Posted by
mgraves on Saturday, August 26, 2006 1:27:42 PM
Iran chief beneficiary of War on Terror
Let us look at the evidence.
Iran has been more assertive regionally. Iran has been deploying terrorists to Iraq and Lebanon. Iran has hosted Al Qaida leadership. Iran has provided arms to terrorists in the Palestinian territories.
Meanwhile, back in Iran, the mullahs have brazenly continued their nuclear program. The mullahs have elected one of the former hostage takers at the US Embassy as their president (and don’t blame this one on the people; they stayed home in droves). The mullahs have continued to jail and torture dissidents and crack down on any signs of unrest.
Sure looks like a victory for the black hats.
The problem here is establishing causality. Has Iran grown more defiant as a result of the American War on Terror, or as a result of the feckless and uninspired way in which it has been waged? Coalition and Iraqi troops put their lives on the line daily in Iraq, but nothing is done to stop the flood of materiel and personnel from Iran and Syria. The same goes for Afghanistan. Musharraf doesn’t control Pakistan any more than I do (well, maybe I exaggerate). Taliban remnants take refuge in the NorthWest Frontier Province or in Iran. NATO troops take over for US troops. Too bad their leadership, in attempting to limit their exposure to danger, makes them more vulnerable, and in many cases, irrelevant.
Is Iran more bellicose than it was 5 years ago? Yes. Is this related to the destruction of two surrounding regimes? More likely than not. Of course, those regimes were hardly stable. The Taliban was fighting a civil war. Saddam controlled only one-third of his country and he was providing zero resources for infrastructure maintenance, which was driving his country to explosion. Saddam had twice launched wars of aggression; the direction Iraq was heading, he’d have had to launch another one to stay in power. Iraq was already in low-level warfare with the US and UK and the Kurdish Peshmerga.
Does this mean that the War on Terror has strengthened Iran? I’d say that Iran’s emerging bellicosity was merely accelerated by the War on Terror. Iran was going to become more bellicose: it almost had to. Iran has an unstable, youthful population upset with the status quo. Labor strife is rampant. Disillusionment with the regime is widespread.
In order to maintain power, a dictatorial regime needs a scapegoat, a target outside the borders of the country. If the disillusioned population starts focusing their anger inward, the regime is forced to respond as the Soviets did in 1956. If the West had been resolved to respond to the evil of the Soviet empire then, the world might have been spared another 35 years of Soviet murder and oppression.
By fermenting Iran’s rise early, the War on Terror has made Iran stick its neck out before it needed to. If the West can be resolved that a nuclear Iran is “unacceptable” perhaps the danger can be thwarted before it fully gathers.
And that is the point of pre-emption, is it not?