Iranian Resurrection
Mini Teaser: Iran is becoming a superpower. Funding proxy armies, controlling vital energy hubs and winning the heart of the Arab street, Tehran has created a sphere of influence on an imperial scale. If we don’t do something—and soon—Iran, not China or Russia
HOLDING SWAY over a third of the Middle East and blackmailing 55 percent of the world's oil reserves, Iran is looking more and more like a superpower. Tehran has not achieved this through classic imperialism-invasion and occupation-but rather through a three-pronged strategy of proxy warfare, asymmetrical weapons and an appeal to the Middle East's downtrodden. If Tehran's ascendance continues, it will not be a rising China or Russia that challenges the United States for global supremacy-it will be Iran.
Right now, Tehran's proxy in Lebanon, Hezbollah, is the de facto state. With friendly governments in Damascus and Baghdad, Iran intends to put the rest of the Levant under its thumb. The power of America's traditional allies, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Egypt, is diminishing at a time when Iranian influence is spreading across the Palestinian territories and the Gulf sheikhdoms. Iran is quietly but inexorably building an empire, securing territory, resources, raw economic power, military strength and the allegiance of the "oppressed." If Iran's rise continues, it will find itself at the heart of Middle East oil and at the apex of power.
Yet, American Iran-watchers tend to dismiss Tehran as a serious power. They point out that Iran spends only 2.5 percent of its GDP on its military, its air force is antiquated, and even its relatively new Russian and Chinese arms are in disrepair. Iran does not represent a conventional military threat to the United States, they believe, and Tehran's military forces would succumb to a Western attack almost as quickly as did Saddam's. Iran is seen as a remote enemy, little more than an irritant, one we could easily dispatch given the political will.
Americans' views are colored by the belief that Iran is on the edge of revolution. With double-digit inflation and double-digit unemployment, the mullahs there cannot hold on very much longer, or so goes conventional analysis. It's only a matter of time before the Iranian revolution collapses completely and we will, at long last, find relief in a pro-Western Iranian government, one as compliant as was the Shah's on national-security issues.
A comforting delusion. In reality, Tehran is expanding and consolidating its power in unstable parts of the Middle East. The military balance with Iran is clearly worsening vis-à-vis the Gulf Arab states, as well as more distant countries like Egypt. America views Iran's military capabilities as limited; Iran does not pose a military threat to either its neighbors or the West. This is a laughable proposition to those between the Strait of Hormuz and the Mediterranean Sea. Though Iran may not be strong in terms of the laundry list Washington uses to calculate power-tanks, guns, armor, aircraft carriers-Iran has developed a different sort of mastery in projecting power. It possesses effective military strength, in the sense that it controls popular and lethally efficient guerilla groups. And in Lebanon and Iraq it manipulates sovereign armies. Iran's military might, through its proxies and allies, in fact vastly eclipses that of its neighbors.
What all of this means is that even if Iran were to miraculously stop its nuclear program, the region would still be faced with a formidable Iranian proxy in Lebanon-Hezbollah-which is being replicated in Iraq, Gaza, the West Bank and even in Jordan among the Palestinians. Tehran does not consider Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf sheikhdoms to be beyond its reach.
Iran has evolved from a state with a third-rate military and a first-rate terrorist apparatus to a modern-day imperialist power. Tehran has carefully, systematically and cunningly built up its influence in the region. With a monopoly on violence and Islamic ideological credentials, pulling the strings in Lebanon and enjoying more political influence in southern Iraq than the coalition, Tehran fully intends to take advantage of its newfound power and bring the Arab side of the Gulf into its sphere of influence.
