“Atomic Ayatollah”?
Escalating confrontations with Iran may get nasty
By Marilyn M. Brannan, Assoc. Editor
Unravelling The New World Order

What’s Up with Iran?
It is no secret that Iran’s longtime ambition has been to become the dominant force in the Persian Gulf. After suffering through eight years of war with Iraq under the regime of Saddam Hussein, Iran was determined to insure that it would never again be invaded by Iraq. From the end of Desert Storm to the fall of Baghdad, Iran systematically pursued the goal of seeing Saddam Hussein deposed and his regime destroyed. Iran was not in a position to bring that about by itself, but through the use of “selective intelligence” supplied to the U.S. and the British, it fostered and fed the perception of Saddam as a potential and growing nuclear threat. At the same time, Iran prepared for the period following the eventual fall of Hussein by creating an alternative force in Iraq—the Shiites—whose primary loyalty was to Iran.

It should be mentioned at this point that one of the primary reasons the United States did not press the war to Baghdad in 1991 was the fear than an Iraqi collapse would increase Iran’s power in the region, making it the dominant force in the Persian Gulf. Since the Iranian government understood that, it knew that its success, post-Saddam, depended on reducing the threat the U.S. felt from Iran.

Iranian intelligence deliberately “neglected” to share a couple of key pieces of information with U.S. intelligence gatherers prior to Operation Freedom: (1) Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction programs had been abandoned, and (2) Iran knew about Saddam’s carefully laid plans for a guerrilla war to follow the fall of Baghdad. The Iranians wanted the Americans to win the conventional war, but they did not want the U.S. to have an easy time occupying Iraq. They knew the failure to find WMD would create a political crisis in the U.S., and U.S. failure to anticipate a Baathist guerrilla war would create a crisis in Iraq. Iran wanted both.

The worse things became in Iraq after the fall of Hussein, the more urgently the U.S. needed to accommodate what seemed its only viable ally in the region, the Shiite majority. In the fall of 2003, the U.S. accepted the fact that the new Iraqi government would be dominated by the Shia—with substantial Iranian influence. In quiet diplomacy at that point, the Iranians agreed to put their nuclear plans on the back burner.

The Iranians believed they had the Americans where they wanted them, and began to increase pressure for concessions. At the same time, the U.S. was getting buyer’s remorse over the deal it had made. As the winter of 2003-2004 wore on, the Americans, instead of pursuing the Shiite government plan, began talking to the Sunnis and considering an interim government in which Kurds or Sunnis would have veto power.

This riled the Grand Ayatollah al-Sistani (who is an Iranian) and he began to incite demonstrations and call for direct elections to insure a Shiite-controlled government. The U.S. responded by leaking that they knew the game the Iranians were playing. The “expose” in the U.S. media that Chalabi was an Iranian agent was part of this process.

When the Iranians and al-Sistani saw the situation slipping out of their control, they tried to convince the Americans that they would let Iraq go up in flames. During the Sunni rising in Fallujah, they permitted al-Sadr to rise as well. When the U.S. went to al-Sistani for help, he refused to lift a finger, apparently believing the U.S. would reverse its plans and make concessions to buy Shiite support.

The opposite happened. The U.S. decided that the Shia and the Iranians were unreliable—and no longer necessary. The Americans began negotiating with the Sunni guerrillas in Fallujah and reached an agreement with them. The U.S. then pressed on with plans for the interim government that left the Shia on the margins. That was the point at which U.S.-Iranian relations broke down.

Iran Wants a Crisis
Iran saw more than a decade of patient political machinations going down the tubes and they were furious. They have taken several steps in recent weeks to let the U.S. and her allies know that they face a major crisis with Iran.

First, they created a crisis with the IAEA over nuclear weapons, certain it would draw U.S. attention. Whereas Iran had formerly taken pains to conceal its development of nuclear weaponry, Iran stunned the IAEA with a report mid-June that it has enriched uranium to 54 percent, far beyond the level required to produce bomb-grade fuel. Further, the Iranians admitted they had attempted to obtain large numbers of components for equipment used to produce weapons-grade nuclear material.

Second, they seized several British patrol boats in the Shatt al-Arab stretch of water between Iraq and Iran on June 21. This appeared to be a hostile response to the British following their agreement with other key UN members on a resolution accusing Iran of failing to cooperate with the IAEA. The Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) arrested and detained several crew members, claiming the vessels had entered Iranian waters without permission. An IRGC spokesman added in what amounts to a belligerent warning, “Anyone from any nationality entering our waters will face the same response.”

In another highly militant move, seen as Teheran’s near-hysterical response to Western pressure through the IAEA to halt its nuclear weapons program, Iran is establishing an army of suicide bombers. Geostrategy-Direct.com reported the week of June 22 that more than 10,000 would-be suicide bombers have been drafted over the past few weeks. The young Iranians, including seminary students, have volunteered to commit suicide attacks against targets in Chechnya, Iraq, Israel and Europe.

