Gary Sick: If you like the Iraq and Afghanistan wars ...

Gary Sick, an expert on Iran and its foreign policies, takes a look at the current state of relations between the US and its allies, on the one hand, and Iran on the other in an important piece, Who’s Afraid of the Ayatollahs? Gary's Choices 01/04/2012. Toward the end, he includes this warning about a war of choice against Iran that American hawks are promoting and have been promoting for a while:

These are the same illusions of righteousness and impunity that preceded the U.S. invasion of Iraq. As General Zinni memorably noted, if you like Iraq and Afghanistan, you're going to love Iran. Those who suggest that a U.S. military confrontation with Iran would be surgical, limited, and one-sided are many of the same people who eight years ago assured you that the invasion of Iraq would be a cakewalk. ...

An impeccable array of U.S. and Israeli security officials have spoken openly of the absolute folly of going to war with Iran and have warned against exaggerating either the threat or Iran’s intentions. Those voices include the top military leaders and intelligence officials in both the United States and Israel.

After a decade of war and trillion dollar deficits, the United States should be well aware that such adventures can do us real harm. An important set of experienced voices continue to call for a return to negotiations. Iran says it is willing. We risk greatly and unnecessarily if we ignore the chance. [my emphasis]

He notes that even among Republicans like Willard (Mitt) Romney who paint the supposed Iranian threat in apocalyptic terms, it also simultaneously taken for granted that the US has an overwhelming superiority to Iran in the force it could apply to defend against an Iranian military move in its neighborhood perceived to be hostile to US interests. And he writes:

Without questioning the logic of this proposition, just how worried should we be about Iran? How much harm can Iran actually do to us?

This question is important since, despite all the scare talk, the United States and its allies are actually conducting their relations with Iran as if they were entirely immune to any retaliation. Such policies include the use of drones for both reconnaissance and attack; covert (or officially deniable) actions, such as the Stuxnet worm introduced into the Iranian nuclear infrastructure and/or assassinations of suspect individuals; displays of military force; and destructive unilateral sanctions.

He warns against the faith that the Obama Administration puts in such acts, because in fact they are "misleading and ultimately dangerous" - and not only in Iran. Obama has expanded covert warfare considerably, based on what we know in the public record.

I haven't followed the drones-in-Iran story closely, but this was news to me: "At least two other U.S. drones had previously been downed over Iran, though they were apparently shot down, not commandeered."

He also notes that Iran may have scored again on the covert front: "Little noticed was the Iranian announcement that it had rolled up a CIA espionage ring in Iran. If true, this is the third time since the revolution that a major U.S. spy ring was neutralized."

Sick also warns that asymmetric methods don't apply only to guerrilla warfare. Referring to the cyber-attacks on Iran's nuclear power program, he writes:

Iran has a very highly developed cyber warfare capability of its own, with a battalion of young, skilled IT engineers. Until now, they have focused primarily on putting down the incipient revolt that followed the contested elections of 2009. In that effort, they were much more efficient than the Egyptians, or Syrians or other Middle East nations who have tried to stop use of the internet for social and political mobilization. But what happens next?

The United States and all other developed industrial states rely on computer-driven systems for their most mundane and most sensitive services, everything from waste disposal sites to dams to nuclear plants. Cyber warfare specialists are openly worried about the vulnerability of these systems to a sophisticated cyber attack. And such attacks, if well planned, leave no discernible fingerprints.

As in the case of the stealth drone, are we as invulnerable as we thought? What if a power plant in your vicinity suddenly and mysteriously exploded or ran amok? You probably would not blame your national security officials, but you might be wrong. In cyber warfare, the playing field is much more level than in conventional warfare.

If such a thing happens, it won't be very helpful for our politicians and pundits to be cluelessly asking, "Why do they hate us?"

In the real world, those whiz-bang black ops programs often don't work nearly so well as they do on TV and in the movies. If the United States is firing rockets from drones, or conducting sabotage operations or other covert military missions, assassinating scientists or other civilians the US Administration of the moment decides needs killin', all those are acts of war. For all the annoyance they cause us, the airport inspections by the TSA can't protect Americans from every risk that stems from our reckless and ill-advised covert wars.

Economic sanctions aren't as always clean and easy as we might like to imagine them:

More recently, the U.S. Congress has been insisting on sanctions against Iranian banks that, in effect, make it impossible for Iran to sell its oil. That is the equivalent of a military blockade of Iran’s oil ports, arguably an act of war. And these sanctions are being imposed unilaterally, without reference to the United Nations Security Council. Members of Congress can go home to their districts and boast about how tough they can be on Iran, and in an election year that is worth a few votes. President Obama seems unwilling to buck the tide, despite his better judgment.