IT ALL started with Hezbollah. At the time of the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon, Iran was locked in a savage and unwinnable war with Saddam Hussein: the Iran-Iraq War that carried on from 1980 to 1988. The fact that Iran was fighting another Muslim country put Khomeini's revolution at stake. The 1979 Islamic Revolution was, after all, supposed to unite Muslims against outside oppression and colonialism rather than shed Muslim blood. The Israeli invasion of Lebanon then was a heaven-sent opportunity for Iran to regain its revolutionary credentials fighting a non-Muslim enemy. Various Lebanese Shia groups, remnants of the PLO and fanatical clerics had already started to form a national resistance against Israel. Iran immediately recognized in them a cause larger than itself, a vehicle to reignite Khomeini's Islamic Revolution-as well as weaken Israel in the bargain. It helped Iran's cause that it had historical ties to Lebanon's Shia going back more than three hundred years, and that poor Lebanese Shia were receptive to Iran's appeal to the downtrodden.
Out of a scattering of Lebanese Shia incensed by the Israeli invasion and inspired by Khomeini's revolution, Iran was able to assemble an extraordinarily disciplined and dedicated guerilla force: Hezbollah. With the guidance and money of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Iran exported its revolution to Lebanon. Iran never talked about empire but imperialism this was.
On November 11, 1982, the threat posed by Iran's proxy Hezbollah became tragically clear. That morning a young Shia man drove an explosive-laden van into Israel's military headquarters in Tyre, killing seventy-five Israeli soldiers and fourteen Arabs. A suicide bomb. Yet not unlike the United States at the beginning of the Iraq invasion, the Israeli army's initial reaction was to downplay the attack, calming Tel Aviv's nerves by claiming that their opponents were merely a small, isolated resistance group that got lucky-dead-enders, as the Bush administration would call them. But it was not long before Israel realized what it was up against in Lebanon: a guerilla force more lethal than any other of the twentieth century. The Palestinians had never been able to mount an attack with this precision, let alone recruit someone to take his own life. The Israelis were surprised, too, when they learned that Iran, supposedly bogged down with the war in Iraq, was willing to divert enormous resources to Hezbollah and fund what would turn out to be an eighteen-year war.
The Tyre attack was the opening shot in a new form of warfare that Iran and Hezbollah would set in motion with stunning success, warfare that defies easy definition. It was an innovation in classic guerilla tactics-small, mobile units capable of operating with lightning speed, taking the enemy by surprise and inflicting extreme violence. Iran and Hezbollah also learned to integrate advanced weapons and terrorist tactics, including suicide bombers and car bombs. The small-unit tactics were based on what naturalists call "mobbing," in the sense of dozens of crows "mobbing" a cat and driving it away. By attacking an armored column from multiple angles, with relatively small weapons, sometimes involving suicide bombers and sometimes not, Hezbollah could destroy a stronger conventional opponent. Iran's tactics and weapons stymied the Israeli army's absolute advantage in arms, training and manpower. Israel's predominance in the field of battle was no longer a given.
It was in Lebanon that Iran learned how to create order out of chaos, even in the middle of a sectarian civil war. In 1987-I was in Beirut at the time-Hezbollah and Amal (a more secular Lebanese Shia organization) were fighting a battle that threatened to permanently tear the Shia apart. Rather than throwing its weight behind Hezbollah, which was the inclination of the radicals in Tehran, Iran spent the next four years reconciling the two sides. At one point Iran cut off money and arms to Hezbollah as a reminder of who really called the shots. And it is thanks to Iran's mediation that Amal and Hezbollah work almost as a bloc today, turning the Shia into Lebanon's most powerful sect. Their two militias combined are stronger than the Lebanese army.
Israel has fought Iran through these proxies and-let's be blunt-lost. Those losses have been seriously underestimated in the United States because they happened during wars barely covered in the American media. And as proxy wars, there were no victory parades in Tehran, Iranian soldiers served in the dark and Iranian support to Hezbollah, while an open secret, was still clandestine. To Americans, the war looked like a series of skirmishes rather than the decisive battles they were, ones that undermined Israel's overwhelming military superiority.
