Worries For Iraq

I was at an impromptu dinner party here in Abu Dhabi last night and one of the guests, the mother of a former Spanish diplomat asked me what I thought would happen in Iraq. The other guests around the table grimaced; Iraq is a well-worn and tiresome topic here in the Gulf emirate and many have made up their minds already as what is going to happen.

But despite White House statements that every year is a make-or-break year for that poor country, I really do believe 2008 will be a crucial one for Iraq.

Iraq and the United States face huge challenges this year. But the gains made under the current surge strategy aren’t the only measure of what’s going on in Iraq; it remains a series of delicately balanced accords. If one worsens it can be managed, but more than that and the U.S. would again be overwhelmed. Everything has to go just right for Bush to hand a stable and relatively peaceful Iraq off to his successor.

With that in mind, here’s a look at some of the issues that will confront George W. Bush in his last year in office — and what lies in store for the next president

The Surge: The surge is coming to an end this summer, like it or not. Five combat brigades — about 30,000 troops — will leave Iraq by the end of July because their deployments are up and there aren’t any more reserves ready to go. There’s just no getting around it. The big question is then: Will there be an increase in general violence once the U.S. presence is back down to around 140,000 troops, about the same number who were in-country during the worst of the 2004-2006 violence?

Some say it’s not the numbers of troops, but the mission, and the U.S. has been far more aggressive getting troops into neighborhoods and protecting Iraqi civilians. That’s led to more intelligence tips and a routing of al Qaeda in Iraq to the northern part of the country.

But the competency of the Iraqi security forces, while improving, is still in doubt. With fewer U.S. troops on the ground, the Iraqis will have to pick up the slack. The White House says it intends to continue withdrawing troops after a brief pause to assess the situation. Which means there are likely to be even fewer troops if things go pear-shaped in the fall.

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Another Road To Damascus

If Syria’s sitting down at the table, as it’s indicated it will do at next week, it’s a safe bet that the fate of two key parts of the region — the Golan and Lebanon — are up for discussion.

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Turkey’s Game of Chicken

Still, there’s little doubt that Turkey is royally pissed off and resentful of the United States and have decided to warn the Americans with what they see as a legitimate security measure to protect their borders…. The Turks figure that the KRG and its American backers will choose to crack down on Kurdish rebels if they’re faced with the prospect of a Turkish invasion and the collapse of the Kurdish economic miracle in the north – much of which relies on trade with Turkey and Iran.

