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Preparation for Operation Iran Freedom
China
Supplies the Technology - Iran Builds the Bomb - Israel Conveniently
Disappears
US prepares military blitz against
Iran's nuclear sites
Running circles around Iran
By Hooman Peimani
A Russian newspaper article last week accused the United States government
of preparing for a military operation against Iran from the Caucasian
states of Azerbaijan and Georgia. While the US ambassador in the Azeri
capital Baku denied the accusation, the article reflected a growing
concern about a possible US attack on Iran as Washington relentlessly
raises its rhetoric against Tehran.
According to the news agency Agence France-Presse, on Thursday a
Nezavisimaya Gazeta article accused the Pentagon of having a plan for a
military operation against Iran of an unspecified scale. Accordingly, US
troops stationed in Azerbaijan and Georgia would be used in the operation,
along with those deployed in Iraq. The article speculated that the latter
would be the main launch pad for the operation.
The Russian report described the alleged operation as part of a broader US
plan for a regime change in Iran. Hence, "the military action is designed
to complete a popular uprising on which the Pentagon is counting". The
date of such an operation, according to that report, was to be determined
in a White House meeting last Friday. However, that meeting, tasked with
drawing up a policy toward the Iranian government, has been reportedly
postponed indefinitely because of policy disagreements within the George W
Bush administration between the hawkish Pentagon and the more conciliatory
State Department.
The two states implicated by the Nezavisimaya Gazeta's article have
categorically denied the mentioned plan. The Azeri government, whose
geographical location as an Iranian neighbor grants it a crucial role in
any such US operation from the Caucasus, has gone beyond this to attribute
the plan to an effort to damage Azeri-Iranian relations. Reacting to the
article, an Azeri official, Fuad Akhundov, reportedly stated: "This
article is aimed at torpedoing relations between Iran and Azerbaijan,
which are improving."
The accusation may or may not reflect the realities in the absence of
publicly available information to prove or disprove it. However, the
ongoing hostile US policy toward Iran has left no doubt in anyone's mind
that Washington is considering all options in its dealing with Iran,
including a military strike a la Iraq.
Given Iran's huge size (1.6 million square kilometers), a successful
military attack would require opening many fronts against the Iranians,
for which Azerbaijan would be a potential candidate. Apart from the
geographical factor, the mainly troubled relations between Baku and Tehran
since Azerbaijan's independence in 1991 have created grounds for possible
cooperation of the Azeri government with any US attack against its
southern neighbor. The two sides have sought to improve relations since
the late 1990s, with limited success. These efforts have increased,
especially since last year's official visit to Tehran of Azeri President
Haider Aliyev. However, these peaceful relations are yet to become
friendly and reliable because of the existence of certain barriers,
especially a major disagreement over the division of the energy-rich
Caspian Sea, a matter of disagreement in fact among all the Caspian's five
littoral states.
The Azeri leadership's friendly ties with two countries on hostile terms
with Iran, the United States and Israel, also make Baku's cooperation with
a US military operation against Iran a conceivable scenario. While
Azeri-Israeli ties have been a source of irritation in Baku-Tehran
relations, the growing Azeri-American relations have been a very damaging
factor in the latter.
The US domination of the Azeri oil industry, on whose revenue Baku hopes
to build its country's prosperity, has consolidated Baku-Washington
relations, while giving a growing influence to the Americans in
Azerbaijan. Those relations have also had a military dimension since the
conclusion of a few military/security agreements in early 2002. These have
provided grounds for a degree of direct US military presence in
Azerbaijan, while giving Washington an upper hand in shaping Azerbaijan's
military force.
Washington's "war on terrorism" has expanded the US military presence in
South and West Asia, including in the Caucasus, a region neighboring
northern Iran, where Azerbaijan and Georgia are located. As a result, US
military "advisors" are deployed in Georgia, which has sought North
Atlantic Treaty Organization membership. Georgia has been on friendly
terms with Iran despite its expanding relations with the United States.
