The Iranian Bomb

Courtesy CIA World Factbook.

Reading an in-depth article on the Iranian nuclear issue. It looks more serious than I had supposed.

Among those most worried about an Iranian bomb—let's be clear about this—are the Arab countries of the Persian, aka Arabian, Gulf. They are very small countries, with very small populations, flat as pancakes with no natural defences, and very, very rich. Iran is very big and very close by. If Iran gets le bombe, they warn, they will have no choice. They will have to cater to Iran's whims, in hopes of not being devoured, as they have been by Persia many times in their history.

Iran, on the other hand, will have every incentive to try sooner or later to take them over with conventional forces. The money is so good. Should they fail, given that they have the bomb, as well as strong natural defences, not much bad is going to happen to them. Should they succeed, they get control of the majority of the world's oil supply, with all the financial and strategic benefits this implies. A firm hand on the necks of Europe and the developed and developing nations of the Far East.

The alternative is almost as troubling: the little oil-rich states of the Middle East will all have to get their own nuclear arsenals, in order to forestall Iran. They have the financial ability, at least, to do so. But this probably means a Saudi bomb, a Kuwaiti bomb, a Qatari bomb, an Emirati bomb, maybe even an Omani and a Bahraini bomb. So much for nuclear non-proliferation. And you've suddenly multiplied the likelihood of some Islamist terrorist organization getting their hands on a bomb, clean or dirty, exponentially.

The possible elimination of Israel, really, is the least of America's worries; but this too looks ominous. There is no Mutually Assured Destruction here to stay Iran's hand. Even if Israel retained the ability to strike back—which it would—Israel would be gone in a puff of smoke from only a handful of well-placed bombs. Iran could be wounded, but not so destroyed. It is just possible the prestige of having taken out Israel might be worth it; and there is also the calculation that, even if a few Israeli subs retained the ability to strike back, they might not at this point. Their command structure would be gone, they would have no nation to return to—their own self-interest as well as objective morality would argue for quietly heading instead for the nearest friendly port.

So let's review: Ahmadinejad has within his sights control over all the oil wealth and plain wealth wealth of the Persian Gulf, great strategic influence over all of the developed world outside North America, and perhaps Russia, and indeed also over most of the undeveloped world. Meantime, he takes out Israel.

Seems as though, by this point, and given that by this point the counterbalancing prestige of the US in the region would be roughly zero Kelvin, his prestige could be great enough to become the acknowledged leader, formally or informally, of the Muslim world, stretching from Gibraltar to New Guinea. The new Iran, a democratic-theocratic Muslim government, seems primed to be an ideological model for such a new caliphate.

Imagine that: a radical Islamist world power. Perhaps even the dominant world power. Allah is great.

Gentlemen, we could be looking at the end of the American empire.

Given the stakes, does the current US administration have the courage to try to take out Iran's nuclear capabilities, by whatever means necessary? Do they even have the courage to let Israel do so? It seems a bad time to have a president like Obama in office, and a bad time for the US to be maxing all its credit cards.

The gameboard.

In the face of these concerns, Bush's invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan look a lot smarter than many ever imagined. I suspect he knew all along what he was doing—it's all too perfect. Saddam himself, let alone his weapons of mass destruction, might have been an alibi. Bush was surrounding Iran with US military, and US military bases—to the East, in Afghanistan, and to the West, in Iraq. Check and mate. At the same time, American and Iraqi forces are now positioned to oppose any land invasion from Persia into the Gulf—they will have to come by sea, and that's a lot more difficult for a land power facing a sea power; not to mention the high-tech Gulf Arab air forces. Money for good equipment, they've got.

I note that Irbil, in Northern Iraq, population just under one million, just opened in September a new airport with the fourth-longest runway in the world. It's a civil airport. Infrastructure is a good thing, but it is a bit hard to see why a mere regional centre, in a nation not exactly on the world tourist map, needs this kind of capacity in the near future. Oddly enough, though, the runway is large enough to land all the USAF's largest cargo planes. At speed. They are within about a hundred clicks of the Iranian border. They are also directly across from the one major pass in the mountains that separate Northern Iraq from Northern Iran—one of only four highway crossings along the entire Iraq-Iran border.

I suspect similar airports are opening elsewhere in Iraq, and in Afghanistan. Similar huge airports are certainly under construction in Dubai and Qatar. Dubai's will be the world's largest. Together, they seem like a necklace of peals around Iran's neck.

This suggests that the US authorities do have a fix on the significance of the problem before them. I suspect they have been working hard, with Brits, Gulf Arabs, and Israelis, on other options: on cyber attacks on Iran, on supporting the Green Revolutionaries, who seem, frankly, to have been coordinated very largely from Dubai. If any of these other initiatives succeed, well and good; the need for possibly massive bloodshed will have been avoided. The evident strength of these attacks—so great that they have made the world news, although the government of Iran itself would probably want to suppress all knowledge of them—shows the seriousness of intent behind them.