How deep is the US treachery?
An excellent analysis by Dan Diker of the NIE volte-face over Iran — which makes the point, as I noted in an earlier post, that far from cementing a regional alliance against Iran this display of US weakness is pushing ‘moderate’ Arab states to run with the winning Iranian horse – refers to the equally excellent analysis by Simon Henderson of the Washington Institute, who noted: …the UAE set a precedent in November by impounding an Iranian-bound shipment of undisclosed material banned by UN Security Council Resolutions 1737 and 1747 because of its potential use for nuclear weapons or missile programs. The Washington Institute brief also notes that Bahrain's crown prince for the first time openly accused Iran in a recent interview of seeking nuclear weapons.
The NIE’s assessment that Iran did not restart its nuclear programme after 2003 has now been dismissed with contumely by pretty well every single informed observer. The $64,000 question still remains, however, whether the NIE was simply a freelance piece of treachery by the US intelligence community or whether it was part of a strategic rethink from the President down in favour of appeasement and surrender, in line with the ‘new realism’ doctrine of Baker/Hamilton.
Hopes that the former may be the case were raised when the US Defence Secretary Robert Gates, who had been thought to be part of the Baker/Hamilton axis, made a remarkably hawkish speech after the NIE to a security conference in Bahrain:
Claiming Iran may secretly have resumed efforts to build a nuclear weapon, the US defence secretary, Robert Gates, called for intensified international pressure on Tehran and urged Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states to develop a joint air and missile shield to ward off future threats…
Speaking at a weekend security conference in Bahrain, Gates insisted multilateral defence cooperation was an ‘absolute necessity’. The region faced a ‘truculent’ leadership in Tehran that was ‘bent on confrontation with its neighbours and deeply engaged in subverting stability in Iraq and Afghanistan,’ he said.
‘Everywhere you turn, it is the policy of Iran to foment instability and chaos, no matter the strategic value or the cost in the blood of innocents - Christians, Jews and Muslims alike,’ he said. Gates said Tehran, as well as backing Hizbullah and Hamas, was developing medium-range ballistic missiles that are ‘not particularly cost-effective unless equipped with warheads carrying weapons of mass destruction’.
Gates thus seemed to be going out of his way to counter the ruinous impression created by the NIE that the US was throwing in the towel over Iran. But any hopes that the NIE might have been a one-off blip and not evidence of a major strategic shift have to be set against the dreadful betrayal of Lebanon, where the appointment of a Syrian puppet as president has delivered that country into the hands of its Syrian oppressors. The killing of a senior general in a bomb attack in Beirut on Wednesday is suspected to be the latest in a series of bombings and assassinations at the hands of Syria, which began with the 2005 killing of former Premier Rafik al-Hariri.
This is really awful. Lebanon's 'Cedar revolution', fragile as it was, offered a ray of hope that the wind of freedom might really be beginning to blow through the Middle East. America is thus negating the whole justification for its policy in the Middle East -- the belief that it could breathe life there into the universal yearning for freedom. The reason for this American volte-face is the asinine‘New Realist’ belief that by delivering Lebanon to Syria as a sacrificial lamb, the US will prise Syria away from Iran. But what will now surely happen instead is that Iran, through its puppet Syria, will control Lebanon.
The betrayal of both Lebanon and Israel suggest that, whatever the explanation behind the NIE, the appeasement faction now has the whip hand in DC -- and chaos is the result.