Bush opens a 3rd front in Iraq — against Iran
Bush opens a 3rd front in Iraq — against Iran
By David E. Sanger
Copyright by The International Herald Tribune
Published: January 14, 2007
WASHINGTON: For more than two years after Saddam Hussein's fall, the war in Iraq was about chasing down insurgents and Al Qaeda in Iraq. Last year it expanded to tamping down sectarian warfare.
But over the past three weeks, in two sets of raids and newly revealed orders issued by President George W. Bush, a third front has opened — against Iran.
For now, administration officials say, that effort has a limited goal: preventing Iranians from aiding in attacks on American and Iraqi forces inside Iraq. But in recent interviews and public statements, senior members of the Bush administration have made clear that their real agenda goes significantly further, toward a goal of containing Iran's ability to exploit America's troubles and realizing its dream of re-emerging as the greatest power in the Middle East.
In an interview in her office Friday, before she left on her latest Mideast trip, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice described what she called an "evolving" administration strategy to confront "destabilizing behavior" by Iran across the region. Bush's national security adviser, Stephen Hadley, went further Sunday, when he said on NBC's "Meet the Press" that the United States was resisting an Iranian effort "to basically establish hegemony" throughout the region.
Even some of Bush's fiercest critics do not question that the administration's diagnosis is correct. Some of them argued in 2003 that Iran was a far more potent threat than Saddam Hussein ever had been, and questioned whether the president had taken on Iraq first simply because it seemed, at the time, like an easier confrontation to resolve. But nearly four years later, with American forces stretched thin, confronting Iran raises strategic questions that the White House is not eager to answer.
In many ways, the new focus on Iran represents another way in which the American mission in Iraq has backfired. In the lead-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, administration officials argued that successfully deposing Saddam Hussein would send a powerful signal to other nations seeking to challenge Washington and racing for nuclear weapons. Iran and North Korea, the two other countries that Bush identified in his 2002 State of the Union address as part of an "axis of evil," would take note of the costs of defiance and rein in their ambitions.
"You heard this argument in meetings all the time," a senior official on the National Security Council, who has since left the administration, said recently. "Iraq would make the harder problems of Iran and North Korea easier."
But the opposite happened. North Korea tested a nuclear device in October. And Iran has sped ahead with a uranium enrichment program in defiance of United Nations Security Council demands. Now, Rice confirms, Washington is moving to what amounts to a Plan B: stationing more naval, air and anti-missile batteries off Iran's coast; cracking down on its international financial transactions in an effort to squeeze its ability to pump oil; and hunting down suspected members of the Revolutionary Guard and other Iranian operatives inside Iraqi territory.
The strategy, officials say, is to raise the cost for Iranians so much that they question the hard-line tactics of the country's current leadership, especially that of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. To the administration's critics, though, the result could be the opposite — that Washington's hard line could give Ahmadinejad's movement new life.
"The administration does have Iran on the brain, and I think they are exaggerating the amount of Iranian activities in Iraq," Kenneth Pollack, the director of research at the Saban Center at the Brookings Institution, said on Sunday. "There's a good chance that this is going to be counterproductive."
Administration officials say that ignoring Iran's activities will lead only to escalation. "There's no question that everything that has gone wrong in Iraq has made life easier for the Iranians," one senior White House official said recently. "The question is what you do about that."
The answer, shaped in the National Security Council, is for the American military to make targets of Iranians who they believe are fueling attacks, a decision that Bush made months ago that was disclosed only last week. It is a strategy that raises many questions.
First is whether the confrontation will be limited to Iraqi territory. In testimony in recent days, the new secretary of defense, Robert Gates, has argued that he sees no need to enter into Iranian territory.
Yet American officials have been careful not to shut off the possibility of American actions inside Iran, and they have been cagey about what kind of orders, including secret presidential findings, Bush may have signed in recent months. Pressed on ABC's "This Week" on Sunday about excluding the option of going after Iranians inside Iran's own borders, Hadley said that for now, Iraq was "the best place" for the United States to take on the Iranians.
"So, you don't believe you have the authority to go into Iran?" the host of the show, George Stephanopoulos, asked Hadley. "I didn't say that," he responded. "This is another issue. Any time you have questions about crossing international borders, there are legal issues."
The second question is whether Bush is now determined to step up covert as well as overt efforts to halt Iran's nuclear program. So far, the evidence collected by the International Atomic Energy Agency suggests that Tehran's nuclear efforts have run into considerable technical obstacles. But concerns remain that inspectors are missing secret facilities, bigger and more advanced than those that they discovered a few years ago, acting on tips from Iranian exiles.
And the third question is what Washington would do if the Iranians looked for ways to strike back. Until now, the conventional wisdom in Washington has been that Bush has his hands full and is not eager to add to America's challenges in the Middle East.
But a newer argument is coming to the fore: that America's allies in the region, from Israel to Saudi Arabia, need evidence that Bush has not been so weakened that Iran will emerge as the beneficiary of all that has gone wrong.
"If you go and talk with the Gulf states or if you talk with the Saudis or if you talk about the Israelis or the Jordanians, the entire region is worried," Vice President Dick Cheney said on Fox News on Sunday. He described how the Iranians "sit astride the Straits of Hormuz" and its oil-shipping channels, how they support Hamas and Hezbollah.
"So the threat that Iran represents is growing," he said, in words reminiscent of how he once built a case against Saddam Hussein. "It's multidimensional, and it is, in fact, of concern to everybody in the region."
