Why the West will attack Iran

Asia Times Online
24 January 2006


Middle East

Why the West will attack Iran
By Spengler

Why did French President Jacques Chirac last week threaten to use non-
conventional - that is, nuclear - weapons against terrorist states?
And why did Iran announce that it would shift foreign-exchange
reserves out of European banks (although it has since retracted this
warning)? The answer lies in the nature of Tehran's nuclear
ambitions. Iran needs nuclear weapons, I believe, not to attack
Israel, but to support imperial expansion by conventional military
means.

Iran's oil exports will shrink to zero in 20 years, just at the
demographic inflection point when the costs of maintaining an aged
population will crush its state finances, as I reported in
Demographics and Iran's imperial design (September 13, 2005). Just
outside Iran's present frontiers lie the oil resources of Iraq,
Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan, and not far away are the oil
concentrations of eastern Saudi Arabia. Its neighbors are quite as
alarmed as Washington about the prospect of a nuclear-armed Iran, and
privately quite happy for Washington to wipe out this capability.

It is remarkable how quickly an international consensus has emerged
for the eventual use of force against Iran. Chirac's indirect
reference to the French nuclear capability was a warning to Tehran.
Mohamed ElBaradei, whose Nobel Peace Prize last year was awarded to
rap the knuckles of the United States, told Newsweek that in the
extreme case, force might be required to stop Iran's acquiring a
nuclear capability. German Defense Minister Franz Josef Jung told the
newspaper Bild am Sonntag that the military option could not be
abandoned, although diplomatic efforts should be tried first. Bild,
Germany's largest-circulation daily, ran Iranian President Mahmud
Ahmedinejad's picture next to Adolf Hitler's, with the headline,
"Will Iran plunge the world into the abyss?"

The same Europeans who excoriated the United States for invading Iraq
with insufficient proof of the presence of weapons of mass
destruction already have signed on to a military campaign against
Iran, in advance of Iran's gaining WMD. There are a number of reasons
for this sudden lack of squeamishness, and all of them lead back to oil.

First, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have the most to
lose from a nuclear-equipped Iran. No one can predict when the Saudi
kingdom might become unstable, but whenever it does, Iran will stand
ready to support its Shi'ite co-religionists, who make up a majority
in the kingdom's oil-producing east.

At some point the United States will reduce or eliminate its presence
in Iraq, and the result, I believe, will be civil war. Under
conditions of chaos Iran will have a pretext to expand its already
substantial presence on the ground in Iraq, perhaps even to intervene
militarily on behalf of its Shi'ite co-religionists.

What now is Azerbaijan had been for centuries the northern provinces
of the Persian Empire, and a nuclear-armed Iran could revive Persian
claims on southern Azerbaijan. Iran continues to lay claim to a share
of Caspian Sea energy resources under the Iranian-Soviet treaties of
1921 and 1940. [1] For the time being, Azerbaijani-Iranian relations
are the most cordial in years, with Iran providing natural gas to
pockets of Azerbaijani territory blockaded by Armenia, and Baku
defending Iran's nuclear program. As Iran's oil production dwindles
over the next two decades, though, its historic claims on the Caspian
are likely to re-emerge.

Ahmedinejad's apocalyptic inclinations have inspired considerable
comment from Western analysts, who note that he appears to believe in
the early return of the Mahdi, the 12th Imam. I do not know whether
Ahmedinejad is mad or sane, but even mad people may be sly and
calculating. Iran's prospects are grim. Over a generation it faces
demographic decay, economic collapse and cultural deracination. When
reason fails to provide a solution to an inherently insoluble
problem, irrationality well may take hold. Like Hitler, who also was
mad but out-bluffed the West for years before overreaching,
Ahmedinejad is pursuing a rational if loathsome imperial policy.

Given Israel's possession of a large arsenal of fission weapons as
well as thermonuclear capability, it is extremely unlikely that Iran
would attack the Jewish state unless pressed to the wall. Faced with
encirclement and ruin, the Islamic Republic is fully capable of
lashing out in a destructive and suicidal fashion, not only against
Israel but against other antagonists. Whatever one may say about
Chirac, he is not remotely stupid, and feels it prudent to warn Iran
that pursuit of its imperial ambitions may lead to a French nuclear
response. French intelligence evidently believes that Iran may
express its frustrations through terrorist actions in the West.

By far the biggest loser in an Iranian confrontation with the West
will be China, the fastest-growing among the world's large economies,
but also the least efficient in energy use. Higher oil prices will
harm China's economy more than any other, and Beijing's reluctance to
back Western efforts to encircle Iran are understandable in this
context. It is unclear how China will proceed if the rest of the
international community confronts Iran; in the great scheme of things
it really does not matter.

Washington will initiate military action against Iran only with
extreme reluctance, but it will do so nonetheless, except in the
extremely unlikely event that Ahmedinejad were to stand down. Rather
than a legacy of prosperity and democracy in the Middle East, the
administration of US President George W Bush will exit with an
economy weakened by higher oil prices and chaos on the ground in Iraq
and elsewhere. But it really has no other options, except to let a
nuclear-armed spoiler loose in the oil corridor. We have begun the
third act of the tragedy that started on September 11, 2001, and I
see no way to prevent it from proceeding.