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COMMENTARY
June 22, 2004
Nuclear mullahs
The Iran of the ayatollahs has just executed a formidable power play in the Shatt-al-Arab (the waterway shared by Iraq and Iran at the sea-mouth of Mesopotamia) by taking British forces into custody. According to British officials the three small Royal Navy boats and their crew of eight sailors were on a routine mission and may or may not have strayed into Iranian waters. According to a British intelligence source confirmed by both Iraqi and American sources -- the boats were (or were probably) laying sensing devices on the bed of the Shatt-al-Arab for the express purpose of detecting Iranian-launched terrorist hits on Basra's extensive oil-exporting facilities. And according to Michael Ledeen the American journalist with the best sources from within Iran there was every reason to be laying such sensing devices. For the ayatollahs like the leaders of the Sunni Islamist terror networks whose nexus is Saudi Arabia would very much like under the present circumstances to drive the price of oil to $60 per barrel. The Iranian Islamists have even better motives than the Saudi Islamist "underground" (and the overground Saudi princes who fund and encourage them). For the Iranians would be left selling the oil for $60 a barrel -- after Iraqi and Saudi exports had been wiped out by the direct and indirect effects of terrorism. This would create economic chaos in the West while supplying both the money and distraction the Iranians need to complete their nuclear weapons programme. That it is close to success is indicated by every particle of information reaching the West -- and indeed more noise on the subject is being made currently by the United Nations' International Atomic Energy Agency than by the Bush administration which would rather not have it as an election issue. The Iranians have been caught red-handed with at least two large undeclared nuclear research facilities and have stonewalled IAEA inspectors in the Saddamite manner. They also occasionally gloat that they will soon be members of the "nuclear club" and ought to be accepted. Though almost everyone believed Saddam Hussein's Iraq was harbouring large quantities of WMD. So we can't be entirely certain of anything until the weapons are actually used. (Which is the moment when the chorus from the Left changes its tune from Why are you trying to do something about it? to Why didn't you do something in time? ) The failure to find the kind of "smoking guns" in Iraq that would meet the news criteria of the New York Times or CNN has made every kind of assertion about mortal threats from rogue states politically unwise. It's "the boy who cried wolf". (And the reader will remember how that story ends.) Now given the existence of a real wolf now -- and the Iranian wolf is bigger and smarter than the Iraqi one which the U.S. dealt with -- we are in a fix. President Bush proved himself bold over Iraq willing to act with most of the world against him. But is he big enough to sacrifice his presidency to confront Iran while there is still time? A President is lucky to get away with one war per term in office; Mr. Bush has already had two and needs three. Alternatively I'm fairly certain the Israelis this time aren't up to the job that they performed in 1981 taking out Saddam's nuclear reactor at Osirak in time to a chorus of world outrage. It is too large for them -- the Iranian nuclear programme is dispersed over too many sites and most of them are out of range of the IAF's strike aircraft which would anyway have to overfly too many hostile or uncooperative countries. And yet the very survival of Israel must be brought into question once the ayatollahs have The Bomb. We needn't waste time considering whether the U.N. or the European Union might have a plan. Even Britain is up to its ears in high-tech contracts with the Iranian regime of the sort that tend to make the supplier docile. Once armed with nukes and even without actually using them Iran's ability to project power throughout the region -- both diplomatically and through Hezbollah -- is much enhanced. The mullahs' chance of surviving domestic challenges to their power will be likewise enhanced. Saddam's domestic power came from the common belief that he was armed with hideous weapons. To sum up the West is in no position to act boldly against the ayatollahs. But they for their part are now acting boldly against us. David Warren
© Ottawa Citizen
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