July 24, 2006 6:34 AM

Cold War redux

War with Iran: It’s not if, but where? Tehran benefits from elections — best of all in Iraq, thanks to the U.S.

THE United States is already at war with Iran; but for the time being the battle is being fought through surrogates.

During the Cold War, the US (The Shining City on the Hill) and the USSR (The Empire of Evil) were constantly at war…albeit by proxy. Soviets and Americans never actually shot at one another, but their surrogates certain did- all over the world.

Now, as if to prove once again the circularity of history and that what is old eventually becomes new again, we’re back to waging another war by proxy- this time with Iran. Hey, it makes perfect sense. We hate them (they fund Hezbollah, Hamas, and a raftload of other terrorist nutjobs) and they hate us (we’re not called “The Great Satan” for nothing). Of course, the Iranian leadership may hate America and all things American, but they’re certainly not stupid enough to risk a head-on war. Instead, they tinker around the margins, supporting governments and groups who pursue policies and commit acts that run very much contrary to American interests. If you can’t afford to take on the Great Satan directly, why not do it indirectly? After all, the plausible deniability factor is so much higher when someone else does the dirty work for you.

Ted Koppel’s excellent article on his interview with a Jordanian intelligence officer (It was hidden behind the New York Times pay wall today, but kudos to the Houston Chronicle for running it on their Op-Ed page) does an excellent job of explaining how Bush Adminstration policy has rendered the Middle East FUBAR. Nice going, eh?

That message was conveyed to me recently by a senior Jordanian intelligence official at his office in Amman. He spoke on the condition of anonymity, reflecting gloomily on the failure of the Bush administration’s various policies in the region.

He reserved his greatest contempt for the policy of encouraging democratic reform. “For the Islamic fundamentalists, democratic reform is like toilet paper,” he said. “You use it once and then you throw it away.”

Lest the point elude me, the official conducted a brief tour of recent democratic highlights in the region. Gaza and the West Bank, where Hamas, spurned by the State Department as a terrorist organization, was voted into power last spring and now represents the Palestinian government; Lebanon, where Hezbollah, similarly rejected by the United States, has become the most influential political entity in the country; and, of course, Iraq, where the Shiite majority has now, through elections, gained political power commensurate with its numbers.

In each case, the intelligence officer reminded me, the beneficiary of those electoral victories is allied with and, to some degree, dependent upon Iran. Over the past couple of months alone, he told me, Hamas has received more than $300 million in cash, provided by Iran and funneled through Syria. He told me what has now become self-evident to the residents of Haifa: namely, that Iran has made longer-range and more powerful rockets and missiles available to Hezbollah in southern Lebanon.

American soldiers may not be shooting at Iranian soldiers or lobbing artillery shells at Iranian military targets, but the conflict is very real. What is happening in the Middle East is very much a Cold War in the sense the US-USSR conflict was. America’s proxy, Israel, is doing battle with Iran’s proxy (Hezbollah and Hamas). Each side supplies it’s surrogates with materiel and intelligence, and then stands back as they try to kill one another. It’s great sport, and no one from the US or Iran gets dirty or, worse, gets killed.

It’s no secret that if a shooting war broke out between the US and Iran that we would have a decided and overwhelming advantage in firepower. Of course, no one wants to see this happen, so we wage our war through third parties. It’s SO much easier when someone else does the fighting and dying for you, no??

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This page contains a single entry by Jack Cluth published on July 24, 2006 6:34 AM.

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