"No one dare attack our sacred land": Iran FM's Claim Challenges Relevance of Britain, U.S. as World Powers

One week ago today, the Iranian Navy seized 15 British Navy personnel engaged in searching for smugglers in Iraqi waters. Despite GPS evidence presented by the British government that clearly indicated the British crew was well within established Iraqi waters, Iranian leaders have refused to release the hostages, whom they insist were captured in Iranian territorial waters. Ignoring Geneva Convention policies and British warnings not to do so, the Iranian government produced and distributed videotaped “confessions” in which the hostages “admit” they were in Iranian waters illegally when they were captured. Iran also floated the possibility that the lone female hostage would be released, but has subsequently rescinded that gesture. Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki now insists that Britain must apologize for instigating the incident, and suggested that the hostages may yet be tried in Tehran on charges of espionage. The outcome of such a show trial is not difficult to imagine. Espionage is a capital offense under Iran’s version of Sharia law.

What steps have Britain and the UN taken to resolve this critical situation? Tony Blair demanded the release of the hostages, to which demands Iran responded with increased rhetoric and blunt refusals to comply. To add insult to injury, Iran released to the media a letter allegedly written by female hostage Seaman Faye Turney, in which Turney robotically asks her government to withdraw troops from Iraq. Tony Blair became “livid” at the Iranian attempt to dictate British foreign policy, the refusal to release the hostages, and the obviously forced confessions (hint to future Iranian fake confession writers: British citizens refer to their Parliamentary representatives as MPs, not “representatives”). Blair requested that the UN Security Council condemn Iran for the seizure and issue a resolution calling upon Iran to immediately release the British crew.

In a pathetic display of its own irrelevancy, the UN Security Council, at the behest of such stalwart defenders of international law as Russia, could not agree on issuing a call for the immediate release of the hostages. The UK Times Online reported:

The UN Security Council, voicing “grave concern”, meanwhile called on Iran to allow consular access to the detained British naval personnel and urged “an early resolution of this problem, including the release of the 15”.

Britain originally asked for a tougher three-sentence statement to “deplore” the detention of the British personnel and “support calls” for their immediate release, but this was blocked by Russia and several other members.

“We will not be able to accept a call for the immediate release of the 15 UK naval personnel,” Vitaly Churkin, Russian’s UN envoy, declared during the debate.

The final two-sentence statement was read to the press outside the Security Council chamber, making it weaker than a formal declaration.

Apparently “grave concern” is the extent of the Security Council’s reaction to what under international law is an act of war: forced boarding of a vessel under flag of a recognized nation, compounded by taking uniformed military personnel of a sovereign nation hostage. Whatever one thinks of President Bush personally or politically, it is clear he was justified in his blunt warning to the UN that if it did not take action against Saddam Hussein after 14 of its resolutions had been ignored it would become an irrelevant organization in world affairs. Unfortunately, terrorists have paid close attention to the UN’s reactions to provocations and Iran clearly determined that President Bush was right about the UN’s irrelevancy. Hence the brazen taking of British hostages with little concern that any nations other than Britain and the U.S. would be inclined to interfere.

The west has a tendency to underestimate radical Islamic nations like Iran, whether out of a sense of cultural superiority or sheer ignorance. Iran has proven itself an astute observer of internal politics in America and Britain and has calculated that neither government has the political unity necessary to mount an effective response to this hostage incident. The political climate in America has become so acidic that Iran is certain America will not respond militarily to this provocation against our closest ally.

Democrats begging for immediate withdrawal from Iraq and impeachment of President Bush should consider carefully the words of Iranian Foreign Minister Mottaki:

To a question on probable US military attack on Iran, he said the Americans are now engaged in domestic issues and are not in a position to enter into another crisis.

"No one dare to attack our sacred land," he said.

“Engaged in domestic issues” is a euphemism for blind bush hatred in Congress. Non-binding resolutions criticizing the new “surge” in Iraq; over dramatized investigations into U.S. Attorney firings the President was constitutionally empowered to conduct; adding non-military pork funding to the Iraq War appropriations bill; and inserting ill-advised provisions into that bill to establish a withdrawal date from Iraq are precisely the “domestic issues” Mottaki and the Mullahs count on to tie the hands of our Commander in Chief. Conservative radio hosts and bloggers frequently use the term “embolden our enemies” when referring to the effects of the Democrat controlled Congress’s efforts to shackle President Bush’s executive war powers. Mottaki’s comments are proof that our enemies are indeed emboldened by this Congress and that bravado resulted in the hostage incident now upon us.

Britain is in a less rancorous but equally tenuous political position, as Prime Minister Blair is in effect a lame-duck leader until replaced in the next UK election. His liberal party has cut military expenditures so significantly during his tenure that France now has a larger Navy than Britain, which once ruled the seas. In fact, Belgium’s navy is now approximately the same size as Britain’s. Britain has been slowly reducing its military presence in Iraq, and other than typical criminal investigations did virtually nothing in response to the London Subway bombings in 2005. It is easy to see why Mottaki feels very confident that no nation dares to attack Iran. Even though Iran is known to be the world’s largest supplier of terrorist financing and equipment, to date no nation has taken direct action against it except the U.S. and then only under Republican presidents.

Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice, interviewed on the Sean Hannity radio show yesterday, expressed some hope that the hostage incident can still be resolved diplomatically, but that is the politically correct answer one would expect from the nation’s head diplomat. Hannity reminded Secretary Rice of President Reagan’s response in 1987 when the Iranian Navy attempted to mine the Persian Gulf, in which commercial oil and military vessels of various nations were operating. President Reagan considered the Iranian mining strategy a danger to American and international interests and without begging for UN permission or sanctions or written resolutions, President Reagan ordered military strikes against the Iranian ships laying the mines. After several of Iran’s naval vessels were sunk, Iran stopped its mining operations. When Iran resumed mining the Gulf in 1988, Reagan again ordered military action that resulted in significant losses to the Iranian Navy. The mining stopped and was not resumed again. Some regimes only respond to, and respect, force. Iran is governed by such a regime.

The U.S. and Britain now face a moment of decision in which the global relevancy of both nations may hinge on their response to this Iranian provocation. If Britain takes no action beyond becoming “livid” or pleading with the UN Security Council to merely “condemn” the action, Britain will certainly be targeted by terrorists for increasingly brazen attacks. If the U.S. fails to take decisive action on behalf of its dearest ally and continues being distracted by partisan sniping, it may suffer a similar fate.

President Bush warned the UN about becoming irrelevant, and Bin Laden referred to America as a “paper tiger.” Perhaps both were right. The only thing that today’s Democrats become angry enough to go to war over is paper: resolutions, appropriations bills, and hanging chads. The War on Bush has spanned more than 6 years, and the only two casualties have been the world image of the President of the United States, and the unity of the American people in the face of grave danger from terrorists. It is difficult to determine who is more gleeful over President Bush’s low approval ratings, liberals or emboldened terrorists.

Foreign Minister Mottaki’s confidence that no one dares attack Iran may be premature. According to an unnamed U.S. government source quoted in the New York Sun today:

“The Iranians are going to be shocked to find out how badly they have miscalculated," this official said. "Remember, Jimmy Carter is not the president of the United States these days."

444 days is a long time to let an act of war go unpunished. It is fitting that Carter was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize, because from 1979 to 1981 he contributed a great deal to the “peaceful” seizure of the U.S. Embassy and Embassy staff in Tehran through his spineless non-response to that act of war. It is no coincidence that the man whose face is circled in the picture at right with a U.S. Embassy hostage is the same man who orchestrated the kidnapping of the British crew last week: Ahmadinejad. Britain and America should hope history is not repeated in the current hostage incident. In that context, one week has already been too long to let an act of war go unpunished.

America's Quiet Cold War with Iran

President Bush has long declared that winning the war in Iraq is critical to keeping America and its allies safe from terrorism and Islamic extremists. The President’s critics have long rebutted this statement by arguing that there was no connection between Iraq and the 9/11 terrorists, or any other terrorists for that matter. Those who find themselves in the latter camp call for “redeploying” our troops from Iraq as Speaker Nancy Pelosi constantly demands. Regardless of the motivations cited or intelligence used to make the decision to invade Iraq, now that we are committed there is an important reason for staying in Iraq until the nation is sufficiently stable and capable of self defense: Containment of a much graver threat to the world, Iran.

Containment of Iran’s aggressions and drying up its terrorist funding are two features of what is clearly a multi-faceted non-military war being waged by the U.S. against Iran. Critics of the President miss the mark when they focus solely on whether we have succeeded in ridding Iraq of terrorists. No nation is ever completely free of existing or potential terrorists. That is not the point of the war in Iraq. As the President frequently states, we are fighting terrorists in Iraq so we will not be forced to fight at home. That may sound like a mere campaign style platitude, but it is not. The number of actual terrorists in Iraq is undoubtedly smaller than the number would be if we were militarily engaged in Iran, or even Pakistan. That is precisely the point. By conducting this war in and eventually securing a stable non-terrorist Iraq, we are quietly squeezing Iran’s oil-dependent economy through investment pressure while simultaneously denying Ahmadinejad of something he covets and will need desperately in the future: Iraq’s oil fields.

