflict.
Heightened bellicosity in Arabia.
The tension between Saudi Arabia and Iran is
especially high right now, and most of the
initiative for making it so has come from the
Saudi side. The ascent to power of the Saudi
king’s inexperienced son, Mohammed bin Salman,
has something to do with this. The young crown
prince has talked about how “we will work so the
battle is there, in Iran.” He has used the
relatively minor link between a Yemeni group and
Iran as the excuse for prosecuting a war that
has turned Yemen into a humanitarian disaster.
His most recent destabilizing move has been the
fracturing of the Gulf Cooperation Council for
the sake of bashing Qatar, one of whose listed
offenses is to have more-or-less normal,
peaceful relations with Iran. The potential for
the United States being dragged into an
escalation of this mess is significant,
especially given Trump’s inclination so far to
go all in with the Saudis.
Brinksmanship in the Persian Gulf.
Even without the added recklessness of young
princes, the Gulf is the other most likely
place, besides Syria, for an incident involving
U.S. and Iranian forces to escalate out of
control. The U.S. forward presence in what the
Iranians regard as their maritime backyard is
more than matched by the sometimes reckless and
unsafe maneuvers by small craft of Iran’s
Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. The recent
fatal collision of a U.S. Navy destroyer with a
merchant ship in Japanese waters shows what can
happen in crowded sea lanes even when there is
no international conflict or animosity
involved. Imagine something similar happening
in the Persian Gulf amid the current hostility
in U.S.-Iranian relations, with no apparent
interest by the Trump administration in
restoring a diplomatic channel for defusing
incidents.
The nature of the person in the
White House.
In his Congressional testimony, James Comey
mentioned “the nature of the person” as a reason
for meticulously documenting his conversations
with President Trump, meaning that Trump is a
serial liar. The first five months of Trump’s
administration is sufficient to see that the
lying extends not just to individual falsehoods
but to large segments of his policies. On
domestic and economic policy, the populism he
voiced and that won him decisive votes last year
has been revealed to be fraudulent, with health
care being only
one of the indications
of this. There is no reason to suppose that
what Trump has said about foreign and security
policy, including vote-winning rhetoric about
aversion to more foreign wars, is any less
fraudulent. With the rhetoric being next to
meaningless, other aspects of the nature of the
person will be influential, including Trump’s
impetuosity, his dwelling on the immediate at
the expense of longer-term consequences, and his
insatiable appetite for personal approbation at
the expanse of broader national interests. None
of these qualities augurs well for avoiding
conflagration with Iran.
Diversion from difficulty.
These personal qualities of Trump make him a
prime candidate to turn to the time-honored
tactic of using foreign conflict to divert
attention from domestic troubles and to win
flag-rally popular support. His current
support, according to the latest
poll on the
subject, continues to fall.
Armed
conflict with Iran would be an enormously
negative event for U.S. interests on several
grounds, beginning with whatever expenditure of
American blood and treasure was involved. Other
consequences would include giving a gift to the
most hardline elements in Iranian politics,
possibly leading to renunciation of the nuclear
agreement and the opening of a path to an
Iranian nuclear weapon, as well as collateral
damage to U.S. good will and relations with many
others, beyond some hardliners in other places
who would welcome the spilling of American blood
as long as it was done in the service of
attacking Iran. One can hope that that there
will be enough thinking about such consequences
to prevent such an armed conflict from coming to
pass.
But war
is a possibility, with a likelihood that is
somewhere above trivial levels. It is an
uncertainty. Also uncertain is the extent to
which any conflict that did break out would be
fully intended, as distinct from an unintended
consequence of aggressive and confrontational
policies and postures.
Citizens and members of Congress need to be
fully aware of the possibilities and the
associated dangers. They should be alert to any
new signs that the United States may be headed
toward such a war, and they should ask the
toughest of questions every step of the way as
to whether this path is in U.S. interests.
Paul R. Pillar is Nonresident
Senior Fellow at the Center for Security Studies
at Georgetown University and Nonresident Senior
Fellow in Foreign Policy at the Brookings
Institution. He is a contributing editor to
The National
Interest, where he
writes a blog
This article was first published by
The
National Interest
-
See
also
Escalation against Qatar
and Iran may follow Muhammad Bin-Salman’s
appointment as crown prince
The
views expressed in this article are solely those
of the author and do not necessarily reflect the
opinions of Information Clearing House.