Over the course of a long and savage war, Israel failed to destroy Hezbollah or even set up a security zone to keep northern Israel from being shelled. Iran and Hezbollah continually adapted and battle-tested their new form of guerilla warfare. When the last Israelis crossed back into Israel from Lebanon in 2000, for the first time in Israel's history it ceded land under the force of arms. And there is no doubt who it was that won the war-Iran. The foot soldiers may have been Lebanese, but they were armed, trained, inspired and guided by Iranians, almost all from Iran's hard-line, cultlike Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
And if there were any doubts about Hezbollah's military capabilities, they were put to rest during the 2006 Lebanon War. Touched off by Hezbollah attacking an Israeli patrol within Israel's borders, by the war's end, the Israeli army retreated from Lebanon after suffering heavy losses and failing to obtain a single objective. The conflict left Hezbollah a clear strategic threat to Israel.
What came as a shock during this recent conflict was that Hezbollah had armed itself for a more conventional war. In a surprise attack, Hezbollah nearly sank an Israeli corvette-a small warship-with a Chinese-designed and Iranian-modified Silkworm missile. The sheer number of rockets Hezbollah fired on Israel blanked out Israel's most sophisticated radar. By attacking from hidden bunkers and caves, the effectiveness of Israel's air force was defeated. Finally, advanced antitank weapons and tactics neutralized Israel's armor.
The former Israeli deputy defense minister, Ephraim Sneh, told me this year that Hezbollah's so-called "tandem charge" Russian antitank weapons disabled an alarming number of Israeli Merkava tanks. Israel, he said, has since developed new armor plating to protect against these rockets. Still, more advanced Russian weaponry could find its way into Hezbollah's hands, allowing the group to overcome Israel's technological advances.
Not only did Hezbollah win against Israel in July 2006, it was able to subsequently take over the Lebanese government in a nearly bloodless coup d'état. And there is little doubt that Hezbollah is politically and militarily stronger than it was at the beginning of the war. According to Israeli estimates and from my contacts close to the group's leadership, Hezbollah may have since trebled the number of rockets in its arsenal.
The first phase on the path to Iran's imperialist dream is formally, if not officially, complete. With Hezbollah effectively in control of the Lebanese state, and through Hezbollah's battle-tested guerilla force, Iran can clearly thwart Israel and the United States in Lebanon. If Israel, the strongest regional military power in the Middle East, is unable to defeat an Iranian proxy, it is precisely for this reason that it would be wise to fear the coming Iranian empire. Iran may never accomplish quite the same level of success that we've seen in Lebanon elsewhere, but Tehran shows every sign of drawing on the Lebanon model to undermine the Middle East's vulnerable regimes.
IRAN IS uniting Sunni and Shia, Persians and Arabs, across the Middle East. Through eighteen years of war in Lebanon, Iran pulled into its grasp Lebanese Shia, turning Hezbollah into a world-class military force. Iran also slowly but systematically recruited Lebanese Sunni to its side, and today has even established ties with Christian Maronite groups. The Israelis could only watch as Khomeini's Iran learned how to suborn Semitic Arabs. Even if Americans missed it, Israel understood the significance of the fact that Hezbollah's secretary-general, Hassan Nasrallah, doesn't have a drop of Persian blood in him and yet loyally and obediently fights in Iran's ranks. Just as important, during the last twenty-five years, Iran has gradually co-opted every Palestinian group in Lebanon, including Yasir Arafat's Fatah. And, lest we forget, the Palestinians are orthodox Sunni Muslims, a sect that has oppressed the Shia going back to the murder of the prophet's grandson Hussein in 680 AD.
Hezbollah and Nasrallah have inspired the alienated and disenfranchised throughout the Muslim world, stretching across sectarian lines. These successes are critical milestones in Iran's long-term imperial plans. Next stops: the Palestinian territories, Jordan and Egypt.
Hamas and the rest of the Palestinians are inexorably succumbing to Iran's sway. Part of Iran's appeal is pragmatic-my enemy's enemy is my friend. In the early nineties, at the same time that Iran was building Hezbollah, Israel made the error of expelling Hamas's leadership to Lebanon, forcing Hamas into the arms of Iran, which was more than willing to provide arms, food and shelter. Much like with Hezbollah in Lebanon, Tehran has provided strategic guidance, cash and matériel to Hamas when no one else will. In the bargain, Hezbollah and Iran were able to change Hamas's view of how to fight a resistance. There is good evidence that it was Hezbollah that pushed Hamas to adopt suicide bombings-and take over Gaza.
