[Mb-civic] Commentary written by Arnaud de Borchgrave

[Debbie Stroman]

The Washington Times

www.washingtontimes.com <http://www.washingtontimes.com> 

________________________________

Eye of the beholder
<http://www.washingtontimes.com/commentary/20060423-091905-7415r.htm> 

By Arnaud de Borchgrave
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
Published April 24, 2006

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  At least three unofficial Iranian emissaries have been in Washington
this spring with the same recommendation: Send a high-ranking current or
former U.S. official to Qom for secret talks with Ayatollah Ali Khameini
to explore a geopolitical deal before Iran passes yet another nuclear
milestone -- e.g., a nonaggression treaty in return for taking Iran's
gauntleted hand off the nuclear sword and resheathing it in an
International Atomic Energy Agency scabbard. An American exit from Iraq
would be part of the diplomatic mix. 
    For President Bush, this is rank appeasement. He sees his embattled
presidency as a throwback to Winston Churchill on the backbenches of
Parliament surrounded by appeasers. Now it's a world of appeasers trying
to blunt America's sword. Mr. Bush tells his out-of-town visitors to
think of how history will judge his administration 20 years hence and
not to worry about setbacks in Iraq. 
    Investigative reporter Seymour Hersh wrote a long story for the New
Yorker the gist of which is that Mr. Bush is contemplating a tactical
nuclear strike against Iran's nuclear installations, now spread in at
least 17 different locations. The absurd idea is not denied by Mr. Bush.
He simply calls it "wild speculation." For the rest of the world this
means that the only power in history to have used nuclear weapons --
"Little Boy" and "Fat Man" incinerated almost 200,000 in Hiroshima and
Nagasaki in less than a second -- is seriously thinking of doing it
again. 
    Mr. Bush's "wild speculation" description is now taken seriously in
foreign media as yet another indication America's global imperial hubris
is out of control. The damage this is doing to America's image is hard
to quantify, but it is at least as serious as the Abu Ghraib "torture"
pictures. 
    Neoconservative supporters of the Bush administration are confident
the president will order air strikes against Iran between the November
2006 elections and November 2008, when his successor will be elected.
The post-strike scenario was put to one of these neocon supporters: 
    (1) Swift minelayers sail from Bandar Abbas, the Iranian naval base
at the mouth of the Strait of Hormuz and sow a few score mines in the
world's busiest oil shipping lane. All tanker traffic stops. U.S. and
NATO minesweepers head for Hormuz. Iranian naval commandos in Zodiak
rubber speedboats come alongside a supertanker and sink it by sticking
limpet mines along the waterline. Oil futures quickly pass $100 a barrel
and keep climbing, 
    (2) Saudi Arabia's Shi'ite minority, employed in the eastern Saudi
oilfields, begins blowing oil pipelines. Sabotage is reported at Ras
Tanura, the world's largest oil loading port. 
    (3) U.S. air strikes obliterate Bandar Abbas. 
    (4) Iraq's two Shi'ite militia, armed and funded by Iran's
Revolutionary Guards, are ordered into action against Iraq's U.S.-funded
and trained army and police forces and against U.S. forces. U.S.
casualties mount again. Congress calls for immediate evacuation of U.S.
forces into Kuwait. The Kuwaiti Parliament balks and declares its
neutrality in what is now the new U.S.-Iran war. 
    (5) Hezbollah and Hamas fire several thousand rockets and missiles
over Israel's protective barrier killing scores of Israelis. The Israeli
Defense Force is ordered back into Gaza to wipe out the terrorists. 
    (6) Hezbollah's militia goes into action against U.S. interests in
Beirut. 
    (7) Shi'ite and Sunni Arabs close ranks against the U.S.-Zionist
enemy. Arab streets erupt in mass anti-U.S. demonstrations. Arab
governments recall their ambassadors from Washington. 
    (8) The entire Muslim world closes ranks behind Iran. 
    (9) A "dirty bomb" explodes in Lower Manhattan. Casualties are far
lower than on September 11, 2001, when the Twin Towers were destroyed.
But a 60-square-block area has to be permanently evacuated. It will be
uninhabitable for several years due to dangerous radiation. 
    The neocon interlocutor smiled, then shrugged his shoulders and
called the scenario "wild speculation." White House calculus ignores the
fact Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran's president and a member of a fanatic
sect of Shi'ite Islam, believes in the apocalypse in his own lifetime.
Some people who know him say he thinks global death and destruction is
only two years away and that this will be followed by the return of the
12th Imam, known as the Mahdi. 
    Iran's president, who claims the Nazi Holocaust was pure fiction and
that Israel should be erased from the map, only has power over his
Cabinet. Under Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei come the intelligence
services, armed forces, revolutionary guards, parliament, broadcasting
-- and the government. The time for secret talks with the real No. 1 was
yesterday. 
    Richard Armitage, a tough Republican who was deputy secretary of
state under Colin Powell, says it would behoove the U.S. to talk to Iran
directly -- not simply at the level of the U.S. ambassador in Baghdad to
talk about the future of Iraq. So far, the U.S. has resisted direct
talks with Tehran about its nuclear aspirations and mandated the EU3 --
the United Kingdom, France and Germany -- as its surrogate. 
    The stakes are so high, Mr. Armitage says, the situation "merits
talking to the Iranians about the full range of our relationship...
everything from energy to terrorism to weapons to Iraq. We can be
diplomatically astute enough to do it without giving anything away." 
    When Nikita Khrushchev warned the U.S. that the Soviet Union would
bury America, Washington didn't break diplomatic relations but went on
talking throughout the Cold War, and the evil empire collapsed. 
    During the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, with the world poised on the
edge of nuclear war, brilliant U.S. diplomacy always left Khrushchev a
way out of his geopolitical power play. He was trying to find a shortcut
to nuclear parity with the U.S. The Soviet dictator took his missiles
home, the U.S. agreed not to invade Cuba, and later took its obsolete
Jupiter missiles out of Turkey. 
    Perhaps Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is not a student of
Machiavelli. But Henry Kissinger, Zbigniew Brzezinski and James
Schlesinger are still among us -- and ready to serve, not a public
circus, but a top-secret head-to-head with Velayat-e-Faqih, "the
Guardianship of the Jurisprudent." That's Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the
Prophet's proconsul in the holy city of Qom. 
     
    Arnaud de Borchgrave is editor at large of The Washington Times and
of United Press International. 
     
     
     
    

 

 

 

 

Debbie D. Stroman

Special Assistant to Arnaud de Borchgrave

Transnational Threats Project

1800 K Street NW, Suite 400

Washington, DC 20006

Office:  (202) 775-3282

Fax:  (202) 785-1688

 

 

 

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