Iran's practical encirclement by the US military stationed in the Persian
Gulf countries, Iraq, Turkey, Afghanistan and in certain Caucasian and
Central Asian countries makes a US military attack on Iran technically
feasible. However, such an action would be unwise both for its predictable
failure to impose a regime change on Iran, a country totally different
from Afghanistan and Iraq, where the US government has embarked on a
regime-change program with questionable success in dominating those
societies. It would also be detrimental to the long-term relations of the
two countries, which, ironically, have common interests in certain
strategically important regions such as the Persian Gulf. For that matter,
Tehran and Washington will have to normalize their relations at some point
in the future.
Against this background, no matter if the United States government is
actually contemplating any military operation against Iran, as claimed in
the Russian article, the Iranian government has reasons to be nervous
about being encircled by the US military. Among other factors, Tehran's
two-decade history of hostile relations with Washington leaves no room for
optimism for the Iranians, who should be preparing for the worst-case
scenario.
In such a situation, Iran should find strong incentives to close ranks
with neighboring Russia. The two countries have extensive
multi-dimensional relations and common views about many issues, including
their opposition to a US-led unipolar international system and to a
long-term US military presence in their proximity. Their shared concern
about a US plan for restructuring the geopolitical map of their
neighboring regions, including the Caucasus, could likely push them to
work together on contingency plans to deal with threats arising from
Azerbaijan and Georgia.
Dr Hooman Peimani works as an independent consultant with
international organizations in Geneva and does research in international
relations.
(Copyright 2003 Asia Times Online Co, Ltd. All rights reserved. Please
contact
content@atimes.com for information on our sales and syndication
policies.)
US terror tactics in Iran
By Hooman Peimani
At the end of its military operation in April, the US military reached a
ceasefire agreement with an Iraqi-based Iranian group, the Mujahideen-e
Khalq Organization (MKO), a group declared by the US and British members
of the "coalition of the willing" as terrorist. While the Americans
described the agreement as a step toward the MKO's surrender, the group's
backing by many members of the US Congress and its own claim of a
rapprochement suggested a deal between the two sides.
Until the April agreement, designating a terrorist status to the MKO was
the only common view of Tehran and the United States. In its efforts to
normalize estranged US-Iranian ties, the Bill Clinton administration added
the MKO to its list of terrorist organizations in the late 1990s. It also
conducted an inquiry into the group's fundraising activities in the US.
Notwithstanding these developments, the MKO, also operating under the name
of the National Council of Resistance, has enjoyed the backing of many
members of Congress. Viewing the MKO as an acceptable alternative to the
current Iranian regime, on many occasions they have demanded the US
government's support of the group to overthrow the Iranian regime.
While the US seems to have changed its policy toward the MKO, the European
Union, which declared it a terrorist group last year, insists on its
stance despite the MKO-US agreement. The official Iranian News agency,
IRNA, reported Cristina Gallach, spokeswoman for EU foreign-policy chief
Javier Solana, as stating on April 30, "For the EU, the MKO continues to
be a terrorist group. There has been no change in the decision. This
consideration continues to be the policy of the EU regardless of what has
been going on in Iraq in recent weeks."
The MKO emerged as an underground anti-Shah-regime group in the early
1960s. Subscribing to Islam as its ideology, its political and economic
views drew heavily from Marxism. Its advocacy for armed struggle resulted
in bombing of government buildings and many assassinations of mainly
low-level pro-government civilians and police and military personnel, as
well as a few US military personnel stationed in Iran in the 1960s and the
1970s. The Iranian authorities' systematic crackdown of the group resulted
in its paralysis. By the time of the 1979 Iranian revolution, most of its
cadres had been killed, were imprisoned or lived abroad.
A few months prior to its collapse, the Shah regime's release of political
prisoners and a significant relaxation of its authoritarian grip on
society helped the MKO revitalize itself. After the 1979 revolution, the
politicization of Iranian society and a growing dissatisfaction of
Iranians with the Islamic regime helped the MKO mushroom rapidly as an
opposition group.
In its effort to ascend to power, the MKO sided with Iranian president
Abolhassan Banisadr, who, ironically, became critical of the Iranian
regime. His sudden removal by the late ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in 1981
and a subsequent government crackdown on all major opposition groups was
followed by the MKO's resort to arms to topple the regime. Its launching a
campaign of assassination and bombing resulted in the deaths of many
pro-government civilian and military/security personnel at different
levels, including a president (Mohammad-Ali Rajaei) and a prime minister
(Ali-Akbar Bahonar) and many high-ranking figures of the then ruling
Islamic Republic Party. However, the MKO failed to destabilize the regime,
which instituted a massive crackdown on its members and supporters. By
1983, it practically ceased to exist as a group inside Iran capable of
posing a serious threat to the Iranian government.
