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COMMENTARY
July 21, 2004
Iran
A significant barrier was crossed when President George W. Bush spoke aloud Monday about the possibility of an Iranian role in the 9/11 attacks on the United States. By doing so he was responding -- in a language that the ayatollahs would understand -- to escalating threats and provocative behaviour from Iran. No matter who is President after November it appears the U.S. and Iran are now on course for another history-making collision. The movement of known Afghan-Arab Jihadis through Iranian territory from Afghanistan both before and after the U.S. invasion is now so well established in fact that even the CIA has acknowledged it. But as ever it is nearly impossible for the CIA or any other Western intelligence service -- who do not have their own agents in the field and thus rely entirely on second-hand information -- to confirm much beyond that. I fear Mr. Bush is about to repeat a mistake he made in his approach to war in Iraq. This is to develop a case for war based on narrow legalistic arguments. As we discovered before during and after the invasion of Iraq this concedes most of the debate to nitpickers in the media and the political opposition: an especially hard course when we remember that agencies like the CIA have proved entirely incompetent in establishing the facts upon which legalistic arguments can be based. Iran itself has been doing a better job of establishing a casus belli. With the sort of arrogance made visible even to Canadians in the recent "trial" of suspects in the murder of Zahra Kazemi the regime's officials from Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei down have been making bellicose declarations against America Israel and the West generally. "Today we have in our possession long-range smart missiles which can reach many of the interests and vital resources of the Americans and of the Zionist regime in our region writes Yadollah Javani, political head of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards in the daily Kayhan, which has become the Iranian Pravda". General Javani was echoing remarks made by Ayatollah Khamenei in Hamadan a week earlier in more Koranic language. "The entire Islamic Middle East is now a volatile and tangled trap and will be set off by the smallest bit of silliness Javani declares. Indeed the White House's 80 years of exclusive rule are likely to become 80 seconds of Hell." Translations on the excellent MEMRI website (see Internet) flesh out such threats. Recent announcements include: the recruitment and training of thousands of Iranian volunteers for suicide attacks against U.S. and other targets in Iraq; the resumption of work on Iran's long-range Shihab 4 and 5 missiles capable of reaching targets in Europe and the U.S.; and references to a "master plan" to eliminate "Anglo-Saxon civilization" with missiles and martyrdom mentioning "29 sensitive targets". These threats are not uttered from a cave in the Hindu Kush. They are official Iranian state announcements. The ability of the Western media to ignore them is astounding. They come at a time when the ayatollahs are taking a much more aggressive and meddlesome role in the political and economic development of Central Asia in direct challenge to U.S. and sometimes even Russian interests; when they are flexing their muscles through fleet manoeuvres in the Persian Gulf; and -- the crucial issue -- when they are racing to become the second Islamic power after Pakistan to flourish nuclear weapons. The United Nations ' IAEA has effectively conceded its inspectors can no longer keep up with reports of nuclear developments in the country. In the face of these realities we continue to hear absurd suggestions from European governments and the U.S. State Department that the West must "engage in dialogue" with the Iranian regime. But there is no way to "nuance" with an enemy who is openly committed to destroying us and who fields factual queries with undisguised contempt. Moreover the growing arrogance of the ayatollahs portends a nuclear power that will try to wield influence with the subtlety of a North Korea. Canada's own "angry gerbil" response to the insulting handling of the Kazemi trial is obviously not going to influence Iranian behaviour. What might is a show of force sufficient to plausibly counter-threaten the existence of the ayatollahs' regime. This could count on the multiplier effect of inspiring renewed efforts by the Iranian people to complicate the regime's life: for its popularity at home after a quarter-century of Islamic Revolution is extremely low. Once again the U.S. is the only power in a material position to act in defence of the West. The confrontation being inevitable the sooner it happens the better. David Warren
© Ottawa Citizen
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