An international posse led by the US has set off along with a motley crowd hunting for one of the two remaining leaders of the Axis of Evil. The British are there, as always, galloping along close to the Americans. The Germans and the French have returned to the fold after staying away in the hunt for Saddam Hussein. The Chinese and the Russians are there too; somewhat reluctant and tentative but there, nevertheless. We are there too, hunting with the Big Boys. Meanwhile, the quarry waits, defiant and refusing to run.
The Iran nuclear crisis continues to gather steam as the world watches. A good deal of hope is pinned on the February 16 meeting between the Russians and the Iranians but the latter are saying they won't talk any more. There is no point, they say. The Iranian leader is neither crazy nor is the regime worse than that of the Nazis as his Western detractors would have us believe. On the contrary, the regime has gathered domestic support for standing up to the Great Satan.
The tactics used at the time of the buildup preceding the Iraqi invasion have been used once again. A scare scenario, with the neo-con sections of the US media pitching in, threatening statements from US leaders and Condoleezza Rice saying the time for talking is over. Other dire warnings are becoming shriller and more frequent. There is elaborate discussion about military strikes.
US intelligence assesses Iran is a decade away from making the bomb but administration officials chose to ignore this. They say Iran has the capability to make a bomb. It has the intention to make a bomb. This situation was intolerable, but that they would give diplomacy a chance. And if that fails, then obviously the course of action recommended by Richard Perle, a powerful neo-con who was one of the chief advocates of the Iraq invasion and chairman of the Defence Advisory Board from 2001 to 2003, will be followed.
Recently, on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference, Perle told the Reuters correspondent that "if you want to wait until the very last minute, you'd better be very confident of your intelligence because if you're not, you won't know when the last minute is." He also said, "And so, one of the lessons of the inadequate intelligence of Iraq is, you'd better be careful how long you choose to wait. I can't tell you when we may face a similar choice with Iran. But it's either take action now or lose the option of taking action." This makes it appear that the countdown may have begun.
It is also unlikely that the CIA has had any great intelligence from Iran. Moreover, it may be of the same level as was in the case of Iraq. Whatever intelligence it may have would be from defectors similar to that in Iraq. There are some other possibilities. James Risen, in his unflattering book on the CIA called State of War - the Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration has described a too-clever-by-half CIA operation in which some dud intelligence about making a nuclear bomb was passed on to the Iranians through a Russian defector. The underlying assumption was that the Iranians were too dumb to understand this game. As it turned out, they were not - the Russian was working for them. It is also possible that in this hare-brained scheme the CIA gave away more intelligence than they intended to, facilitating the making of the bomb.
The additional possibility could be that General Musharraf has now come clean about the extent of assistance the Pakistanis gave to the Iranians in the making of the bomb. A. Q. Khan is only a convenient fall guy in this, for he could simply not have given away secrets without higher approval. In the past, the CIA had shielded Khan when the Dutch wanted him arrested for stealing secrets. It is possible all this may be causing the Americans some anxiety, although if there were something substantial to this, then they would have broadcast it far and wide.
The Russians see this as an opportunity to get into a position to play a role in West Asia, apart from the Bushehr nuclear plant that they are constructing on the Persian Gulf coast. They would also have worries that some of the secrets or material that may have been passed on to Iran or purchased by the Iranians in the chaotic days that followed the breakup of the Soviet Union. There is an oil swap arrangement with the Russians who ship crude to Iran where it is refined for domestic consumption. In return, the Iranians give the Russians an equivalent amount of oil for shipment to nonEuropean buyers. Sanctions would cut off supplies to Europe from Iran and increase its dependence on the Russians.
The Chinese have huge stakes in the Khuzestan province of Iran, which produces 90 per cent of the oil. The China Petroleum and Chemical Corporation has a 50 per cent stake in the Yadavaran oil field. On the one hand, the Chinese would not want to be a party to any sanctions on Iran, as this would affect its supplies. On the other, neither Russia nor China would really mind if the Americans got sucked in deeper into the Iranian quagmire that threatens to be far worse than the Iraqi quagmire.
The US seems determined to go ahead with destabilising the Ahmadinejad regime. There were reports earlier of the Mujaheddin-eKhalq, till recently on the terrorist watch list, being rehabilitated and used from Afghanistan and Balochistan to incite trouble in eastern Iran. Similarly, there is renewed interest in the Khuzestan province in southwest Iran on the Iraqi border. Since last year more and more incidents have been reported from this area with a predominantly Arab Shia population akin to the population in Iraq. Control of this province will enable control of the wealth of Iran leading to a possible regime change and the return of US companies to Iran.
As Iran gets closer to the proposed date of opening its oil bourse dealing in euros on March 20, the petrodollar is at risk of ultimately losing its pre-eminence in oil dealings. Neither the Russians nor the Europeans would mind selling or buying oil in euros. Oil may cease to be billed in dollars. So far, the US has been able to go to war despite its massive budget and trade deficits because major buyers like Japan, China, the EU and oil producers have purchased US debt and hold dollar denominated assets. All that these countries have to do is dump the dollar to precipitate a crisis in the US economy. Naturally, the US cannot allow this to happen.
The Iranians are to be denied the bomb even while US nuclear weapon scientists at Livermore and Los Alamos are working on a new hydrogen bomb design. This, if successful, will lead to highly automated factories producing more warheads and of new kinds.
But it is more than just the nuclear bomb. It is more than the charge that Iran is aiding terrorism. It is ultimately a question of command and control. Halford Mackinder, British geographer, economist and politician said about 85 years ago, Who rules East Europe commands the Heartland/ Who rules the Heartland commands the World-Island/ Who rules the World-Island commands the World.
Today, instead of East Europe, it is the Caspian region that commands the Heartland.
The author is Advisor to Chairman, Observer Research Foundation, New Delhi.
Source: Hindustan Times, New Delhi, February 15, 2006.
* Views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Observer Research Foundation.
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