The Osterley Times: Max Hastings: Iran's leaders need enemies like Bush, and at every turn he obliges them

Max Hastings is a right wing commentator and former editor of The Daily Telegraph famous here in the UK for being the first journalist to enter Port Stanley during the Falklands war. I point this out merely to assure that this is no left wing, knee jerk, anti-American talking here.

He has an article in today's Guardian newspaper about Bush's recent sanctions against Iran which he feels will have almost no effect on Tehran, nor does he think that Europeans seriously believe sanctions will deter Iran, but France and others are going along with this because they hope that by doing so, they can prevent an American military intervention.

These sanctions are directed more at foreign businesses that deal with Iran than US commerce, which is already barred. It is hard to believe that Washington expects them to have much practical impact. As long as China and Russia keep trading, those imposed on Iran will, even by the historic standards of international sanctions, leak like Tony Blair's Downing Street.

The Iranians have oil, which the world wants to buy. The EU is eager to build a gas pipeline there, to diminish its dependence on Russian energy. Beijing and Moscow show no interest in helping Bush face down the Iranians. The principal causes of Tehran's economic turmoil are not sanctions, but the incompetence of the government and its refusal to allow foreign companies to develop its oil resources, for which the domestic skills are lacking.

There are two strands in the west's sanctions activity. The first is the elaborate minuet being performed by the Europeans. Led by France's Nicolas Sarkozy, their chief objective is to rebuild relationships with Washington by being seen to support US objectives. It is unlikely that anyone in the chancelleries of Europe supposes that sanctions will cause the Iranians to stop building their bomb. But they might deflect the Americans from military action.

Nor does he accept the argument that sanctions might bring about the regime change that Bush is said to crave:

Unfortunately, this seems fanciful. It is easier to accept the view of the Texas academics who concluded in a recent study of sanctions that they make military showdowns more likely. Christopher Sprecher, of Texas A&M University, says: "The country being sanctioned views the sanctions as weak, and therefore becomes almost provocative." A genuine global diplomatic coalition against Iran's nuclear and foreign policies would be far more likely to impress Tehran, Sprecher and a colleague argue, than sanctions perceived as an overwhelmingly American play.

He then spells out what the Bush presidency has done for American influence worldwide and - even Max Hastings of all people - concludes that it has been an unmitigated disaster.

The seven years of the Bush presidency have witnessed a haemorrhage of American moral authority of a kind quite unknown in the 20th century. Even in the darkest days of the cold war, and indeed in the Cuban missile crisis, most people around the world retained a faith in the fundamental benign nature of American purposes. This has been lost in Iraq. All manner of folk, outside Europe and America anyway, admire Iranian defiance of US hegemony.

He then tells us that sources he has in Washington have assured him that Bush is determined not to leave office without attacking Iran.

As for Bush, one of his confidants assured me two years ago that he would never leave the White House with the Iranian issue "unresolved". That still appears to be his position. Such is his strange brand of serenity that he is unmoved by slumping opinion polls and foreign policy disasters. He believes that Iraq could still be redeemable, if the Iranian "terrorists" are checked. His military advisers tell him that air strikes would not destroy Iran's nuclear project, but could delay it by five years.
Six months hence, when it has become plain that sanctions have failed to move Tehran and his own departure from office is imminent, there must be a real prospect that he will launch Stealth bombers. Among the consequences of such action would be a steep rise in oil prices, and a dramatic and perhaps historic increase in tension between the Muslim world and the west. There would also be an agonising dilemma for Gordon Brown. Most of the British people would want the prime minister to distance this country from any such US initiative. Whether he would summon the nerve to do so is debatable.

And, of course, far from weakening Ahmadinejad's grip on power, the US sanctions are far more likely to strengthen his position.

Ahmadinejad and the Revolutionary Guard need US enemies to justify their idiocies at home and mischief-making in Iraq. At every turn the Bush administration obliges them, by seeming to welcome confrontation. The rival governments in Tehran and Washington deserve each other. It is another matter as to whether their peoples, and the world, do so. But relations between Iran and the US are likely to get much worse before either nation changes leadership and gives peace a chance.

Iran have offered talks with the US and seen them rebuffed by a neo-con administration which seems to welcome conflict over negotiations and appear to want to flex their muscles at all times, even when the flexing of their muscles - as in the case of North Korea - only results in them having to make humiliating U-turns.

The Iranian regime have made every effort to have diplomatic relations with the US, including an offer to recognise Israel, and an offer to end support for Lebanese and Palestinian terror groups and make it's nuclear programme more transparent.

All were rejected out of hand.

Indeed, despite offering to recognise Israel, the Iranians have had to listen endlessly to Bush and other neo-con loons claiming that Ahmadinejad is seeking "to wipe Israel off the map", which is a simply astonishing U-turn from a nation who had only recently offered recognition.

It is hard to believe that Bush is not actively seeking confrontation with Iran as I can think of no other offer that the Iranians can seriously make.

And when even conservatives like Max Hastings are beginning to state publicly that Bush and Ahmadinejad deserve each other, it really is some indication of the contempt in which Bush is held, even by former editors of The Daily Telegraph.

UPDATE:

Whilst visiting a friend today who reads that dreadful rag, The Daily Mail, I came across a further indication of how British right wing columnists are starting to openly express their contempt for President Bush. In an article entitled, "Let's stop sucking up to Bush the warmonger", Peter McKay states:

Justified wars we absolutely have to fight are hard on military families, but the bleakest prospect of all is risking life and limb when the conflict in question seems increasingly pointless.

Both Iraq and Afghanistan now fall into this category. The only thing keeping us there is embarrassment and the lack of a face-saving excuse for getting out...
It's plain the game is up in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Now the Bush Administration's aim is to establish in American minds a military continuum between 9/11, the invasion of Iraq and a new conflict with Iran.

Thus locking the post-2008 presidency into phase two of George W. Bush's fatuous "war on terror", hoping they'll get it right sooner or later.

Fighting wars is good politics in America. Bush, who was handed the 2000 election by the Supreme Court after losing it on the popular vote, won a convincing second-term victory in 2004 because he had taken America to war in Iraq by pretending Saddam Hussein was responsible for 9/11.

There is another big plus for Americans in Iraq - controlling the future flow of Iraqi oil.

It is estimated to be worth more than ten times what America has spent on the war.

And remember: the war spending has gone largely to U.S. companies who are donors to Bush's Republican Party.

One would have to be British to understand the full significance of a Daily Mail commentator saying that Bush didn't win his first election and is lining the pockets, through the Iraq war, of the people who bankrolled his campaign.

Even the British "believers" are deserting Bush in their droves. And they are now stating that both Iraq and Afghanistan are lost. With Conservative support worldwide now deserting him, Bush really is only left with that loyal band of 30%'s who are prepared to say that they alone can appreciate the subtlety of the Emperor's new clothes.

Click title for Hastings' article.