Iran: A Continuing Threat to Peace and Security
Iran: A Continuing Threat to Peace and Security » Publications » Family Security Matters.
If, as the Obama Administration insists, Iran was behind a plot to assassinate the Saudi Ambassador to Washington, the implications are truly mind-boggling. After all, the last time Iran was involved in a terror plot on U.S. soil was in 1980, shortly after Ruhollah Khomeini came to power. And while Iran’s Quds Force and intelligence ministry were responsible for terrorist operations in many foreign lands since then, the U.S. homeland was spared.
At the minimum the new scheme suggests Iran is testing the Obama Administration. This is not the first time Tehran has acted in such a fashion. On February 14, 2010 in the presence of IAEA inspectors, Iran moved nearly all its stockpile of low-enriched nuclear fuel to an above-ground plant that Tehran declared will be used to re-enrich the fuel to 20 percent purity. As a result roughly 4,300 pounds of low-enriched uranium had been exposed to destruction from an air attack or even a fire.
But, as far as is known the stash remained unmolested. It would be hardly surprising; therefore, that the newly discovered plot may indicate Tehran has escalated from a passive test to an active one. Tehran may now be convinced that the Obama Administration is nothing but a paper tiger unable or unwilling to withstand further Iranian encroachments. As Ramin Mehmanparast,Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman said in response to Washington’s revelations: “Such scenarios prove the political fluster and desperation of the United States. We consider such behaviors as symptoms of disintegration of America’s empire, which once claimed it can conduct its autocracy in the world.”
A much starker interpretation is that the plot proves that, at least insofar as the U.S. is concerned, Iran is undeterrable. Its new aggressiveness may undoubtedly be linked to the long history of Iranian provocations involving attacks on US forces in both Iraq and Afghanistan which has gone unanswered. For example, last July Adm. Michael G. Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, stated, “Iran is very directly supporting extremist Shia groups [in Iraq], which are killing our troops.” He said: “They [the Iranians] are shipping high-tech weapons in there – IRAMS (improvised rocket-assisted munitions), [and] EFPs (enhanced explosive penetrators) – which are killing our people and the forensics prove that.” Mullen added: “From my perspective, that has to be dealt with, not just now because it is killing our people, but obviously in the future as well.”
Yet, even if Washington had responded to the Iranian aggression not much has changed. Soon after Admiral Mullen made his remarks, U.S. Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta complained anew that weapons supplied by Iran are behind a rash of attacks against American forces in Iraq. “We’re seeing more of those weapons going in from Iran, and they’ve really hurt us,” the Secretary lamented.
As well Iran’s new undeterrability may indicate that its nuclear capability is closer at hand than had been previously realized. Tehran surely acts as if it possesses a new strategic deterrent whose effectiveness it trusts transcends the regional context. If such is the case, Tehran’s new plot may be the harbinger of a qualitatively new Iranian belligerency and risk taking.
Some have offered a third explanation for the plot. They hurried to excuse the Iranian conduct by alleging the scheme was probably a rogue operation. Accordingly, the conspiracy is another indication of the growing schisms within the Tehran regime and was probably hatched to embarrass one or more of its leaders. Yet, as far-fetched as this thesis sounds– considering the Iranian regime’s pervasive central controls– its implications are even more frightening.
To begin with, the Iranian government is adamantly denying Washington’s accusations that it masterminded the plot, suggesting that even if the plot was the product of a rogue faction within the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), Iran’s government is protecting it. Moreover, by this logic it would appear that some inside Iran’s security apparatus are actively trying to foment a U.S.-Iranian conflict undoubtedly believing that given the recent geopolitical shift in the Middle East, Iran’s nuclear progress and America’s retreat Tehran can deal a coup de grace to the “Great Satan’s” global stature. Indeed, from this perspective the plot’s amateurism might not have been entirely coincidental.
Whatever is Iran’s motive the implications are dire.
For the U.S. it appears that its military interventions abroad have paradoxically undermined its deterrent posture. The prolonged entanglements in Iraq and Afghanistan, the inability to bring the wars there to timely conclusions have meant that fear of America’s military prowess has ebbed. Rather than deterring radicals, the continued deployment of U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan has been used as leverage against America. As Mohammad Ali Jafari, the IRGC commander, said in a June 2008 interview: “We believe that the Americans are more vulnerable than the Israelis, and the presence of their forces in the region, not far from Iran, is part of this vulnerability.”
But while the Obama Administration is now desperately seeking to curtail its military involvement abroad the effort has infused Tehran with added confidence and the ensuing Iranian assertiveness suggests Washington could soon find itself in a much hotter confrontation with the Mullahs.
Even more perilous implications may await America’s regional allies. Riyadh must now understand that Tehran will not shy away from toppling the monarchy as it has apparently concluded the latter stands in its way to Middle East supremacy while its “master”–the United States–is on the verge of regional irrelevancy. This propensity will only grow once Iran wields its own nuclear stick.
The bleakest consequences are facing Israel. In fact even if it is true that an Israeli preemptive attack on Iran’s nuclear program is the stupidest idea ever broached, as former Mossad Chief Meir Dagan has recently opined, it increasingly seems a bad idea whose time has definitely come.
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