With the Iranians expected to tell President Bush to go pound sand tomorrow in their response to Washington's "proposals" to resolve the growing crisis over Iran's nucelar program,the stage could be set for a military confrontation with the Islamic Republic sometime down the road. Did Washington see Israel's recent campaign against Hezbullah in Lebanon as a real-world test case for its intended strategy to bring down the Iranian government? If so, the U.S. could be on the brink of the greatest geopolitical disaster in its history.
While the dust is still settling in Lebanon and northern Israeli, the returns on the conflict are already coming in, and it appears that Hezbullah, as the cover of this week's issue of The Economist states, "won". The Middle East in particular is a region where military victories on the ground often fail to lead to political victories afterward (see: U.S. vs. Iran. Twice) but for Israel its failed campaign may bring down the government. There are, of course, indications that Hezbullah's military capacities were even more severely degraded than originally reported, and perhaps ultimately, this will be seen as a modern-day version of the Tet Offensive. In that 1968 Vietnam battle, the Viet Cong was essentially finished as a fighting force. But the ferocity of of their offensive, covered every night on the TV newscasts, was a major political victory for the Vietnamese Communists and led to the decision in Washington to finally begin serious negotiations to end the war. Similarly, Hezbullah may be severly damaged as a fighting force, but its prestige, and the prestige of its Syrian and Iranian backers, may be enhanced exponentially, which may encourage them to take even harderline stances against America and Israel. Which leads us to possible war.
As several correspondents, including the incomparable Seymour Hersh in last week's New Yorker have reported, the Pentagon and the White House were closely watching Israel's campaign against Lebanon, viewing it as a possible preview of a war against Iran. Like Israel in Lebanon, the White House and Pentagon evidently believe the way to victory in Iran is largely through an air campaign, in the belief that the bombs will a) destroy the necessary military targets and b)turn the population against the political actors whose policies and actions brought about the bombing raids in the first place.
We saw how well this policy worked for Israel in Lebanon. Bombs alone are not enough to destroy an armed force that has also woven itself into a country's political and social structure. There's also the fact that national pride comes into place. Time and again the history of warfare has shown that rather than breaking the back of a society's willingness to fight, bombing raids just, as William Sloane Coffin remarked about the Vietnamese, "sends steel up their spines" and hardens their determination to oppose us. Unpopular as the fundamentalist regime in Tehran may be with portions of the population, especially the under-25 generation, if the U.S. attacks, the Iranian people, among the most nationalistic in the world, are more likely to put aside their differences and take up arms against the "Great Satan."
Then Washington will be on the brink of the abyss. Having knocked over the hornet's nest, it will face 2 choices: either go through with an all-out invasion, which would be like invading Iran, squared, or back down, leaving Iran a seething country primed to strike out at us and also leaving what remains of our international prestige and military deterrent in shreds.
Duirng the Spanish Civil War of the 1930s, new theories of modern warfare were tested, such as aeriel bombardments and the blitzkrieg. The Germans especially took notice of what new tactics were available in the modern age of warfare and planned for the upcoming continent-wide war appropriately. Picasso noticed as well, of course, and painted "Guernica." Is there a Picasso out there today warning us of what's to come? If so, is anyone listening?