Iran has responded with harsh words, indicating that if Iran’s oil lifeline is cut off, others will also find their access to world oil markets imperiled. Iran does not need to close the Strait of Hormuz to make a point. Its words make it clear that an act of war by the United States will be treated as such by Iran. Even the threat of a confrontation immediately drove the price of oil above $100 per barrel, which has effects on economies struggling to recover from the recession. [my emphasis]

War with Iran. Really not a good idea.

Tags: gary sick, iran, iran war

Gary Sick on the alleged Iranian/Zetas plot

Gary Sick, a real live expert on Iran who worked in Jimmy Carter's White House on the hostage crisis decades ago now, writes about the alleged Iranian plot to assassinate the Saudi Ambassador to the US in Did Iran launch a plot against the US? Gary's Choices 10/12/2011:

I find this [alleged plot] very hard to believe. In fact, this plot, if true, departs from all known Iranian policies and procedures.

To be sure, Iran has plenty of reasons to be angry at both the United States and Saudi Arabia. They attribute the recent wave of assassinations of physics professors and students, as well as the intrusion of the Stuxnet worm, to the US and Israel. And the king of Saudi Arabia is reliably reported to have called for the US to bomb Iran.

Iran has reportedly been involved in past assassinations in Europe and bombings in Argentina and elsewhere. But the assassinations were of Iranian counter-revolutionaries in the 1980s, and the bombings were always carried out by trusted proxies — normally a branch of Hezbollah. Iran’s fingerprints were always concealed beneath one or more layers of disguise.

The Argentina reference is presumably to the 1994 AMIA Jewish Community Center attack in Buenos Aires; Iranian participation on that one remains unproven and, from what I've see, dubious.

He thinks the allegation of official Iranian involvement is exceptionally shaky based on what we know so far:

Iran has never conducted — or apparently even attempted — an assassination or a bombing inside the US. And it is difficult to believe that they would rely on a non-Islamic criminal gang to carry out this most sensitive of all possible missions. In this instance, they allegedly relied on at least one amateur and a Mexican criminal drug gang that is known to be riddled with both Mexican and US intelligence agents.

Whatever else may be Iran’s failings, they are not noted for utter disregard of the most basic intelligence tradecraft, e.g. discussing an ultra-covert operation on an open international line between Iran and the US. Yet that is what happened here.

He also draws this conclusion: "If Iran is really as stupid and as incompetent as this case implies, then perhaps they are their own worst enemy and not the clever and determined adversary that they are made out to be."

Tags: gary sick, iran, iran war

Gary Sick assesses Osama Bin Laden's legacy

In the wake of Bin Laden's death, Gary Sick asks Does Islamism Have a Future? Gary's Choices 05/03/2011:

Osama bin Laden was important in creating the image of a global campaign that was immensely attractive to the disaffected and the fanatic. As such, his loss will no doubt be felt. But his theology and his politics had already been discredited to anyone who was willing to devote even a few minutes of objective thought to the subject. He and his campaign were increasingly denounced from Muslim pulpits, by Islamic scholars and even by average citizens who saw the beheadings, the suicide bombings of innocents, and the incitement to religious civil war as an execration.

Al Qaeda's political "solution" was the proposed return to the seventh century utopia of a holy caliphate that, if it ever existed at all, collapsed into civil war within half a dozen years. Like most utopias, this mythical caliphate was a figment of Osama bin Laden’s imagination and provided no solution to the genuine problems of his tortured followers.

With no plausible political goal to offer, and only appalling violence as a means to that end, Osama bin Laden understandably made no real headway. He could sow pain and chaos, but he was never able to change a government or to impose his illusory vision on any group outside his own immediate followers. [my emphasis]

Tags: gary sick, osama bin laden

Good news on Obama's Iran policy

Iran expert Gary Sick reports what looks like good news about the Obama administration's Iran policy in All the President's Leaks Foreign Policy 01/03/09. He argues that Obama foolishly let the Iran hawks talk him into setting a firm deadline for Iran to agree on his proposals for Irtanian uranium enrichment. But also that he's now trying to back away from the hardline policy to give himself some more practical negotiating room. Sick also argues that Israel knows that it can't pull off a military attack on Iran without American approval and that the latter is not going to be forthcoming in the immediate future.

All good news, if true. And Gary Sick is often right about these things.

Sick sees avoiding having Congress imposing gasoline sanctions became and urgent goal for Obama. And that Obama's verbal denunciations of Iran for human rights violations helped him project a tough image and thus helped him back away from the more hostile measures to which the Iran hawks are pushing him. Sick mentions at several times the dysfuntional behavior of the national so-called quality press on Obama's Iran policy. And he concludes:

In short, Mr. President, you have taken what appeared to be a losing hand and, with a few well-placed leaks, transformed it into a victory over Iran. You have converted a lose-lose proposition of crippling sanctions vs. appeasement into an Iranian nuclear collapse. The imminent threat of Iran has become an indefinite delay of its breakout capability. The huffing and puffing of Congress has been rendered irrelevant even before it hits your desk. A deadline has become a new beginning of negotiations. And you brought the Israelis along with you, without a peep of complaint. As for the punditocracy, so far so good.

