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ot:OT:ot logical conclusion

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2005-03-29, 7:15 pm

New York Times
March 27, 2005

Is a State Sponsor of Terrorism Winning?

By Richard A. Clarke
National security advice to four U.S. presidents

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images.../27secu.184.jpg

Imagine with me a nation's security leaders sitting around the conference
table being briefed on the progress of things in Iraq. They celebrate the
overwhelming victory of their favorites in the Iraqi elections. They are
pleased with the effectiveness of their huge investment in building schools
and hospitals in Shiite communities. They are delighted that the thousands
of their security forces in Iraq are doing well, with few casualties. The
nation? Iran.

Yes, Iran, the nation the Bush administration calls the greatest state
sponsor of terrorism, is having some good days, largely at our expense.

In the 1980's, Iran suffered an estimated one million casualties in a
seven-year [eight-year] war against Iraq.

From Iran's perspective, the purpose of the war was to place Iraq's majority
Shia religious faction in charge, to unseat Saddam Hussein, to protect the
Shia holy places and, perhaps, to get its hands on Iraq's vast oil deposits.
The costly war ended in a draw, after the two sides exhausted themselves.

Seventeen years later, Iran has now achieved three of those four war goals,
thanks to 13,000 American casualties and scores of billions of
American-taxpayer dollars.

Unlike American aid to Iraq, Iran's assistance is having little problem
getting through. Estimated at many hundreds of millions of dollars per year,
Iranian aid has a low overhead and is buying Tehran influence in Shia
communities.

Intelligence sources report that Iran's secret service and Revolutionary
Guards have heavily infiltrated Iraq, with perhaps as many as 5000
personnel. That would make Iran the third-largest force in the coalition,
but it does not, of course, participate in the coalition.

Iran operates on its own agenda in Iraq. Iran's goal is to have a government
in Baghdad under strong Iranian influence, not to create a mirror image of
Tehran. Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani is widely agreed to be the most
influential person in Iraq. He and many of the new leaders of Iraq spent
many years living in Iran, with the help of the Tehran government.

European and American pressure on Syria has driven President Bashar al-Assad
into the arms of Tehran. Although Syria's forces may withdraw from Lebanon,
the Hezbollah terrorist force created by Iran will stay and has now gained
Washington's acceptance as a legitimate Lebanese political party. Hezbollah
is widely believed to have been responsible for the terrorist murders of
more than 300 Americans in Lebanon and Saudi Arabia, as well as many
Israelis.

With oil costing more than $50 a barrel, the money keeps on flowing into
Tehran's treasury. Western oil companies, including a Halliburton
subsidiary, work with the Iranians, planning new oil pipelines to increase
their output.

The hope of American national security planners has been for democracy to
flourish in Iran. Unfortunately, when a progressive parliament was elected,
the ruling mullahs vetoed its actions and then stacked it with their
supporters. There will soon be another election in Iran, but it is likely to
be fixed by the mullahs.

Iran's nuclear strategists are also succeeding. President Bush has agreed to
give Iran trade concessions to get it to abide by nuclear-nonproliferation
agreements. Optimists think such concessions will halt the Iranian nuclear
weapons program and buy agreement to a reliable inspection regime. Cynics
suggest that Iran is playing for time to finish making bombs in hidden
facilities.

Either outcome, trade concessions or nuclear weapons, will strengthen Iran.

The president recently said that reports of the United States preparing to
attack Iran were ''simply ridiculous''. He then quickly added, ''All options
are on the table". There are reports that Pentagon planners, reacting to the
prospect of drawn-out negotiations, are developing strike packages to take
out W.M.D. sites in Iran.

Some planners say such strikes would cause the people to overthrow the
mullahs. Actually, if we struck Iran, I think we would unite it, trigger a
spasm of terrorist attacks against America and Israel and start another war
for which we have no exit strategy.

Thus, we need an honest national dialogue now on how much we feel threatened
by Iran and what the least-bad approaches to mitigating that threat are.

* Richard A. Clarke (born 1951) provided national security advice to four
U.S. presidents: Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton and George W.
Bush, consulting on issues of intelligence and terrorism, from 1973 to 2003.
Clarke's specialties are cyber security, counterterrorism and homeland
security. He was the counter-terrorism adviser on the U.S. National Security
Council when the September 11 attacks occurred. He resigned in January of
2003 to work on his book, 'Against All Enemies'
(http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0743260244), which came out in early
2004. He testified before the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon
the United States on March 24,
2004.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Clarke

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/27/m.../27ADVISER.html

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2005-03-29, 7:15 pm

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