By David E. Sanger
Copyright by The International Herald Tribune
Published: January 14, 2007
WASHINGTON: For more than two years after Saddam Hussein's fall, the war in Iraq was about chasing down insurgents and Al Qaeda in Iraq. Last year it expanded to tamping down sectarian warfare.
But over the past three weeks, in two sets of raids and newly revealed orders issued by President George W. Bush, a third front has opened — against Iran.
For now, administration officials say, that effort has a limited goal: preventing Iranians from aiding in attacks on American and Iraqi forces inside Iraq. But in recent interviews and public statements, senior members of the Bush administration have made clear that their real agenda goes significantly further, toward a goal of containing Iran's ability to exploit America's troubles and realizing its dream of re-emerging as the greatest power in the Middle East.
In an interview in her office Friday, before she left on her latest Mideast trip, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice described what she called an "evolving" administration strategy to confront "destabilizing behavior" by Iran across the region. Bush's national security adviser, Stephen Hadley, went further Sunday, when he said on NBC's "Meet the Press" that the United States was resisting an Iranian effort "to basically establish hegemony" throughout the region.
Even some of Bush's fiercest critics do not question that the administration's diagnosis is correct. Some of them argued in 2003 that Iran was a far more potent threat than Saddam Hussein ever had been, and questioned whether the president had taken on Iraq first simply because it seemed, at the time, like an easier confrontation to resolve. But nearly four years later, with American forces stretched thin, confronting Iran raises strategic questions that the White House is not eager to answer.
In many ways, the new focus on Iran represents another way in which the American mission in Iraq has backfired. In the lead-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, administration officials argued that successfully deposing Saddam Hussein would send a powerful signal to other nations seeking to challenge Washington and racing for nuclear weapons. Iran and North Korea, the two other countries that Bush identified in his 2002 State of the Union address as part of an "axis of evil," would take note of the costs of defiance and rein in their ambitions.
"You heard this argument in meetings all the time," a senior official on the National Security Council, who has since left the administration, said recently. "Iraq would make the harder problems of Iran and North Korea easier."
But the opposite happened. North Korea tested a nuclear device in October. And Iran has sped ahead with a uranium enrichment program in defiance of United Nations Security Council demands. Now, Rice confirms, Washington is moving to what amounts to a Plan B: stationing more naval, air and anti-missile batteries off Iran's coast; cracking down on its international financial transactions in an effort to squeeze its ability to pump oil; and hunting down suspected members of the Revolutionary Guard and other Iranian operatives inside Iraqi territory.
The strategy, officials say, is to raise the cost for Iranians so much that they question the hard-line tactics of the country's current leadership, especially that of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. To the administration's critics, though, the result could be the opposite — that Washington's hard line could give Ahmadinejad's movement new life.
"The administration does have Iran on the brain, and I think they are exaggerating the amount of Iranian activities in Iraq," Kenneth Pollack, the director of research at the Saban Center at the Brookings Institution, said on Sunday. "There's a good chance that this is going to be counterproductive."
Administration officials say that ignoring Iran's activities will lead only to escalation. "There's no question that everything that has gone wrong in Iraq has made life easier for the Iranians," one senior White House official said recently. "The question is what you do about that."
The answer, shaped in the National Security Council, is for the American military to make targets of Iranians who they believe are fueling attacks, a decision that Bush made months ago that was disclosed only last week. It is a strategy that raises many questions.
First is whether the confrontation will be limited to Iraqi territory. In testimony in recent days, the new secretary of defense, Robert Gates, has argued that he sees no need to enter into Iranian territory.
Yet American officials have been careful not to shut off the possibility of American actions inside Iran, and they have been cagey about what kind of orders, including secret presidential findings, Bush may have signed in recent months. Pressed on ABC's "This Week" on Sunday about excluding the option of going after Iranians inside Iran's own borders, Hadley said that for now, Iraq was "the best place" for the United States to take on the Iranians.
"So, you don't believe you have the authority to go into Iran?" the host of the show, George Stephanopoulos, asked Hadley. "I didn't say that," he responded. "This is another issue. Any time you have questions about crossing international borders, there are legal issues."
The second question is whether Bush is now determined to step up covert as well as overt efforts to halt Iran's nuclear program. So far, the evidence collected by the International Atomic Energy Agency suggests that Tehran's nuclear efforts have run into considerable technical obstacles. But concerns remain that inspectors are missing secret facilities, bigger and more advanced than those that they discovered a few years ago, acting on tips from Iranian exiles.
And the third question is what Washington would do if the Iranians looked for ways to strike back. Until now, the conventional wisdom in Washington has been that Bush has his hands full and is not eager to add to America's challenges in the Middle East.
But a newer argument is coming to the fore: that America's allies in the region, from Israel to Saudi Arabia, need evidence that Bush has not been so weakened that Iran will emerge as the beneficiary of all that has gone wrong.
"If you go and talk with the Gulf states or if you talk with the Saudis or if you talk about the Israelis or the Jordanians, the entire region is worried," Vice President Dick Cheney said on Fox News on Sunday. He described how the Iranians "sit astride the Straits of Hormuz" and its oil-shipping channels, how they support Hamas and Hezbollah.
"So the threat that Iran represents is growing," he said, in words reminiscent of how he once built a case against Saddam Hussein. "It's multidimensional, and it is, in fact, of concern to everybody in the region."
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