US envoy: Iran gained from US invasions

The American ambassador to the United Nations is only saying what any first year student of history could have told George Bush long before he invaded Iraq: To do so will only strengthen Iran and turn it into a regional superpower.

The 2003 invasion of Iraq removed a key rival of Shiite Iran with the ouster of Saddam Hussein's Sunni-dominated government. Iran has friendly ties with the Shiites now in power in Iraq.

"It's helped Iran's relative position in the region, because Iraq was a rival of Iran ... and the balance there has disintegrated or weakened," Zalmay Khalilzad said while answering questions from students at Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs. "And so one of the objectives of Iran, in my view, is to discourage a reemergence of Iraq as a balancer. And Afghanistan, too, the change was helpful to Iran."

I have always thought that one of the reasons Bush continually talks of Iran as aiding the insurgency in Iraq is because he does not want to leave office as the only US President in God knows how many years to have taken an action that strengthens Iran. And Iran is now infinitely stronger than it was before the neo-cons came to power. To this end they are searching for any excuse to put that genie back into the bottle.

And sanctions are, at the moment, the main weapon in the US arsenal.

This is why Khalilzad continues to talk of the need for sanctions and continues, like Bush, to talk about Iran's nuclear programme as if the NIE report - stating that Iran is no longer attempting to obtain a nuclear weapon - simply didn't exist.

Khalilzad said that Iran has the "right to have access for nuclear energy," and the United States is willing to work with Iran and other nations to assure they have "reliable access to fuel for nuclear reactors."

But he said there must be controls.

"Having this Iran have access to fissile material that brings it so close to a nuclear weapons capability, is just too risky for this region and for this world," Khalilzad said.

Of course, the contradiction in what Khalilzad is saying is that there is no way to have one without the other, unless Iran agree to give up their right to enrich uranium - which they are legally allowed to do under the NNPT - and agree to import rather than enrich uranium themselves.

And the reason that the US has been insisting that Iran suspend uranium enrichment is because they fear this is the first step to a bomb, even though the US's own NIE report has clearly stated that the Iranians gave up this ambition in 2003.

So why hasn't the US position changed in line with this new evidence, why do people like Bush and Khalilzad continue to talk as if the NIE report had never been published?

The nearest thing we will ever get to the truth comes from Khalilzad's recent statement.

It's because both of George Bush's major wars - in both Afghanistan and Iraq -increased the regional power of Iran (by wiping out two of it's major enemies) without Iran having to fire a single shot.

Bush and the neo-cons are anxious to correct that imbalance before they leave office. But, as I say, it's an imbalance that any first year student of history could have told them would be the inevitable consequence of their actions.

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