The Bush Administration should be given credit for recognizing long ago that forcible regime change, while clearly feasible in Iraq, was not a viable option for halting Iran’s rapid march toward nuclear weapons and its penchant for financing terrorist training and operations worldwide. Rather than bragging about America’s might and capability to remove Ahmadinejad, President Bush has followed the Reagan Cold War approach by working to force an enemy to use all of its natural resources to sustain its own needs and the likely result of this tactic may be that Ahmadinejad’s Iran will spend itself into regime change. How is this quiet war being waged? The major fronts are economic pressure and securing Iraq and its resources for the Iraqis, not for Ahmadinejad, and are detailed below:

1. Discourage foreign investment in Iran - In a nation-state version of the Terror-Free Investing strategy championed by Missouri Treasurer Sarah Steelman as detailed in a previous post, the Bush administration has relied on strong personal trust and good relations between the President and his fellow heads of state in key nations, such as Japan, to wield significant financial power in Iran and withdraw from contracts for Iranian oil. L.A. Times writer Kim Murphy, in an article titled "Health of Iran's Oil Fields in Question, Analysts Say," published in today’s NY Sun, cites oil industry analysts who agree that America’s quiet efforts to dry up foreign investments in Iranian oil and natural gas development projects are creating a significant burden on the Iranian economy. This is evidenced by Iran’s increasing embrace of Russian and Chinese investments in Iranian oil field development, although the Bush Administration is pressing both nations to reduce or abandon such investments until Ahmadinejad complies with UN sanctions related to the Iranian nuclear program.

These analysts further observe that the cancellation of foreign contracts for oil and gas development is forcing Tehran to divert increasing amounts of the oil it produces for use in its own oil consuming infrastructures. Thus, Iran, through America’s quiet war to keep money out Ahmadinejad’s hands, is keeping him from funding terrorists in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and the United States. Of equal if not greater importance, the decreasing flow of oil revenue into Tehran’s coffers also hampers Iran’s suicidal quest for nuclear weapons. As Iran’s oil consumption eventually overtakes its production, Iranians themselves, as the former Soviet states did, will demand fundamental changes in leadership and economic priorities.

2. Remain in Iraq - By remaining in Iraq until the Iraqi government expresses confidence that it is prepared for our withdrawal. The similarities between Iraq’s establishment of democracy and that of America itself are striking. In the founding of both democracies, geographic and religious groups united in the overthrow of tyrannical government, then squabbled for years over representation in the new government. It took America more than a decade to agree on a constitution. Iraq has one already and is working to hold the diverse elements of the government together, and like our own Civil War, there will be failures and setbacks. The difference for America was that after defeating the British, America was capable of defending itself from foreign aggressors until the governmental creation phase was completed. Iraq has not reached that stage or military independence and may not for several years. America started Iraq on this path which Iraqis have now embraced, and America must not withdraw at this point and leave Iraq’s fate in the eager hands of its neighbors.

Remaining in Iraq until the Iraqis no longer need us will prevent Ahmadinejad from taking aggressive actions to acquire the prized Iraqi oil fields. As America’s financial pressure on Iran continues through diverted investments and Iran’s own rising domestic consumption of oil creates more strain, Ahmadinejad will need additional sources of revenue to fund the projects most pressing to him, i.e. the Iranian nuclear program and funding of global Jihad. Should we leave Iraq ill-equipped to defend itself or unstable in its government foundations, Ahmadinejad would seize the Iraqi oil fields and exponentially increase revenues for his nuclear and terrorist ambitions. In that sense, the mantra that the war in Iraq is a war for oil is true, but only as one aspect of a complex multi-front war to contain a much more dangerous and powerful enemy, Iran.

Instead of militarily engaging and attempting to disarm a heavily armed Iran on its turf as it grows stronger, we are engaging small pockets of terrorists in Iraq, building an Iraqi government capable of sustaining itself against Iran, and preserving the Iraqi oil fields as the key revenue producer for the fledgling Iraqi democracy. The cost of 3,000 American casualties seems too steep to the war-weary Democrats, like Pelosi, but the cost in American casualties had this war been militarily waged in Iran would have been much greater.

The withdrawal of troops from Iraq and the abandonment of American goals there would render impotent any American-led financial pressures on nations who continue to enter oil contracts with Iran. In Murphy’s article, the following paragraph should receive close scrutiny from those who oppose the war in Iraq and want to see it ended:

If Iran were suddenly to stop exporting its 2.4 million barrels of oil a day, such as in the event of a military strike, world oil prices probably would skyrocket. But a gradual decline probably could be offset by other OPEC members, analysts say, particularly as Iraq increases its oil production [emphasis added] and Saudi Arabia carries out plans for significant increases in its production capacity.

By establishing a stable Iraq exporting oil more efficiently and profitably than under Sadaam, we lessen the world’s dependence on, and thus also its investments in, Iran’s nuclear weapon-seeking Mullahs. Battling Tehran on these fronts, rather than in its streets, is a strategy clearly calculated to achieve containment and eventual disarmament at minimal loss of life and should be applauded for its similarities to Reagan’s Cold War economic tactics that strained the Soviet economy until it reached critical mass. Iran’s once robust economy, though strained now, will not crumble overnight, and America should not expect immediate gratification from this strategy any more than it did with similar efforts to curb the Soviet Union. Yet the approach is tactically sound, minimally costly in casualties, and has proven in the past to be most effective.

Technorati Tags: Ahmadinejad Sarah Steelman Reagan Iranian Oil Iraqi oil fields Cold War Nancy Pelosi Bush Administration Civil War Iranian nuclear program investing in Iran Iraq War War On Terror