Iran & Iraq

[burrow_owl]

Recently, Iran made a curious statement:

We will not sit [with arms folded] to wait for what others will do to us. Some military commanders in Iran are convinced that preventive operations which the Americans talk about are not their monopoly.

Clearly, Iran is warning of a pre-emptive strike against America. But why? Is this just bluster?

From Juan Cole:

The debates about Iraqi Shiism seem to me to occur often in a sort of historical vacuum in which everyone ignores the elephant in the living room. That is Ayatollah Khomeini and his movement, the central tenets of which were rejected by Najaf but accepted by the Sadr movement.

...US actions like repeatedly bombing Najaf's sacred cemetery (where a lot of Iranians' loved ones are buried) and generally reducing much of this pilgrimage site to rubble, is strengthening Iran's hardliners and the Bush administration is succeeding in breathing new live into Khomeinism in Iran, as well.

Iran has much to gain from an Iraqi government allied with Iran.

Will they succeed? And if a Khomeinist government succeeds in Iraq, what should America's response be?

 

[datan]

right now they have an Ace in their hand and they know it.

they know that Bush doesn't want any news out of Iraq in October.

they know that they can easily stir up trouble among the Shi'ites.

I wonder why kind of concessions they will try to get out of Bush in return for staying quiet before the elections.

 

[BobbieDog]

Burrow, the reported speech does not suggest pre-emptive strikes.
The Iranian speaker said preventive. He spoke of regional presence by Iran, He promised retaliation on Israeli nuclear facilities, If Iranian nuclear facilities are attacked.

It was the French reporter who introduced the word pre-emptive: and then this French article was recycled in other media.

No Iranian has suggested pre-emptive action.

The biggest ace that non-coalition forces have, is that the coalition have no hope of achieving generalised security on the ground. We already have an uncontainable insurrgency, just in Iraq, even without further regional creep.
The coalition and the interim government have two options. Negotiation, or brute force military repression.
Either way the coalition loses: certainly in terms of any prospectus presented as we began this invasion.

We all must make every effort to dismantle what could lead to escalation.
Suggesting that Iran has made threats of pre-emptive action, when they clearly have not: can only serve such escalation. Whereas the truth, that Iran was here speaking about region wide insurrgency and retaliation: at least has the merit of reminding that the conflict remains within prevailing paramaters; unless we ourselves decide to change this.

 

[Cjwinnit]

As far as Iran are concerned, the invasion of Iraq was illegal as the US-UK-Aussie forces bypassed the UN. And they threatened to hit american forces in the region, not the US itself. Big difference.

 

[burrow_owl]

Burrow, the reported speech does not suggest pre-emptive strikes.

The Iranians said: "We will not sit [with arms folded] to wait for what others will do to us. Some military commanders in Iran are convinced that preventive operations which the Americans talk about are not their monopoly."

Regardless of what you want to call it, it's what we mean by 'pre-emptive' strike: one striking another before that other has the opportunity to do what one thinks the other will do.

Regardless, the question that interests me is: what ought the American response to be if a government modeled on Khomeini comes into power?

 

[BobbieDog]

Regardless of what you want to call it, it's what we mean by 'pre-emptive' strike: one striking another before that other has the opportunity to do what one thinks the other will do.

Regardless, the question that interests me is: what ought the American response to be if a government modeled on Khomeini comes into power?

Exactly: which means the Iranians are not threatening pre-emptive action.
Read the article again. The sequence in the threat is: (1) The USA or Israel attack our nuclear facilities, then (2) We will attack the Israeli nuclear facilities. The order is the inverse of what it would need to be for pre-emption.
This is retaliation.

The Iranian quoted spoke of an Iranian presence throught the region. The preventive measures possible are clearly widespread, low level, logistics degradation: which is exactly what we have already; and which we know we have already. We are engaging Iranian surrogates; and they are engaging ours: and throughout the region.

In no way, at no point, was pre-emptive striking, of any kind whatsoever spoken of.

I think this has more to do with the last point you raise. The illegal and agressive determination by the USA, that it can pick and choose what governments other countries should have.
To me that is just out and out fascism, no matter how you dress it up.
We dreadfully need an American population that can see through all the propaganda that they are being fed.

Countering an American propoganda machine is what makes it necessary to nitpick on articles such as this.
It does not say what you want it to say, period.

 

[Aduro Amnis]

Who here also thinks that the once secular Iraq is on its way to becoming party of the Iranian theocracy?

 

[rahma]

Who here also thinks that the once secular Iraq is on its way to becoming party of the Iranian theocracy?

Hey, at least in Iran they get a chance to vote, which up until the last election was getter freer and fairer each time.

 

[BobbieDog]

Who here also thinks that the once secular Iraq is on its way to becoming party of the Iranian theocracy?

You may be right Aduro.
If this is so, then we made it possible, we made it necessary.
The people of the region are in dreadful need, of perspective and world action: that might see their survival.
What the coalition offer them as perspective, and as action on the ground: just does not add up; does not do what needs to be done.
What is regionally exemplified in Iran, begins to look very attractive. Islamic kit, Islamic arrangement: that does what needs to be done in the world, that gives its people a sustainable Islamic way; that stands and endures, is consistent, that may have truth on its side.
Sure, there are lots of grounds for not wanting bits and pieces of what Iran has in its current arrangements. But Iran does seem to be able to accomodate some ongoing struggle over its own reform. Perhaps our reservation too, could one day see adjustment accomodating them.
What Iran offers the region generally, is what puts it most at risk of agression, from both the USA and Israel. Yes nukes would be a bit of an equalizer: but that is not the real threat to US/Israeli startegy. The real threat is that Iran offers a coherent way forward for the region: that it may be taking the moral and international high ground; that it might be, in terms of justice and the hearts of people, winning the day.

I wonder whether the US and Israel have what it takes, to tolerate a neighbour of such potential stature.

Does that condemn Iran to sure destruction?