In yesterday's Geopolitical Intelligence Report,
Stratfor connects the dots thusly...
1. Start with a President severely weakened by, among other things, the recent NIE releases, the scathing Woodward book and now, Foleygate...
2. Throw in an Iranian-sponsored attack on American troops in Iraq, inducing massive casualties...
3. Americans respond by voting Republicans out of Congress, thereby crippling Bush's ability to wage war in Iran...
4. Iran strengthens its position in the Middle East while the U.S. position falters.
Those of you who read Stratfor regularly know that this group of intelligence experts doesn't dabble in wild speculation very often. Combine this fantastic assessment with what we now know about Navy deployments in the Middle East, and you have to wonder if Stratfor's logical progression isn't teetering on truth.
For those of you unfamiliar with Stratfor, the Texas-based company "specializes in providing situational awareness, focused insight and actionable intelligence in the areas of geopolitics, security and public policy," according to its website. ABC News said of Stratfor:
"Often able to uncover the globe's best kept secrets and predict world-changing events in ways that no one else can."
That's not hyperbole. Stratfor is really that good. So this potentially world-changing event caught my attention. Let's go the punchline first, and then I'll back up a bit. From last evening's intelligence report:
With five weeks until the U.S. congressional midterm elections, the Iranians would love to be able to claim that Bush, having rejected their overtures, was brought down -- or at least crippled -- by Iran. There are rumors swirling about pending major attacks in Iraq by pro-Iranian forces. There are always rumors swirling in Iraq about attacks, but in this particular case, logic would give them credibility. The Iranians might be calculating that if Iranian-sponsored groups could inflict massive casualties on U.S. troops, it would affect the U.S. election enough to get a Democratic Congress in place -- which could cripple Bush's ability to wage war and further weaken the United States' position in the Middle East. This, of course, would increase Iran's standing in the region.
The Iranian perception is that the United States does not have the resources to launch either an invasion or massive airstrikes against Iran. The Bush administration's credibility on weapons of mass destruction (WMD) is too low for that to be regarded as a plausible excuse, and even if strikes were launched to take out WMD, that rationale would not justify an extended, multi-month bombing campaign. Since the Iranians believe the United States lacks the will and ability to try regime change from the air, Tehran is in a position to strike without putting itself at risk.
Emphasis mine.
Stratfor rightly points out that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was involved in swinging a US election once before - 26 years ago, when the hostage crisis brought down Jimmy Carter. Stratfor:
The Iranians had an enormous impact on the 1980 election, helping to defeat Carter and not releasing the hostages until Ronald Reagan was sworn in as president. They crippled a president once and might like to try it again.
File that under "things that make you go hmmm..."
Iran, like the rest of the world, perceives the Bush administration to be partially crippled already. For a little back story, see my March diary about Stratfor's "lame duck presidency" analysis.
It was weak enough 10 days ago. But then came a flurry of paper - in the form of an NIE, Woodward's State of Denial and printed emails and IMs from Mark Foley to a teenage boy. Here's an abbreviated intro to the Geopolitical Intelligence Report:
There is good news for the Republican Party: Things can't get much worse. About five weeks from the midterm elections, a National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) asserting that the situation in Iraq will deteriorate in 2007 is leaked. On top of that, Bob Woodward's book is released to massive fanfare, chronicling major disagreements within the White House over prosecution of the Iraq war and warnings to U.S. President George W. Bush in the summer of 2003 that a dangerous insurgency was under way and that the president's strategy of removing Baathists from the government and abolishing the Iraqi army was a mistake. These events are bad enough, but when U.S. Rep. Mark Foley (R-Fla.) -- the head of a congressional committee charged with shutting down child molesters using the Internet -- is caught sending e-mails to 16-year-old male pages, the news doesn't get much worse.
All of this is tied up with the elections of course. The NIE document leak was undoubtedly meant to embarrass the president. The problem is that it did, as it revealed the rift between the intelligence community and the White House's view of the world. The Woodward book was clearly intended to be published more than a month before the elections, and it was expected to have embarrassing revelations in it. The problem is that not a whole lot of people quoted in the book are denying that they said or did what was described.
These problems might be politically timed, but none of them appears to be based on a lie. The fact is that this confluence of events has created the perception that the Bush White House is disintegrating.
As Stratfor asserted in that March GIR, a weakened US President serves an open invitation for foreign governments to take advantage. They summed it up again this week:
...the perception that Bush's administration is imploding can have a significant impact on his ability to execute his foreign policy because of how foreign nations will behave. The perception of disarray generates a perception of weakness. The perception of weakness encourages foreign states to take advantage of the situation.
If Stratfor is right, Iran is one of those foreign states interested in "taking advantage." And their conclusion is something we've known all along:
...And if the Republicans lose the upcoming elections, the perception that Bush lacks the plans and political power needed for decisive action will become the reality.
For Bush to be able to execute the foreign policy he wants, his party must win the midterm elections. For that to happen, Bush must get control of the political situation quickly. To do that, he must change the perception that his own administration is out of control.
So this, I'm guessing, is what Bush means when he says that a Democratic Congress would embolden terrorists. It's all semantic, but what he really means is that a weak presidency would embolden terrorists. Whether or not Stratfor is right about the rest, they certainly defined the true issue.