So what about Iran?
(See my SOTU live-blog here for the play-by-play with commentary.)
Bush didn’t say much about Iran in his SOTU address. By my count, reading through the prepared text, he mentioned “Iran” five times. Four of those mentions concerned Iran’s support for Hezbollah and Shiite elements in Iraq. The fifth mention was just this quasi-internationalist statement: “The United Nations has imposed sanctions on Iran and made it clear that the world will not allow the regime in Tehran to acquire nuclear weapons.” (The first part of that statement is true; the second is a bit of an exaggeration.)
But what about all the heightened rhetoric about how Iran is arming the Shiite militias in Iraq? What about the warmongering? Whither the neocon worldview?
Perhaps Bush just didn’t want to get into it. Given his low approval ratings, given that he’s facing criticism from both parties over the upcoming surge in Iraq, perhaps he (or his minions) thought better of drawing attention away from Iraq and to Iran. Bush is having enough trouble selling his “new way forward” in Iraq. How is he to secure support for war against Iran? He’s already facing a Democratic majority in Congress. Tough talk on Iran could lose him much of his own party as well, those that haven’t already abandoned him.
Or there’s this: The L.A. Times yesterday reported that “evidence of Iranian involvement in Iraq’s troubles is limited”. Mortars and mines have been found, but “there has been little sign of more advanced weaponry crossing the border, and no Iranian agents have been found”. In his “surge” speech earlier this month, Bush “promised to ‘seek out and destroy’ Iranian networks that he said were providing ‘advanced weaponry and training to our enemies’”. Although he was “expected to strike a similar note in [his] State of the Union speech,” he didn’t. And that may be because there are no such networks. Indeed, “the Bush administration has provided scant evidence to support [its] claims”. Again, that may be because there is no hard evidence.
Bush defended his “new” strategy in Iraq and requested more time to pursue victory. In that respect, his speech last night mirrored his “surge” speech. But the differences are more striking than the similarities, and the key differences concern Iran. This is not to say that Bush has given up his hard line against Iran. Military action is hardly out of the question, even now. But, for whatever reason, the content of the public rhetoric has changed within a matter of weeks. And that should worry us. With a lack of evidence, Iran 2007 looks a lot like Iraq 2002/3. Which is to say, Bush may be pursuing military action against Iran even without evidence of Iranian malfeasance in Iraq and even with Iran’s nuclear program in its early stages. And if he is, he’s doing so privately, without informing the public. He downplayed Iran in his speech last night, but before we know it there could be war.
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For more, see Creature at State of the Day, as well as Glenn Greenwald.
14 Responses to “So what about Iran?”
Back in the summer British forces left a FOB and patrolled the desert in the soutern Iraq along the Iranian border. These British troops found no organized weapons smuggling. This part of the WaPo article was interesting:
So the Iranians are supplying UNIVERSAL TV REMOTES as weapons – LOL. W’s and his administrations credibility is ZERO.
So let me see if I’ve got this straight: Bush talks about deploying aircraft carrier to the Gulf region in his surge speech; this means he’s planning to go to war against Iran.
Bush doesn’t talk about taking military action against Iran in the SOTU speech. This means he’s planning to go to war against Iran.
Where do you guys get those decoder rings you use?
CS As many pundits from both sides said yesterday – The speech from a week ago focused on Iraq and Iran. The SOTU avoided those issues because the AUGENTATION speech went over like finger nails across a blackboard. I guess Senator Warner is one of those decoder ring defeatists.
Rudi,
My point is, MS could save a lot of bandwidth by just writing:
“Everything GWB says is irrelevant because I believe he’s taking us to war with Iran, regardless of whether or not his statements support that assumption.”
And yes, I understand why the distrust is there, but still, why bother then to analyze the speeches? MS picks out excerpts that support the idea that there’s a plan for military action against Iran and uses these to support his hypothesis, but then when Bush makes a speech that doesn’t have these statements he says this just means that the war is going to be covert.
“What about the warmongering? Whither the neocon worldview?”
silly stereotypes of neoconism. Neocons are trying to seriously struggle with what to do about Iran. I think at this point the idea is to keep the momentum going on sanctions, which apparently ARE already having a positive effect on the Iranian polity, and which China may be agreeable to tightening. On the one hand we want to be tough enough to frighten the Iranians from responding when we crack down on Sadr, and to keep the pressure on, but we dont want to be so tough that we scare away the Euros and Chinese whose help we need on sanctions and at the UNSC. A difficult balancing act, and I think the mentions in the speech, the position of carriers, the arrest of Iranian agents in Irbil, are all part of that.
CS, my decoder ring tells me this about the carrier battle groups. The number of ships will be roughly the same amount we used for the invasion of Iraq when we had constant and repeated strikes against a multitude of military targets, infantry concentrations, tanks, radar installations, airstrips, bridges, and command centers to name just a few. If you remember the air campaign against Iraq was massive but great care was taken to avoid collateral damage in urban areas. The surge we are engaging in is mostly house to house searches to find weapons and round up insurgents in both Shiite and Sunni areas of Baghdad. This type of operation does not need the kind of firepower employed against Saddam, almost every target would be in urban areas and mostly be comprised of small groups of people, not the type of target you would call an air strike against due to the fear of civilian casualties in a congested area. Even if troops doing the searches could accurately pick out groups of insurgents the number of targets available would be nowhere the number that you would need two carrier battle groups to take care of. So my question is why two battle groups? The number of aircraft assembled suggests something more is going on, that is not absolute proof but it does raise the question as to the administrations intentions towards Iran.
grog – The ransacking of Consulates in Process is another example of the sabre rattling directed at Iran. The house to house tactics should have been done two or three years ago. To pacify the insurgency and to secure thearms caches that Saddam planted throughout Iraq.
But that wasn’t part of the new “Rumsfeld army”. The Rummy Army uses technology and swiftness to conquer third world armies. What would happen if the Chinese and Russians made our orbitting satellites one big debris field?
Rudi, yes a very good point, the satellite system is the Achilles heal of our high tech system, and why China is going to continue further development of ant satellite systems.
This hi-tech Army is doing wonders in Iraq. The next step is the Future Combat System. The numbers in Iraq reflect a hi-tech Army, more people behind computers, repair technicians and logistics than Marine patrols in Bahgdada. GD and Raytheon are winning this GWOT, their bottom line and stock prices are exploding, like the IED’s triggered by cell phones and TV remotes.
My Iran war radar went off when Bush mentioned Hezbollah several times. Hezbollah hasn’t declared any kind of war against the US, isn’t allied with Al Qaeda, and probably cares less about the US. But Bush’s GWOT apparently means we can pick and choose a new enemy when he’s polically in trouble or irrelivant.
General Dynamics Stock price as of Jan 2002 was 48 dollars…..its 78 dollars today.
Raytheon’s stock price as of Jan 2002 was 37 dollars it is 52 dollars today.
This is hardly a stock explosion. Caterpillar during that same time went from 28 to as high as 95 and split 2 for 1. I know I own Caterpillar.
The point…….PLOWS still make more MONEY then WEAPONS.
Its the economics of reality. Try a dose of it. It does a body good.
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