Tags: gary sick, iran, iran war

This can't be good

From Borzou Daragahi, Iran's Revolutionary Guard takes command Los Angeles Times 07/06/09

The top leaders of Iran's elite Revolutionary Guard publicly acknowledged they had taken over the nation's security and warned late Sunday that there was no middle ground in the ongoing dispute over the reelection of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in a threat against a reformist wave led by Mir-Hossein Mousavi.

Maj. Gen. Mohammad Ali Jafari, commander of the elite military branch, said the Guard's takeover of the country had led to "a revival of the revolution and clarification of the value positions of the establishment at home and abroad."

"These events put us in a new stage of the revolution and political struggles, and all of us must fully comprehend its dimensions," he said at a Sunday press conference, according to reports that surfaced today.

It's not really clear to me what this means, and may not be clear to the Revolutionary Guard, either. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is still in charge. Presumably this means that the military will not direct the police rather than the civil government doing so. But even that isn't clear from the article.

Gary Sick a few days ago in The Thugs Who Lead Iran's Supreme Leader The Daily Beast 06/27/09 makes it sound like The Revolutionary Guard had been pretty much calling the shots in national policy, including economic policy, for a long time anyway. And he actually knows a lot about Iran.

Meanwhile, Robert Perry reminds us that prolonged dissension within Iran over the results on the recent presidential election there could delay progress on peace negotiations, in Obama's Iran Peace Talk Dilemma ConsortiumNews.com 07/07/09.

Tags: gary sick, iran

Surprising sense - and even hope - in the Middle East confusion?

Uneasy allies: Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and Our Dear Leader Bush

The reports about a rift between Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and Gen. David Petraeus, US commander in Iraq and the current Republican grand hope for Victory there, indicate a serious complication in the balancing act that Cheney and Bush are currently doing between the Shi'a and Sunni camps. See, for instance, Iraq: Washington won't heed any call to replace commander by Steven Hurst and Qassim Abdul-Zahra AP Long Beach Press-Telegram Online 07/28/07:

Al-Maliki, a Shiite activist who spent the Saddam Hussein years in exile, hotly objects to the recent U.S. practice of recruiting tribal groups tied to the Sunni insurgency for the fight against the Sunni extremists of al-Qaida, deemed "Enemy No. 1" by the Americans. His loud complaints have won little but a U.S. pledge to let al-Maliki's security apparatus screen the recruits.

As the head of a Shi'a coalition and Iraq's Shi'a-dominated government, Maliki is concerned that the Sunni groups cooperating with the US now will be strengthened in later confrontations with his government. Understandably so. One of the risks of encouraging and empowering local militias like this is that it makes it more difficult to de-activate or neutralize them later.

This is also an interesting observation reminding us the level of confidence the Cheney-Bush admnistration has in the "independent" government of Iraq:

Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari told Newsweek magazine the Petraeus-al-Maliki relationship is "difficult." For one thing, the Americans retain control of the Iraqi military. "The prime minister cannot just pick up the phone and have Iraqi army units do what he says. Maliki needs more leverage," Zebari said. (my emphasis)

(For the Newsweek interview, see 'A Sense of Conspiracy' by Melinda Liu and Larry Kaplow Newsweek International 07/2-907 issue.

But in all the cross-currents of escalating arms sales to Saudi Arabia and Israel, talks with Iran mixed with incessent threats and various other complications, Iran expert Gary Sick continues to maintain his hope that war with Iran can be avoided. And even that a near-miracle could be happening: the Cheney-Bush administration pulling off a complex set diplomatic manuevers (Iran and US Jiu-Jitsu in the Middle East Informed Comment Global Affairs blog 07/30/07):

I was finally moved to respond by the news this weekend that the US intends to sell $20 billion in new arms to the Arab states of the Gulf over the next decade, while increasing military aid to Israel by 25% (a total of $3 billion per year) and also raising aid to Egypt by a smaller but significant amount. Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates are getting ready for a major Middle East trip to present this package and to attempt to forge a working consensus focused squarely on Iran as the major threat in the region. The level of the bribes may change in the course of discussions, but this is obviously intended as an offer that they cannot refuse. ...

I am aware of the total incompetence of this administration over much of the past five years or so in the Middle East, and I also read the polls saying that their confidence level with the American people (not to mention the rest of the world) is at a nadir. However, I am simply describing what I see, and I think it is important to take seriously the evidence in front of us. Perhaps my analysis is wrong, but I don't believe this concatenation of actions by the Bush administration is simply random.

I'm not entirely convinced. But avoiding war with Iran would be a major improvement over what Cheney apparently has planned. So I hope Sick is right in this case. Although even he obviously recognizes the riskiness of any assumption that depends on this administration demonstrating real competence in foreign policy.

Tags: gary sick, iraq war