Many MKO members, including its leaders, fled to Western countries in the
early 1980s, only to reorganize their group in Iraq, a neighboring country
at war with Iran, which opened its doors to the MKO rank and file. Seeking
to weaken the Iranian regime to achieve its expansionist objectives, the
Saddam Hussein regime armed the MKO and provided it with bases from where
it launched many attacks on the Iranian military at war with Iraq. It also
conducted many assassination and bombing operations inside Iran, mainly in
neighboring provinces, during the Iran-Iraq war (1980-88).
At the end of the war, the MKO became an Iraq-based group with a limited
number of sympathizers among Iranians abroad and a small and ineffective
underground organization inside Iran. Its cooperation with the Iraqi
regime led to its complete loss of popular support inside Iran as the war
left about 1.5 million Iranians dead and wounded and caused massive
destruction of its oil and other industries, agriculture, and
infrastructure estimated at about US$1 trillion. The Saddam regime used
the MKO until its collapse to pressure Tehran as well as in the
suppression of Iraqi Kurds and Shi'ites who rose after the 1991 Gulf War,
as confirmed by their respective political groups.
Like many other Iranian high-ranking officials, Iranian leader Ayatollah
Ali Khamenei condemned last month's agreement as a clear case of hypocrisy
in the US war on terrorism. Citing the US government's declaration of the
MKO as terrorist, he stated on April 30, "Now, America supports them. It
shows terrorism is bad if terrorists are not America's servants. But if
terrorists become America's servants, then they are not bad. It's a test,
showing how America ridicules fighting terrorism and democracy."
In response to such remarks, on the same day the US State Department's
counterterrorism coordinator, Cofer Black, rejected the characterization
of the April agreement as a cooperation pact. "The US government does not
negotiate with terrorists. The MKO's opposition to the Iranian government
does not change the fact that they are a terrorist organization. We
understand the agreement on the ground, in the field, is a prelude to the
group's surrender. Commanders make tactical decisions in conflict with
enemy combatants."
He added, "This is a pretty special group. They're a foreign terrorist
organization. They are not well liked in Iraq. They could not be put with
a general prisoner population. They are following the orders of the
coalition commanders, and their situation will be addressed in the coming
days and weeks."
Despite Black's denial, evidence suggests otherwise. In spite of its
status as a terrorist group in the United States, the MKO operates freely
in that country and holds an office in Washington. For more than a decade,
many US politicians have backed the group. Last November, 150 members of
Congress signed a petition urging the administration of President George W
Bush to remove the MKO from its terrorist list.
The MKO representatives abroad claim that last month's agreement provides
for their group to maintain its bases, fighters and weapons in Iraq and to
continue its operation from Iraq to overthrow the Iranian regime. Its
claim of fighting with Iranian "infiltrators" suggests its freedom of
action in Iraq after reaching agreement. In its April 30 statement, the
group claimed two clashes with Iran's Revolutionary Guard units allegedly
crossing into Iraq during which two MKO fighters were wounded and three
attackers were killed. No evidence has been provided so far to that effect
and the Iranian government has denied the claim.
In the post-Saddam era, the US government's fear of Iran's capability to
expand its influence in Iraq through pro-Iranian Iraqi Shi'ite groups
capitalizing on the Iraq Shi'ites' politicization seems to have convinced
it of the utility of the MKO. Although it is too weak and isolated to
become an alternative to the Iranian regime, its Iraq-based fighters could
be used to dissuade Tehran from backing the Iraqi Shi'ites. Washington's
apparent intention of using the MKO to pressure the Iranian government
demonstrates an expanding state of hostility toward Iran in the United
States that could potentially lead to major conflicts of a political and
military nature.
Dr Hooman Peimani works as an independent consultant with
international organizations in Geneva and does research in international
relations.
(©2003 Asia Times Online Co, Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact
content@atimes.com for information on our sales and syndication
policies.) |
