Iran is playing offense in its war against the US that has been ongoing for 27 years. The US has to take bold action or take continuing losses and face a more-emboldened, nuclear Iran in the future. In our view, the downside to the course of major military action by the US has been diminished by recent events.

Bill Roggio, via Belmont Club describes how Iran is already in effect playing the ‘Civil War’ card in Iraq:

We are definitely at a ‘crisis point’ and the crisis is more political than military in nature. The attempt to remove or marginalize the Sadrs from the political process is now underway and the outcome is by no means certain.

The player to watch here is SCIRI (the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq). Muqtada al-Sadr has threatened Hakim, SCIRI’s leader, as well as other members of the United Iraqi Alliance if Jaafari was not chosen as Prime Minister. It appears there is a real break between SCIRI’s political wing and Iran (which is why Iran is throwing its weight behind Sadr.) SCIRI’s Badr Brigades are said to be Iranian controlled, and may very well be, but the political party itself is not. They support Sistani, who leads the leads the Najaf school of Shia Islam, and opposes the Qom school which is based out of Iran. This is a major schism in Shiite Islam. Sistani opposes the Khoemeist brand of governance. SCIRI does not back Sadr, and will be the kingmaker here. SCIRI can cross the lines (and Fadihla will likely follow) and create the unity government. My opinion is the Army will back the unity government. The Iraqi Army has acted as an apolitical organization to date, and there is no indication this will change.

Meanwhile, Iran is staging war games in the Strait of Hormuz (previously discussed here) as part of its oil-and-military threat:

“The revolutionary guards corps navy and air force in collaboration with (Iran’s regular) army, navy, (the volunteer militia) Basij, and the Iranian police will start a manoeuvre from 31 March until 6 April in the Persian Gulf and Sea of Oman,” [Rear-Admiral Mostafa Safari] said. Iran has two armed forces in which both have their own ground, naval and air force all under the command of Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. He added: “We hope … We will gain the necessary and needed readiness to decisively reply to any kind of threats.”

“More than 17 000 soldiers and sailors will be used, along with 1 500 different kind of vessels, in addition to the different sorts of jet fighter planes, choppers and different missiles,” he added, but did not say whether Iran will use its ballistic missiles. Iran has medium-range Shahab-3 missiles with the capability of 2 000km, able of hitting arch-enemy Israel and US bases across the Middle East.

It seems to us that a number of factors are beginning to come together that actually limit the downside, and underscore possible upside, of the US taking decisive action against Iran. This is in part because so many of the bad things that Iran would do in case of attack are already being done, and in part because it is our view that the President’s unpopularity as a wartime leader stems in part from his seeming timidity, somewhat like Lincoln before the victories of 1864:

(a) Iran has been trying to play the oil price card for some time, and the world so far has shown (to us) surprising resilience;
(b) Iran is already playing the Civil War card in Iraq, so that fear is already being realized, even while the US takes zero action against Iran; moreover, Shiites like Sistani are apparently invested in ruling Iraq, not in being a subsidiary of Iran or its war-ally;
(c) the Cartoon Riots and the Abdul Rahman Affair have shown Americans that what mixing Islam and democracy look like in the short term in many places around the globe, so the idea of military restraint to avoid alienating ‘hearts and minds’ is rather unpersuasive at this point;
(d) Michael Ledeen makes the case that the Iranians think they are winning in their 27 year war with the US, which sounds pretty persuasive to use; therefore, continued fecklessness with Iran, evident in 1979, 1983 and many times up to today, will only buy us even worse in the future unless the US shows backbone and resolve;
(e) people argue that President Bush is hamstrung by his miniscule popularity ratings; on the contrary, bold action would have limited downside since he has nowhere to fall, and since, in our view, a majority of Americans want to wipe out our enemies, not watch a slow death by a thousand cuts;
(f) people are tired of hearing about what is in Iraq’s interests; either those people want a good future or they do not and they can work out their political problems or not; meanwhile, it is clearly in US interests that Iran does not become nukemaker to the terrorist world

Little ants like Sadr and his militia can be taken out. To choose not to wipe him off the face of the earth along with thousands of his men is a political decision, not a military decision. Similarly, Iran’s nuclear ambitions as well as its flotilla of suicide rafts in the Strait of Hormuz can be made to disappear, along with the smirk on Ahmadinejad’s face.

We are tempted to say that if George Bush does not take these decisive actions to wipe out the enemy, he becomes the Lyndon Johnson of our generation — but that is not quite true. The difference between Vietnam and today’s war is that the Viet Cong had no intention of coming to America and killing us here. Iran has been at war with us for 27 years; our only choice is when we will strike back with overwhelming force, and what needless American losses we will bear in the interim.

We frankly doubt, at this point, that President Bush has the clear-eyed ruthlessness to pursue this course definitively, to the end, and with the bold rhetoric to support it. We hope to be surprised.

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 30th, 2006 at 9:24 am and is filed under General, Religion, Republicans, War, art, culture. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.