The campaign to recruit suicide bombers began with a June 2 conference in Teheran to honor the late Ayatollah Khomeini. The conference was sponsored by the Iranian government and its state-financed Center for the Appreciation of the Martyr. The conference was attended by parliamentarians, military commanders and academics, who spoke on such topics as “Martyrdom Operations and Military and Security Strategies” and “Martyrdom Operations—The Last Weapon.” Terrorists groups such as Hamas, Hizbullah and Islamic Jihad were also represented at the conference.

In May of this year, Iran’s media reported that Teheran had established a suicide training camp. The camp is said to be training Islamic volunteers from around the world. A statement from the command center established to recruit suicide bombers said, “We are confident that expelling the British and American occupiers from Iraq is not possible in any way other than martyrdom-seeking operations.”

The suicide recruitment in Iran is being directed by the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, which reports directly to Khamenei. Officials have said the IRGC wanted their first target to be the U.S.-led coalition in Iraq.

“Peaceful” Nuclear Programs
While the world protests, Teheran moves ahead with its nuclear programs. The confrontation between the IAEA and Iran has dragged on for two years, and time is on Iran’s side. Each day it moves a step closer to achieving its nuclear ambition.

Iran’s nuclear programs include construction of a heavy-water reactor at Arak, which will produce large amounts of plutonium suitable for use in nuclear weapons, and a nuclear-conversion facility at Isfahan for producing uranium hexafluoride, a basic ingredient for developing nuclear weaponry.

Iran insists these facilities are for producing nuclear fuel for its civilian energy sector, which will free oil and gas reserves for export. However, it is known that
(1) The costly infrastructure to perform these activities goes well beyond the cost of a “peaceful” nuclear program; and (2) Iran, with the world’s second-largest natural-gas reserves, wastes enough gas each year to generate four 1,000-megawatt nuclear reactors’ worth of electricity. Bottom line: Iran doesn’t need nuclear power.

Britain, France, and Germany have called on Iran to suspend operations at the uranium conversion facility near Isfahan and stop construction of a heavy-water reactor near the central industrial city of Arak. However, official statements from the Iranian government declare that Iran will not give up or alter its nuclear programs.

It is clear the Iranians don’t want negotiations—they want the bomb.

A nuclear Iran would undermine stability in the region, threatening the new Iraqi and Afghan governments and giving Syria and the Saudis incentives to go nuclear as well. Iran has long-range missiles on the drawing board, which puts NATO, Israel and the U.S. at risk.

Whether the international community will be willing to impose sanctions is the big question. Tough sanctions worked with Libya, who knuckled under on weapons of mass destruction. Sanctions even led North Korea back to the nuclear negotiating table in late June.

But in this case, getting sanctions in place will be very tough, given the fact that countries such as France, Germany and Japan have invested heavily in Iran’s centralized economy, and China, with its huge energy appetite would not likely support Security Council sanctions, either.

Peter Brookes, Senior Fellow at the Heritage Foundation, wrote in the New York Post recently, “If other countries don’t take decisive action soon, the world will have the 9th nuclear weapons state—and its first nuclear-armed state that also sponsors terrorism—faster than you can say “atomic ayatollah.”

Conclusion
Stratfor says military planners are updating plans on Iran even now. “Iran is calculating that it can engage in a crisis more effectively than the United States. The United States does not want a crisis with Iran before the elections—and certainly not over WMD. . . .
The Americans cannot let Iran get nuclear weapons, and the Iranians know it. They assume that U.S. intelligence has a clear picture of how far weapons development has gone. But following the U.S. intelligence failure on WMD in Iraq—ironically aided by Iran—will any policy maker trust the judgment of U.S. intelligence on how far Iran’s development has gone? . . . And since Israel is in the game—and it certainly cannot accept an Iranian nuclear capability—and threatens a pre-emptive strike with its own nuclear weapons, will the United States be forced to act when it does not want to?”

This situation is not really under anyone’s control and can rapidly spin out of control. It is a clash of fundamental national interests that will not be easy to reconcile.

####

Sources:
GeoStrategy-Direct.com, Published by World Tribune.com in association with Middle East Newsline, June 10, 2004: “Iran Convenes World’s First Conference for Suicide Bomber Candidates.”

GeoStrategy-Direct.com, June 18, 2004: “Iran Signs 10,000 for Suicide Army to Target America’s ‘Achilles Heel.’”

GeoStrategy-Direct.com, June 18, 2004: “Iran Stuns IAEA with Uranium Enrichment Disclosure.”

New York Post, June 28, 2004: “Atomic Ayatollahs,” by Peter Brookes.

The Stratfor Weekly, June 23, 2004: “U.S. and Iran: Beneath the Roiled Surface,” by George Friedman