And this is how we got to where we are today, Iran heralded as savior of the oppressed, the only state in the Middle East fighting colonialism, standing up to the United States and Israel.
By rewriting Hezbollah's script, tapping a vein of anger and defiance, and turning Hezbollah into a virtual state and its militia into a modern guerilla force, Nasrallah has successfully projected himself as the new Saladin, putting Palestine, Jordan and Egypt under Iran's shadow. For Iran, the Palestinians were and are an essential vehicle to dominion over the Arabs-an ideal bigger than Iran. And by championing the Palestinian cause, Tehran bridges the Sunni-Shia divide. Iran now is the symbol of an empowered Muslim world.
On the Iranian road map to domination, once the Sunni Palestinian territories are under its thumb, Sunni countries like Jordan and Egypt will have no choice but to follow suit. The hearts and minds of the poor Sunni in Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt and Morocco are already half-won-they overwhelmingly sided with Hezbollah during the 2006 war. With the majority of Jordan's population Palestinian, most side with Hamas. In Jordan, as in Egypt, Iran has made inroads into the Sunni Muslim Brotherhood, a group primarily concerned with bringing the Muslim religion into the affairs and laws of state. Tehran has convinced group members that neither faith nor Sunni orthodoxy alone will achieve their goals. In other words, the Muslim Brotherhood needs Hezbollah and Iran's military might. It is becoming a Hezbollah clone in Egypt and Jordan. If Iran is able to help avert a Sunni-Shia split in Iraq, or of course across the entire Middle East, this message will be all the more compelling.
And in many parts of the Muslim Middle East, Iran's imperialist dream is already being realized-thanks to U.S. mistakes. In spite of the "surge," Iraq remains imperiled, fortuitously allowing Iran to come full circle in its eight-year war with its neighbor. The United States has realized too late that it created the power void Iran is so well equipped to fill.
FROM THE outset, the Bush administration showed no sign that it understood the Iranian threat to Iraq when it decided to invade the country in 2003. In a paper widely circulated among advocates of the invasion, Iraqi opposition leader Ahmad Chalabi stated that after Saddam's departure, Iran would stand little chance of making inroads into Iraq. Chalabi wrote:
The insurrection in the south that followed the uprising continues to simmer. The failure of the Islamic groups supported by Iran to wrest control from Saddam in the south has served to diminish any support or hope that the local population had in them. Their behavior during the intifada is increasingly believed to have been the cause of its failure.
Chalabi could not have been more wrong. The same Iranian-allied militias and political parties swept the parliamentary elections in Iraq in 2005. Although Chalabi's paper is more than ten years old, I offer it as evidence because it remains the predominant view in official Washington-Iran isn't a serious long-term threat to Iraq.
Signs of the strategy Iran developed with Hezbollah are everywhere in Iraq. Iran has been more or less a silent, yet active, advocate of the Iraqi army's deployment into Basra and other parts of the Shia south. Iran forced radical Shia militias to put down their arms, including Moktada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army, whose rash and uncoordinated attacks threatened Iran's grip on Iraq's Shia. When Sadr's actions threatened to provoke a Shia civil war, Iran pulled him back and sent him to Qum for religious training. Baghdad-one of the great cities of Sunni Islam from the eighth century until 2003-is now three-quarters Shia. The 2006-07 war for Baghdad made the shift very clear, and its symbolic significance for Muslims and Iran's standing cannot be overstated. America's surge was meant to contain a Sunni insurgency rather than contain an Iranian-backed Shia rise. Even the senior State Department officer for Iraq had to acknowledge Iran's crucial role. David Satterfield said on the record that the decline in violence in Iraq "has to be attributed to an Iranian policy decision."
