Middle East: Grave mistake to attack Iran, warns Syria

It seems people are lining up to warn the Bush administration not to attack Iran, which must surely be some indication that the nutters around Dick Cheney are actually giving the matter some serious consideration. The latest to warn against such madness is Bashar al-Assad, the Syrian president.

"It will cost the US and the planet dear," he told France Inter radio yesterday during his visit to Paris. "Israel will pay directly the price of this war. Iran has said so. The problem is that when one starts such action in the Middle East, one cannot manage ... reactions that can spread out over years or even decades."

Assad attacked the "warmonger's logic" of the Bush administration, but added: "We are going to have discussions with our Iranian friends to get to the heart of the matter. This is the first time that we had been asked to play a role."

There were also warnings from Hamid Karzai, the US-backed Afghan president. He told Radio Liberty that he did not want his country to be used to launch any attack on Iran. "Afghanistan wants to be a friend of Iran as a neighbour," Karzai said.

Last night Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian president, said that he would welcome bilateral talks with the US if both parties were on "equal footing."

"When two people want to talk, both have to be on equal terms. Dialogue doesn't make any sense if one side stands in a higher position and the other in a lower position," he said in a speech.

Up until now we have been in the bizarre position of having the Bush administration agree to talks only if Iran agree in advance to suspend the enrichment of uranium. It's a bit like being asked to pay your parking ticket in advance before the council will agree to meet with you to discuss your grievances for getting a ticket in the first place.

If you admit guilt then talks can take place. This completely ignores the fact that Iran is allowed to enrich uranium for peaceful means under the NNPT.

However, when the Iranians set off their long range missiles recently one can only hope that both Israel and the US realised that the stakes here are astonishingly high.

Scott Ritter, the man who successfully predicted what would take place if the US invaded Iraq, spells it out:

The chances of preventing an Iranian-Israeli clash in the event of a U.S. strike against Iran are slim to none. Even if Iran initially showed restraint, Hezbollah would undoubtedly join the fray, prompting an Israeli counterstrike in Lebanon and Iran which would in turn bring long-range Iranian missiles raining down on Israeli cities.

Neither the Israeli nor the American (and for that reason, European and Asian) economy would emerge intact from a U.S. attack on Iran. Oil would almost instantly break the $300-per-barrel mark, and because the resulting conflict would more than likely be longer and more violent that most are predicting, there is a good chance oil would top $500 or even more within days or weeks. Hyperinflation would almost certainly strike every market-based economy, and the markets themselves would collapse under the strain.

And, of course, Iran would immediately close the Strait of Hormuz, despite US claims that it would, somehow, keep this open.

The moment the United States makes a move to secure the Strait of Hormuz, Iran will unleash a massive bombardment of the military and industrial facilities of the United States and its allies, including the oil fields in Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar. American military bases in Iraq and Kuwait, large, fixed and well known, would be smothered by rockets and missiles carrying deadly cluster bombs. The damage done would run into the hundreds of millions, if not into billions, of dollars, and hundreds, if not thousands, of U.S. military personnel killed and wounded.

Thankfully, Ritter appears to believe that the planners at the Pentagon will have understood the message that Iran is sending out.

The good news is that the military planners in the Pentagon are cognizant of this reality. They know the limitations of American power, and what they can and cannot achieve. When it was uncertain how Iran would respond to a limited attack, either on their nuclear facilities or bases associated with the Revolutionary Guard Command, some planners might have thought that the U.S. could actually pull off a quick and relatively bloodless attack. Now that Iran has made it crystal clear that even a limited U.S. attack would bring about a massive Iranian response, all military planners now understand that any U.S. military attack will have to be massive. Simply put, the United States does not now have the military capacity in the Middle East to launch such a strike, and any redeployment of U.S. forces into the region could not go undetected, either by Iran, which would in turn redeploy its forces, or the rest of the world. Because a U.S. attack against Iran would have such horrific detrimental impact on the entire world, it is hard to imagine the international community remaining mute as American military might is assembled.

I sincerely hope that Ritter is right. But, as more and more world leaders verbalise that Bush should not attack Iran, I start to worry about what they know that we don't.

Why would they even have to warn Bush/Cheney not to take part in an act of utter madness?

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Tags: US, Israel, Iran, Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, Assad, Ahmadinejad, Bush, Olmert