One of my core assumptions about a U.S. sneak attack on Iran has been that the war would quickly spread -- to Iraq, the Persian Gulf and Lebanon, and to the rest of the world via terrorist attacks. This would give the neocons that third or fourth world war they’ve been looking for, although probably under conditions that would make it impossible for the United States to win.
But I’ve been having serious second thoughts about that assumption, in part because the Iranians simply aren’t acting as if they expect all-out war, or even a climactic showdown over their nuclear program.
At first I thought this was due to miscalculation -- that the strategists in Tehran had concluded the Cheney Administration was in way too much trouble in Iraq to even think about launching another war of choice, especially one in which the costs would vastly outweigh the benefits.
As Col. Gardiner has already reminded us, that kind of analysis is both strategically correct and extremely naïve.
You can call Iran’s rulers many things, but naïve is generally not one of them. Ahmadinejad can and sometimes does come across like the kind of loon who tries to sell you religious pamphlets at the airport (or did, before security got so tight) but the nonchalance emanating from Tehran these days is too widespread and brassy to credit just to him.
The Iranians must see the same signs we all do: the deliberately incited media frenzy, the melodramatic warnings from exile groups, the intelligence strong arm tactics, the stovepipe operations, the efforts to discredit the UN inspectors, and now the military deployments. How can they be so seemingly certain it’s just an elaborate bluff? Even the Israeli air assault on Lebanon doesn’t appear to have made a dent in their confidence.
It finally occurred to me that I may have been looking at this the wrong way. I’ve been thinking about an American air strike as the Cheney Administration's way of kicking over the table and ending the chess match. But the Iranians may see it as simply another move on the board -- a disastrously bad move they could then exploit to improve their position.
It’s not so much that the Iranians want the Americans to attack their country, but they may be fully prepared to deal with it and use it to their own Machiavellian advantage -- not just politically and diplomatically, but also to advance their alleged nuclear ambitions. They may even be counting on it. If this is correct, their initial reaction to a U.S. air strike may be surprisingly restrained.
But this, in turn, raises some ominous questions: If a conventional air strike, even a big one, won't scare the Iranians, what will? And how far up the escalation ladder is the Cheney Administration willing to go to try to force them to knuckle under?
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