Iraq, then, is or should shortly be counted in Iran's column. Conventional wisdom will jump at a categorical statement like this, but I'll let our ambassador in Iraq speak to what is going on in that country. In September 2008, Ryan Crocker stated on the record that Iran was blocking the status-of-forces agreement between Iraq and the United States. It is difficult to imagine better evidence that it is Iran, rather than the United States, that controls the elected Iraqi government.
Few American Middle East analysts see the situation in these same dire terms because they do not believe Iraq's Shia are Tehran's natural allies. They cite as evidence the Iran-Iraq War when Iraq's Shia died en masse fighting for Saddam. The Shia, they say, fought for Iraq rather than their sect. At a more basic level, they believe that ethnic Persians and Semitic Arabs can never mix-the ethnic and historical differences are too great. But, looking to Lebanon as a model, they are absolutely wrong. Those who think we have won Iraq are fooled. The United States can do nothing to contain Iranian proxies in Iraq short of full and permanent occupation.
In a nightmare scenario, America's will in Iraq fails and the United States ultimately leaves an even-larger power vacuum Iran will then exploit. Iraq could very well drift, not just partly, but completely into Iran's orbit. Whether the United States leaves in 2011 or ten years later, Iran will understand how to co-opt the mess: the divisions between the Shia and the Sunni, and between Iraq's two main ethnic groups, the Kurds and the Arabs. The irreducible fact is that the only country that can stop Iraq from tipping into complete chaos will be Iran, if for no other reason than that Iran can quickly put a million people into uniform-and is more than willing to intervene. Even if Iraqis wanted to, they could not resist either Iranian meddling or occupation.
And so, Iran also intends to dominate the Iraqi Kurdish question. Capitalizing on historical and economic ties to the group, Iran will quietly play off tensions between the Kurds and the central government in Baghdad and between the Kurds and Turkey-all in the interest of spreading Iran's proxy empire. Tehran has already established a record of arming and financing the Kurdistan Workers' Party, keeping Turkey on the edge of civil war. At the same time, Iran has kept its borders open with Iraqi Kurdistan, reminding the Kurds they cannot do without Tehran. Finally, Iran looks at Kurdistan as a potential energy corridor for both Iraqi and Iranian oil and natural gas. If one day Iran succeeds in building a gas pipeline to Europe, it will need the Kurds on its side to protect the line.
Aside from having a vital security interest in a stable Iraq, Iran looks at its neighbor as potentially its most important economic trading partner. Iranian goods and products have already flooded into the south. And among other overtures, Tehran has offered to build an oil-export pipeline from Basra to the Iranian port of Bandar Abbas, consolidating control not only over Iraq's politics but also its oil. As OPEC's second-largest producer, Iran's hope is to create a partnership with Iraq that will further increase its power in the trading bloc.
It is a waste of time trying to predict exactly what Iraq will look like after the United States leaves, but in the worst case, the country would succumb to the same fate as Lebanon, with a Hezbollah-like party taking over, or in an extreme scenario, turning into a full-blown Shia Islamic Republic. Assuming that a weak regime in Damascus will remain in Iran's sphere of influence, the Levant at that point would be Iran's. It would be a direct threat to Israel and would endanger the Arab Gulf states with their large Shia populations and weak monarchies.
Clearly, Iran has no intention of letting Iraq slip out of its hands. Although in name Iran has not abandoned Khomeini's revolution, Iran's real interest is territorial acquisition-by proxy. Iran no longer exports only militant Islam, but a raw anticolonial message that barely disguises its quest for Iranian dominion in the Middle East. And so, on to another battlefield laid to waste by America: Afghanistan.
ON THE seventh anniversary of 9/11, al-Qaeda's number two, Ayman al-Zawahiri, released a video in which he said, "The [leader of Iran] collaborates with the Americans in occupying Iraq and Afghanistan and recognizes the puppet regimes in both countries."
