U.S. actions against Iran raise war risk, many fear

The lengths that the Bush administration will go to in order to risk war with Iran appear to have no bounds. The latest escalation comes with the news that Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice are considering designating Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the elite military force that serves as the guardian of Iran's Islamic state, as a foreign terrorist organization.

Now the fact that Rice is pushing for such a thing is an indication that Cheney is ramping up his cries for war and that she hopes, by doing something that falls just short of war, that she can call off the attack dogs.

Designating the Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist group "is the State Department trying to do something short of war," said former U.S. diplomat Charles Dunbar, a professor of international relations at Boston University.

"What else can we do?" said Dunbar, who worked for the State Department in Tehran from 1963 to 1967.

This would be the first time ever that a military unit of a sovereign government was placed on the State department's list of terrorist organisations and is a further indication of how serious the situation between Iran and the US is becoming.

Most of us recognise terrorist groups as people who engage in attacks against civilians, so the Bush administration are really changing all the rules by using such a term against what is, in effect, a national army. The word "terrorist" has, until now, always referred to "a non-state actor", so we really are into new ground when the Bush administration use the term against a national army of 125,000 soldiers.

State Department officials and foreign diplomats see Rice's push for the declaration against the Revolutionary Guards as an effort to blunt arguments by Vice President Dick Cheney and his allies for air strikes on Iran. By making the declaration, they feel, Rice can strike out at a key Iranian institution without resorting to military action while still pushing for sanctions in the United Nations.

Partisans of military force argue that Rice's strategy has failed to change Tehran's behavior.

"It really does seem this is more tied to the internal debate that is going on in the administration on Iran, rather than a serious attempt to influence Iranian behavior," said an Arab diplomat, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the issue's sensitivity.

"How that debate will play out is what's concerning" Arab and European countries, he said.

The Iranians, it should be remembered, have so far done nothing illegal under the NNPT rules, and are already being punished with sanctions for failing to stop their perfectly legal uranium enrichment programme. Bush has also made many claims regarding Iranian interference in Iraq, claims that have never been substantiated.

This, however, would represent a significant escalation in the road to war between the two country's. The chances to negotiate a solution to this impasse will be significantly reduced if Rice walks down this path.

The US are already proposing giving billions of dollars to Iran's neighbours in the hope of bolstering them against an Iranian regional supremacy that their own invasion of Iraq inevitably brought about.

"The coercion ... undermines diplomacy. And once diplomacy is undermined, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy," said Ray Takeyh, an Iran expert at the Council on Foreign Relations.

By early 2008, "You're in a position where you have a series of escalatory measures ... And then the military option becomes something you can consider," Takeyh said.

I can understand what Rice thinks she is doing, but she is hardly heading Cheney off at the pass. Indeed, I would go as far as to say that she is giving him what he wants.

It's also notable that U.S. ground commanders in Iraq oppose proposals from Cheney and his allies to counter-attack inside Iran itself.

Privately, some are hostile to suggestions that the military strike another country, saying they are mired in Iraq.

"Let them put on the uniform and go there then," said one military official in Baghdad who asked not to be identified because of the sensitivity of the topic.

Indeed, the fact that Cheney continues to push for military action in Iran, despite the resistance of US commanders on the ground, undermines the lie that Bush continues to propagate: that decisions in Iraq are driven by the commanders on the ground rather than being micromanaged by politicians 4,000 miles away in Washington.

Despite anything that the US commanders on the ground may think, this is the proof that Iran is still, very much, on the menu.

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