“Iran is providing material support for attacks on American troops [in Iraq],” George Bush declared on 10 January. “We will disrupt the attacks on our forces. We will interrupt the flow of support from Iran and Syria. And we will seek out and destroy the networks providing advanced weaponry and training to our enemies in Iraq.”
The speech marked a new phase in the confrontation between America and Iran. It signalled that, far from talking to Tehran, as he’d been advised to do by the Baker-Hamilton commission, President Bush intended to take tougher action to counter Iran’s meddling in Iraq and its efforts to play a more dominant role in the Middle East.
The new policy is not just rhetoric. It has been accompanied by both military and economic pressure on Iran. Commentators have variously described the tougher approach as opening a new front in the war in Iraq, as an attempt to blame Iran for the Iraq debacle, as giving muscle to American diplomacy over the nuclear issue – or as marking the opening shots in a new war between Washington and Tehran.
For policy-makers in Washington, two issues – Iran’s nuclear programme and its regional ambitions -- have become intertwined, and on both fronts the administration feels thwarted by a determined enemy and less-than-reliable allies. To get Russian and Chinese support for fairly modest sanctions on Iran, the Americans had to water down the resolution eventually passed by the UN Security Council in December. Now, as they try to move to progressively stronger sanctions, there are signs the international consensus may be eroding. In any case, few in the Bush administration (or for that matter elsewhere) believe sanctions alone will force Iran to abandon its nuclear ambitions.
At the same time, there’s frustration in Washington because Iran’s regional position has grown stronger. By intervening in three Middle East conflict zones – Iraq, Palestine and Lebanon – Iran has sent a clear message to Washington that, if pushed into a corner over the nuclear issue, it has regional cards it is willing and able to play.
There is an essential ambiguity in the American position. Is it getting tough with Tehran to change its behaviour, or as a prelude to air strikes against its nuclear facilities? The dangers of a military clash – even an unintended one – are widely understood, and there is some reason to believe that the administration’s aim, at least in the short run, is to force Iran to climb down. The case for dealing with Iran from a position of greater strength has been made by Henry Kissinger. But while for Kissinger the aim is a “geopolitical dialogue” with Iran (what others refer to as a “grand bargain”), the administration’s purpose is narrower: to scare Iranian leaders into scaling back their nuclear and regional ambitions. Though less alarming than the aggressive pursuit of “regime change”, the new approach is not without risk.
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