An American-Iranian conspiracy aside, Zawahiri's point is that Iran is the victor in Iraq and Afghanistan. And to be sure, Zawahiri isn't alone in his alarm about a looming Iranian threat. Earlier this year in Pakistan I caught up with Colonel Sultan Amir, the Inter-Services Intelligence officer who was the godfather of the jihad in Afghanistan in the 1980s and 1990s. It was Amir who was given responsibility for training and bankrolling the Afghan mujahideen, including the current leaders of the Taliban. He was also one of bin Laden's Pakistani points of contact.
I asked Amir how, today, the jihadists look at the Afghan war against the Soviet Union. Did they win or lose?
"We lost, of course," he said, "Iran won. In both Afghanistan and Iraq."
The consensus in the Middle East is that Iran has turned the Iraqi and Afghan wars into major strategic victories. When the Taliban occupied western Afghanistan in the mid-1990s, Iran considered invading with its own forces, but ultimately decided to show patience. It paid off after the October 2001 invasion, both bringing western Afghanistan back into Iran's shadow and putting Tehran's old ally, the Tajik Northern Alliance, in power in Kabul.
Since, western Afghanistan has been, more or less, economically annexed by Iran. Make a visit to Herat, and Iran's influence is unmistakable. Iranian goods fill markets. The Iranian rial is the preferred currency. Tehran is building a railroad from the Iranian city of Khaf to Herat. With a 40 percent Shia population, Herat is an obvious piece of the world Iran intends to break off and bring under its control. A bit more difficult to conquer is the proposed gas pipeline from Central Asia, set to traverse either Afghanistan or Iran. If Iran is incapable of securing the corridor for itself though, it will certainly make sure it has control over the Afghanistan route-either through the threat of proxy unrest or an appeal to the hearts and minds of the people who live along the route.
And there are more than enough cultural connections between Iran and Afghanistan for Iran to exploit. Both of Afghanistan's primary languages, Dari and Pashto, are Iranian. Iran is home to millions of refugees from the Afghan-Soviet War. Many have returned to Afghanistan but still maintain ties to Iran, knowing they cannot afford to break with the country because they may again need Iran for sanctuary.
Not only does it have a friendly government in Baghdad, but Iran also has an enormous amount of sway in Kabul. And again it is through proxies. Iran's cause is aided by the fact that the Shia and many Sunni Afghans understand that they are better off with Iran than the Taliban. With Iraq and a large part of Afghanistan in its control, the Iranian empire's thirst for power and energy could carry it across the Persian Gulf.
IRAN HAS made little secret of its strategy: widen its power through proxy warfare and gain control of the Gulf's oil. It has the means, motive and opportunity to expand its empire across the Persian Gulf.
Not only does Iran intend to become the first hydrocarbon empire, Tehran is painfully aware that oil is its lifeblood. Given the widening disparity between Iran's real and claimed reserves-and if current levels of depletion continue-Iran knows that it could be tapped out within ten years. Without energy, or revenues from energy exports, Iran would become domestically unstable, and obviously any of its greater international ambitions would die. To satisfy domestic demand, Tehran in the not-too-distant future must look elsewhere, and Saudi Arabia for one-with its extensive reserves and weak government-is a prime target for takeover.
That may not be as difficult as it seems. Iran's reach is long. On one level, its proxies have the ability to stir up domestic unrest and sabotage oil fields along the Persian Gulf (which is 90 percent Shia and where, incidentally, the bulk of Gulf oil sits). The area's Arab Shia are increasingly susceptible to Iran's gravity, putting the Sunni sheikhdoms in peril without a single missile ever being fired. Since the 2003 invasion, Iran has moved quickly into Iraq's Shia shrine cities, in particular Najaf, where it has embraced Iraq's Shia clergy. The objective has been to demonstrate to the Gulf's Shia that Iran dominates all the spiritual centers of Shia Islam. If Iran is as successful in this as it was in exploiting Lebanon, then most of the Gulf, at least in the sense of sectarian allegiance, will be under Iran's sway.