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War Without End, Amen

Last week I talked about the alternate ways of dealing with Iran in the Middle East, one that didn’t involve violent confrontation. The idea was to bow to reality and negotiate with Iran, smoothing the lines of friction by bowing to some of its demands, while getting some changes in behavior out of the regime in Tehran.
But that’s not what’s happening. The U.S. and the West are backing Iran into a corner, forcing it to push back. This makes it almost inevitable that Iran would foment chaos and instability in the region while surging toward nuclear arms as a means of deterrence.
If this confrontation continues, there are two possibilities, neither of which are good for the U.S. Let’s take a look at them.
One possibility is a large-scale withdrawal by the United States from Iraq, although that would leave Iran as the dominant military power in the Gulf. It has the largest military in the region (even if it’s poorly equipped) and its Revolutionary Guards Corps is capable and trained in asymmetric warfare. It has reach, a deep bench and good weapons. (Exhibit A: Last year’s war between Hezbollah and Israel.) So what are we looking at?
First, southern Iraq and its oil fields will likely become an Iranian vassal state in all but name. While Iraqi Shi’ites have been patriotic in the past — large numbers of them died in the battle for the Fao Peninsula in the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq War — Iran has tentacles in every major Shi’ite party in Iraq. Even Moqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army, which exhibits a form of Iraqi/Arab Shi’ite nationalism, is not immune. His militia has been splintering for months now, and there are credible reports that rogue elements under the influence of the IRGC are operating in Iraq.
And al-Sadr has an uneasy alliance with Iran. He’s perfectly happy to take their money and weapons, but by no means is he a lapdog. That means he’s in danger. Should Iran make a solid play for southern Iraq — and there’s no reason to think they won’t — al-Sadr could end up dead, with the blame falling on retreating Americans. That will drive Shi’ites loyal to him bonkers, so look for harassment attacks on the withdrawing U.S. forces to escalate to a full-on rout and scramble for the relative haven of Kuwait. Other Tehran-backed militias would quickly take care of their rivals in southern Iraq and it’s likely that after a short, sharp civil war within a civil war, those parties would emerge triumphant in Baghdad and in the south. The Kurds will be threatened in the north by both Turkey and Iran — who already seem to have a de facto alliance against the upstart Kurds — leaving the Sunnis to fend for themselves against foreign *jihadi* elements in Anbar and other majority Sunni provinces. This effective partition won’t take long.
That positions Iran in a dominate position in the Gulf and should it acquire nuclear weapons, other countries will have to follow suit. Saudi Arabia will nuke up, as would Egypt. Syria would benefit from Iranian nuclear technology or simply be given bombs. Israel would be pressed on all sides and would likely drop all pretense and declare itself a nuclear state. The Middle East — and much of the world’s oil supply — would be hostage to one of the most unstable balances of terror the world has ever known. It wouldn’t take much to spark off a regional, nuclear war. Oil prices will rise and plateau at God-knows-what because of the constant, hair-trigger tension and a world-wide recessions or even depression might ensue as prices rise because of cascading costs in the distribution chains. Food would cost more, business travel would drop, jobs would be lost, public transportation would become more expensive, etc., etc. The era of cheap oil and the lifestyle it affords would be over.
Meanwhile, as oil prices rise, the very Middle Eastern countries staring eyeball to eyeball would reap the benefits and be able to buy more modern weapons. It would be an oily, vicious cycle.
That’s one scenario but, unfortunately, it’s the less likely of the two. It’s predicated on the idea that Iran will be left to do as it pleases in Iraq and no one will interfere. But as has been shown, the U.S. is not going to just up and leave Iraq; It will have 35,000 to 50,000 troops there for the foreseeable future even with a drawdown, as well as its considerable over-the-horizon assets (ships and jets) in the region. This means that the U.S. continues to plan for for a possible military confrontation with Iran. And that means Iran intends to build a bomb.
They can’t not try to build a bomb now thanks to the breakdown in talks over Iraq. There’s some dissension within foreign policy circles whether Iran wants an actual, working bomb or merely the capacity to build one quickly, but neither is the least bit palatable to Israel, the surrounding Arab states, the United States or anyone in the Western world, really.
What might a war with Iran look like? Initial strikes would come from the Gulf in the form of a barrage of cruise missiles and fighter jets from the carrier groups there and the surrounding air bases. The Bushehr nuclear plant is certainly on the hit list, as is the Natanz uranium enrichment center. Struck, too, will be the heavy water plant and radioisotope facility in Arak; the Ardekan Nuclear Fuel Unit; the Uranium Conversion Facility and nuclear technology center in Isfahan. And that will only be the first wave of sortie after sortie striking targets that, after the initial nuclear facilities, will grow to include Revolutionary Guard positions and eventually infrastructure points such as bridges, power stations and oil refineries. It would be an attack designed to bring the Iranian economy — and, hopefully, the regime — to its knees.
The Iranians aren’t defenseless, of course. They have robust anti-aircraft defense systems, so there likely would be casualties among the pilots. And they have good surface-to-ship missiles that can take down tankers and smaller ships stationed in the Gulf. There’s a good chance they would try to choke off the Strait of Hormuz, through which a vast amount of the world’s oil flows. It would only take a couple of hits on tankers in the Gulf for all traffic there to stop.
Warships can be further taken down by swarms of suicide speed boats, tactics the Iranians have been perfecting for just this occasion. While the damage to Iran would be severe early on, the repercussions to American forces in Iraq, the Gulf and even Europe could be as bad. Shi’ites in Iraq, goosed by Iranian-backed militias, could inflict heavy losses on the 160,000 troops there.
The Iranians have already thought of this. On Sept. 1, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei replaced the commander-in-chief of the country’s elite military corps with Maj. Gen. Mohammad Ali Jaafari, a former IRGC commander from the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq War. By placing their top Iraq hand in charge of their most potent military force, the Iranians are signaling they mean business in the event of an attack.
At sea, a few warships might be lost, with who knows how many casualties. If Israel is involved in the attack, look for Hezbollah in Lebanon to jump in, pummeling the Jewish state’s north with hundreds of Katyushas in a playback of last summer’s war. That will bring Syria, Israel and Lebanon into the fight. If it drags on, Pakistan could fall to an Islamist coup d’etat, again stoked by Iranian agents. Elsewhere, in Europe, South America and North America, members of the al Quds Force — Iran’s elite international paramilitary unit — could wreck their own brand of havoc with terror attacks.
War would rage from the Khyber Pass in Afghanistan to the Mediterranean, a continuous swath of fury and violence. It would be the end of the world as we know it.
Oil prices would skyrocket, well over $100 barrel, China, the U.S. And Europe, the world’s top producers and consumers, would suffer economic pinches as the oil economies ground to a halt. The Western standard of living would rapidly fall, thank to a similar cascade of squeezes that I mentioned above.
This is the likely outcome of a war, and it’s not at all clear the West would win this one. Yes, Iran would be devastated, but the West would stand hated and impoverished, starved for oil. It would take years to recover, and the simmering resentment of the Muslim would would be stoked for another generation.
Is that what the White House wants? As I mentioned last week, negotiations are the best way forward.

Water and Oil Mix in the Gulf

The flotilla of Coalition ships — including the Australian frigate the HMS Anzac, the American guided missile destroyer Chung-Hoon and the logistical ships the RFA Bedivere (Royal Navy) and the USS Rushmore, as well as nimble patrol boats and Coast Guard cutters — patrol around the two Iraqi oil terminals just off the coast of Iraq, where the Shatt al-Arab and the Khor Abd Allah waterways dump millions cubic meters of silt-heavy freshwater into the salt sea of the Gulf every second…. The Iranian Navy gets some respect from Aiken and other commanders, who told me that when passing through the bottleneck to the Gulf called the Strait of Hormuz, a passing Iranian Navy ship presented colors and her sailors saluted, holding fast to naval traditions the world over.

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Busy Signal in Beirut

Disappointed, Lebanon’s Internet users howled — especially on the forum boards of Michel Aoun’s Free Patriotic Movement, an anti-government, middle-class group of people who stood up to Syria through much of the 1990s and first half of this decade…. Without the infrastructure, remaining businesses that depend on communication will flee, meaning there’s less revenue for the state, perpetuating its weakness and making it unable to find or impose a political solution on its non-state and foreign rivals.

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Beirut: Faith No More?

I wanted to write about my home, Beirut, and invite y’all in for a bit. It’s a messy place and frankly more than a bit depressing. But it’s also important and exciting, full of folks who (mostly) deserve better than they’ve received.

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