Drumbeats of war against Iran, déjà vu of what happened in Iraq

Executive summary: The drumbeats of war against Iran we are seeing since the autumn of 2011 are a déjà vu of what happened in Iraq in 2003. I think the ultimate cause in both cases was and is the wish of Israel to distract international attention, and to avoid committing to serious peace negotiations with the Palestinians. The recent IAEA report does not present evidence that Iran has a nuclear military programme. A different thing is the manipulated and interested  diffusion of the contents of that report, which is been done at present. I plea to demand Israel to sign the Non Proliferation Treaty (NPT), as a first step to start putting things right in the region, instead of blindly rushing towards the umpteenth war.

Is recent history repeating itself? Are we witnessing at the end of 2011 similar drumbeats of war against Iran to the ones that took place against Iraq in 2002? I think so, and in both cases the actors, the apparent causes, the deeper motivations, and the dynamics used are similar too.

In 2002 Iraq had already been over a decade under no-fly zones and sanctions, but that hadn’t decreased Saddam Hussein’s power. He was a very inconvenient neighbour for the absolute monarchies of the Persian Gulf since the invasion of Kuwait in 1991; and he had stopped being a useful pawn for the West. What I couldn’t quite understand then was the unusual haste which the West had begun to display in the autumn of 2002 in order to try to consolidate a body of accusations against Iraq linked to its possession of weapons of mass destruction (accusations, which, afterwards, as it is widely known, proved to be groundless), to justify an illegal invasion which started in March 2003. Although many analysts then and afterwards have linked the allied military intervention to the desire for control over Iraq’s oil reserves (being maybe the best known analyst the former USA federal reserve chairman Alan Greenspan in his memoirs), I think the trigger of an attack taking place precisely then, and not a couple of years earlier or later, was linked to Israel.

On the one hand, Israel wanted to get rid of a quasi-neighbour, Iraq, which had lost its added value since it had stopped attacking Iran, and had turned inconvenient, on the top of which he was a supporter of the Palestinian cause. Israel was starting to lose patience with Western measures which didn’t seem to give any results, and decided to take part in the scuffle: Israel started disseminating the suspicion that Iraq was liked to Al Qaeda –suspicions that have never been proven true in hindsight-; that behind the attempt to shoot down an Israeli chartered plane as it departed the Mombasa airport in November 2002 was Al Qaeda; and that it was necessary to act both against Al Qaeda, and against the regimes that made the organization’s work and the transit of weapons possible, pinpointing at Iraq. In Israel the drumbeats of war against Iraq started to sound in the autumn of 2002. And the operation started in March 2003. On the other hand, and in my opinion this is the key, Israel sought with a military intervention in the Gulf to distract international attention from the Middle East peace process, avoiding thus international pressure that would force her to take serious steps towards peace, amidst the uprise of the Second Intifada.

I deem that what is happening now with Iran is a slavish copy of the above, a déjà vu. Let’s see the similarities in the actors, the motivations and the mechanisms.

In 2011 Iran has spent more than three decades under sanctions, but that hasn’t decreased the power of the theocratic regime. It is a very inconvenient neighbour for some of the absolute monarchies in the Persian Gulf, above all Saudi Arabia; and is a country that had stopped being useful to the West and Israel since the toppling of the Shah [by the way, the Shah was the son of a field Marshall who had proclaimed himself Shah, so there was no royal blood there, irrespective of the packaging of glamour the West had wanted to give him]. Iran’s oil reserves have been estimated as the world’s third largest. However, why are there drumbeats of war precisely now and not two years ago or in two years time?

I think the key again is Israel. On the one hand, Israel is becoming impatient with Western measures towards Iran which Israel considers not expeditious enough [the targeted killings Israel carries out in Dubai or Gaza give more expeditious results, although the nuance that they are illegal is intentionally obviated]. On the other hand, for the first time in many years there is genuine international pressure for the Middle East peace talks to resume marked by the Quartet Declaration of 23 September 2011, under whose aegis various meetings of the parties (Israelis and Palestinians) separately with the Quartet representatives have taken place since then, and the first deadline for concrete proposals comes up on the 26 of January 2012. 

Hans Blix Blix was the head of the United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) for Iraq from March 2000 to June 2003. UNMOVIC sought for weapons of mas destruction in the country; found none; and reported extensively on its findings. Nevertheless, the manipulation of classified information and of the media convinced in 2003 some Governments of the need to go to war; and even though in hindsight it has been proven that there were no weapons of mass destruction (as UNMVIC had proven), and the war has caused more than 100.000 deaths, it doesn’t matter. No one has been or will be brought to justice for that. If the recipe “manipulation +spin” worked then, why shouldn’t it work now? And I think that is precisely the game which is being played at present, to replicate with Iran the recipe applied with success to Iraq, and which had such meagre collateral costs for its ideologues [allowing at the same time to postpone the need for a solution to the Middle East conflict].

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)’s report on Iran issued in November 2011, and specifically its Annex 1, does not present evidence or conclude that Iran has a nuclear military programme. What has happened after the release of the IAEA’s report has been in my opinion a clumsy manipulation of information to make people believe that Iran will truly have shortly the capability to build nuclear weapons; moving the machineries of war (which in times of economic downturn tend to rub their hands with the profits they envisage); and starting a new war. Most of the deaths will neither be from the USA, nor Israel, nor Europe. They will be Muslims from the region. And Israel will gain time again to continue building its illegal settlements on occupied Palestinian land that will render the two-State solution non-viable. And, en passant, USA will have to face a war in the middle of its electoral campaign, which will eliminate the possibilities of President Obama being re-elected, the USA President most seriously committed to the peace process since the time of President Carter. And a homeland for the Palestinian people will be a chimera, a pipe dream, for another generation to come. Are we truly going to continue buying into these stories? Until when? We can’t turn a blind eye, and let a new conflict sweep us into the vortex of war for the umpteenth time, only and only to allow Israel to avoid facing in depth and seriously its historic responsibility, as the occupying power, to give a solution to the Palestinian-Israeli dispute.

Dialogue with Iran since 2003 to this day has not been a dialogue among equals. It has sought the imposition of Western views on Iran. To continue stubbornly along the path of imposition, cornering, and manipulation (both of the negotiating dynamics and of the subsequent information) will not solve the problem. We will just be using ad nauseam the same techniques of hard power.  Why don’t we shift our mindset once and for all? The environment is changing. The third Arab revolution will allow those peoples to start thinking independently. Let’s row all of us in the same direction; let’s call things by their right names; and let’s demand all countries in the region to abide by the same parameters, that is, that all countries (and by all I mean all) abide by international law. Iran has signed the Non Proliferation Treaty (NPT), and so have all the Arab countries in the region. The only country that hasn’t done it, irrespective of the repeated calls for it both by Iran and by the Arab countries, is Israel. Let’s stop inventing new stories only and only to avoid facing up to historic responsibilities. Let’s put the first building block in the region in terms of real justice by demanding Israel to sign the NPT, as Israel has nuclear weapons in Dimona, which escape all control. No to allow anyone, absolutely anyone, to be above international law is the best way to avoid creating resentments arising from inequalities, and the best way to start new dynamics in the Middle East and the world.