Then, on another level, there's pure military blackmail. As tension with Washington rose after the invasion of Iraq, the Iranians made a point of going to the Gulf states to inform them that in the event of a conflict with the United States or Israel, Iran would either prohibit exports through the Strait of Hormuz or destroy the Arab oil facilities that sit along the rim of the Gulf-all vulnerable to attacks by surface-to-surface missiles. The Arab sheikhdoms are militarily weak; there's nothing they can do to fight back. And lest we forget, Iran is the only true local power in the Gulf. If the United States were to reduce its presence in the region, Iran, without serious impediment, could intimidate the Gulf Arabs into accepting Iranian suzerainty over the Gulf's waters.
Worst-case scenario, this is where we end up: Bahrain would be the first Arab sheikhdom to fall under Iran's control, and as Bahrain goes, so goes the Persian Gulf. With its 70 percent Shia population, gaining control of the country would only be a matter of Iran inciting its Bahraini Shia proxies to declare the end of the monarchy and then stepping in with armed force to support the new "legitimate" government.
The other sheikhdoms, too, would not take much to topple. They are largely unpopular regimes and militarily weak. The Shah's Iran already seized three islands from the United Arab Emirates in the 1970s. A taste of what's to come? If Iran and the United States come to blows, it is almost certain that Tehran would consider a putsch to take over Dubai, not unlike the Bahrain scenario. In fact, there are already signs of Iran's arm-twisting. In February 2008, the ruler of Dubai, Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum, effectively pledged his loyalty to Iran, stating that Dubai would never join a U.S.-led alliance in an attack on Iran. Because Iran continues to occupy three islands belonging to the UAE, many Arabs look at a statement like this as tantamount to capitulation.
As for the rest of the Gulf Arabs, the sword of Damocles is their oil wells. It would only be a matter of sinking a few tankers to stop traffic through the Strait of Hormuz connecting the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman (as Tehran already often threatens to do), to take 17 million barrels of oil a day off world markets, driving up the price of gasoline in the United States to $10-12 a gallon. The UAE is so worried about this scenario that a senior official in Dubai recently proposed building a canal to bypass Hormuz.
THE BEST thing about disaster scenarios is that they rarely come about. But as Iran moves through the Middle East with its tried-and-successful strategy of imperialism via proxy, of bridging sectarian differences, of blackmailing oil exports, of adapting advanced weapons to classic guerilla tactics and of thwarting modern armies, we must consider that Tehran could very well succeed in establishing the virtual empire it seeks.
It would be convenient and a good deal less costly if diplomacy and international sanctions would contain Iran, force it to stop building a bomb and make it back off in Lebanon and Iraq. But there is no evidence these approaches will work. Iran called the Bush administration's bluff on nuclear weapons, not slowing down in the least its nuclear program. With the price of oil near a $100 a barrel, with Tehran threatening to close the Strait of Hormuz and with the American people turning against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Iranians see little U.S. appetite for a war with Iran. American posturing can safely be ignored. As long as the price of oil is high, there is little chance Iran will suffer serious economic hardship that would force it to alter its policy.
With rising anti-Americanism and the absence of a Palestinian peace deal, Sunni and Shia will be goaded into overcoming sectarian differences and uniting with Iran against the West. As long as the United States and Israel postpone a Palestinian settlement, Iran will fill the void, inserting itself as the one leader of the discontented, poor, oppressed and downtrodden across the Middle East. Its most important concern now is that Iraq remains calm so a wedge is not driven between Sunni and Shia.
The United States needs to go to Tehran to see what kind of bargain can be struck. To be sure, if indeed the balance of power has shifted to the degree it seems it has, a deal won't be cheap. Iran would demand an important and open role in the security and rebuilding of Iraq. It would demand an open role in policing the Gulf, not unlike the role the Shah's regime played in the 1970s when Iran was the Gulf's "policeman." Tehran would demand the lifting of all sanctions. But we won't know any of this with certainty until we sit down and listen to the Iranians.
The other choice is to let the logic of war play itself out and hope, against the evidence, that we are wrong about Iran's rise.
Robert Baer is a former CIA field officer who served in the Middle East for nearly twenty-one years. He is the author of the book The Devil We Know: Dealing with the New Iranian Superpower (Crown, September 2008).
Essay Types: Essay