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To Iran,
with Love
by Joe Conason
From the botched Iraq war to threatening Iran with "regime change,"
neoconservative policies have been a boon for Tehran.
Aug. 25, 2006 | If the neoconservatives were not
so adept at claiming the patriotic high ground
for themselves -- and convincing the nation that
they are interested only in advancing the security
of America and Israel and the cause of democracy
-- it might be time to start asking which of them
are actually agents of Iran. The question is
pertinent because "objectively," as they like to say,
neoconservative policy has resulted in enormous
profit to the Iranian mullahs, at grave cost to
the United States and with little or no benefit
to Israel.
The most obvious example, of course, is the American
invasion and occupation of Iraq, which has
conveniently eliminated Iran's chief military
rival in the region, and replaced Saddam Hussein's
Baathist regime with a weak government dominated
by Shiite Islamist parties friendly to Tehran.
The only certain outcome of our misbegotten effort
is that the Iranians have finally gotten what
they could not achieve during eight years of
war with Iraq, despite the sacrifice of hundreds of
thousands of lives and hundreds of millions of
dollars. And we delivered the prize to them at
no cost -- except what we have lost in thousands
of dead and wounded U.S. troops and
hundreds of billions of dollars.
Oddly enough, they don't seem any more grateful than the Iraqis.
Remember that the war's chief instigator, aside
from the neoconservatives themselves, was their
friend and collaborator Ahmed Chalabi, who has
since proved to be a more reliable ally of the
Iranians than of his former American sponsors.
With much help from domestic propagandists,
Chalabi oversaw dissemination of the disinformation
about Saddam's "weapons of mass destruction"
that served as the rationale for war. The original
neocon plan was to enthrone him in Baghdad as
a strongman ruler, at least on a temporary basis.
He had promised, among other things, that the
new Iraq would grant diplomatic recognition to
Israel. Things haven't quite worked out that way.
Could the neocons truly have been so dense and
clueless about the consequences of an American
invasion of Iraq? Not if one believes their constant
flattery of their own seriousness and sagacity.
They did do an excellent job of misleading the
American public about how the war would proceed,
from their promises that the costs would be underwritten
by Iraqi oil, to their predictions that a
"new democratic Iraq" would radically improve
the prospects for regional peace and progress,
to their assurances that Shiite domination would
prove benign. William Kristol, the Weekly
Standard editor whose magazine so assiduously
promoted war, brushed aside any concerns about
empowering the Shiites during an April 2003 interview
with National Public Radio's Terry Gross:
"And on this issue of the Shia in Iraq, I think
there's been a certain amount of, frankly, Terry, a kind
of pop sociology in America that, you know, somehow
the Shia can't get along with the Sunni and
the Shia in Iraq just want to establish some
kind of Islamic fundamentalist regime. There's almost no
evidence of that at all. Iraq's always been very
secular." For a man who by then had spent almost
10 years arguing for war in Iraq, he was either
stunningly ignorant or intentionally deceptive.
It would be easier to believe that Kristol and
his fellow war enthusiasts were merely misinformed
or stupid if all of their mistakes did not so
consistently benefit Tehran. But consider the results of
the policies pursued by the White House at their
insistence.
By constantly threatening Iran and proclaiming
a policy of "regime change" that may someday be
imposed militarily, the Bush administration has
gravely weakened the domestic opposition to the
mullahs. This loud, clumsy approach has made
the U.S. so unpopular among the Iranian people
that exile groups seeking democratic reform dare
not identify themselves with us. Actually, the
excessive belligerence of the neoconservatives
is a great boon to the otherwise unpopular mullahs,
creating an external threat that unites the Iranians
and distracts from their domestic misery. And the
threat of an attack by the United States has
given Tehran an excellent reason to continue seeking
a nuclear deterrent.
In the same vein, Tehran profited from the original
Bush policy of refusing to negotiate with Iran
over its nuclear ambitions, which divided the
United States from its traditional allies in Europe and
allowed the mullahs to play Russia and China
off against the West. Indeed, the overarching Bush
policy of breaking apart our alliances and acting
unilaterally has aided all of our adversaries,
especially Tehran, by dividing and weakening
us. (See Iraq war, above.) Meanwhile, the failure
to unite the world behind sanctions much sooner
has allowed Iran to accelerate its nuclear program.
The Iranians have also enjoyed the fruits of an
incredibly reckless decision by the Bush administration
-- again encouraged by the neoconservatives --
to back Israel's bombardment of Lebanon. Tehran's
friends in Hezbollah are now the toast of the
Arab world, and they are well on their way to
destabilizing Iran's enemies (and America's allies),
destroying any chance to revive the peace process,
and radicalizing Muslims around the world. What
benefit, if any, the U.S. or Israel derived from this
latest misadventure is hard to see.
At still another level of policy, the Bush administration
has fought to prevent the imposition of automobile
fuel economy standards or other conservation
measures that would begin to free us from Iranian threats
to withhold oil. While the White House occasionally
pretends to be interested in new energy technologies,
the government has done little or nothing to
pursue real energy independence. But then, that is simply
the inevitable result of electing George W. Bush
as president, a failed oilman more concerned with
chopping brush and making fart jokes than foreign
policy.
And then there's Dick Cheney, the real author
of these disastrous policies. It is the vice president who
has provided the bureaucratic muscle behind the
neoconservatives, whose patronage he has long
enjoyed at the American Enterprise Institute.
Cheney too has a curious history with Iran, as the
former chief executive of Halliburton, a company
that blithely and repeatedly violated U.S. sanctions
against Iran through foreign subsidiaries. As
a congressman, Cheney was also the most outspoken
apologist for the secret arms trading with the
Iranian mullahs, despite their record of supporting
terrorism against American troops, that almost
brought down the Reagan administration.
But Cheney is an opponent of Tehran, as are his
comrades at the Weekly Standard, in the Pentagon
and elsewhere in the ranks of neoconservatism.
They aren't secretly trying to give aid and comfort to Tehran.
It only looks that way.