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World View
Only threat of force will tame Tehran
Britain must stop being soft and use its might to stop terror, says Michael Rubin
Sunday October 9, 2005
The Observer
Tony Blair confirmed last week that bombs used to kill eight British soldiers in Iraq were a type used by Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and groups that it supports in Lebanon.
His words were circumspect, but the point was clear: London considers Tehran responsible for killing British troops in Iraq. Blair's accusations confirm that the British-secured zone, once praised as a triumph for the 'softly-softly' approach, is a model no more. (Give him a break, it took 9/11 for the US to get that the Islamofascists mean what they say.) In recent weeks death squads have kidnapped and murdered journalists, most famously Steven Vincent, an American freelance writer who had warned of Iranian infiltration of the police. Dozens of Iraqis have fallen victim to Iranian-backed militias.
It did not have to be this way. The Iranian challenge in Iraq has long been apparent. In January 2004, Lebanese Hizbollah opened offices across southern Iraq. In the centre of Basra, Lebanese Hizbollah flags flew from an annexe to the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq headquarters.
In exchange for quiet, British officials have turned a blind eye to the Iranian challenge. When Shia militias turned away from schools girls not conforming to Muslim standards of dress, British forces did nothing to guarantee them a right to education. When young gangs plastered the University of Basra with posters of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, British officials remained silent. An official assessment following Muqtada al-Sadr's uprising in April 2004 blamed a British political officer in al-Kut for 'intentionally toning down' reports of [Shia] insurgent activity'. In Amara, British officials transferred the Baath party headquarters to the Badr Corps; many locals wanted to use it as a health clinic instead. The Iranian-trained militia festooned their new headquarters with anti-coalition slogans. British troops refused to be provoked.
For terrorists and their sponsors, British restraint is assumed. There is little fear of military reprisal. A major factor behind the Iranian government's willingness to murder British troops has been the impotence and naivety of UK diplomacy.
It has become conventional wisdom among the foreign policy elite that military force is never appropriate. The outbreak of the Iraqi insurgency and the fumbled reconstruction have reinforced anti-war sentiment among the chattering classes. If only President Bush had listened to the international community and allowed United Nations inspectors to finish their job, they say, war might have been averted.
War should always be the last resort. But a credible military threat is sometimes necessary to maintain peace. In the case of Iran, British cabinet officials have undercut diplomacy. As tension between Washington and Iran escalated last month, for example, Foreign Secretary Jack Straw was asked about the possibility of military action. 'US Presidents always say all options are open. But it is not on the table, it is not on the agenda. I happen to think it is inconceivable,' he told the BBC on 28 September. Al-Jazeera's headline for this was: 'No military action against Iran.'
Straw may have wanted to reinforce the notion that London remained committed to diplomacy, playing to a British public conditioned to view the American President as a reckless cowboy and religious nut. But his words were interpreted in Tehran as weakness.
Engagement alone can backfire. Between 2000 and 2005, trade between Iran and the European Union has almost tripled. During the same period, it doubled its number of executions and spent several billion dollars on its nuclear programme.
Iranian diplomats may be sincere. They may have impressed Straw. But the Islamic republic's structure leaves them impotent. Only the Supreme Leader, the Revolutionary Guards, and the Intelligence Ministry wield power. It is no accident that Iran's envoy to Iraq was not from the Iranian Foreign Ministry, but from the division of the Revolutionary Guards charged with the export of revolution.
Diplomacy backed by the threat of military force can be a winning combination. What little success the negotiations regarding Iran's nuclear intentions have had are due not only to European carrots, but also American sticks.
Iran is not alone in this. Examining Libyan leader Muammar Gadaffi's decision to settle his differences with London and Washington, US columnist Charles Krauthammer suggested it was no coincidence that 'Gadaffi's first message to Britain, the principal US war ally and conduit to White House war counsels, occur[red] just days before the invasion of Iraq.
'And his final capitulation to US-British terms occur[red] just five days after Saddam Hussein is fished out of a rathole.' Had Straw assured Gadaffi he need never fear military reprisal, the Libyan leader would today be nearing completion of his nuclear bomb. Might matters.
If democracy prevails in Iraq, the Iranian leadership understands that 70 million Iranians will clamour for the same rights. Iraq's success poses an existential challenge. While Iran's youth crave Western pop, fashion and freedom, ideology dominates the Islamic republic's leadership. Khomeini's constitution enshrines theocracy and the export of revolution.
No amount of reform can change that. And no amount of engagement can ameliorate its challenge.
The best the West can hope for is containment. Diplomacy can repulse the Iranian challenge in Iraq, but nice words alone are insufficient. Deals must be obeyed and promises kept. Sometimes that takes a willingness to use force.
Armies, not words, are a diplomat's most potent tool.
· Michael Rubin, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, is the editor of the Middle East Quarterly
Now we know the truth about Iran, we must act
By Con Coughlin
(Filed: 09/10/2005)
It was not the outcome the Foreign Office had been planning. When it was announced early last week that a senior British diplomat in Baghdad was flying back to London to give a briefing on Iraq's constitutional referendum, the general expectation in Whitehall was that the following day's headlines would focus exclusively on whether sufficient numbers of Iraqis would turn out to validate the exercise.
Imagine the surprise, then, of Jack Straw and his officials the following morning when they opened their newspapers to discover that the future constitutional arrangements for Iraq had been completely superseded by official British confirmation that Iran's Revolutionary Guards were behind the deadly attacks that have recently claimed the lives of eight British soldiers.
For the past two years it has been a Foreign Office mantra that not a word should be uttered that could in any way be construed as criticising the Iranian government. Having voiced his last-minute opposition to the invasion of Iraq, Mr Straw had taken it upon himself to find a "negotiated solution" to the West's stand-off with Teheran over its clandestine nuclear programme as an alternative to military confrontation.
Indeed, when The Sunday Telegraph two weeks ago revealed that agents working for the Revolutionary Guards had linked up with the Iraqi groups responsible for the attacks on British troops, the Foreign Office continued to insist that there was no firm evidence.
But now the cat is out of the bag. Not realising the sensitivity that Mr Straw attaches to Britain's dealings with Teheran, the unfortunate diplomat unwittingly strayed from his referendum brief and started laying into the Iranians with a gusto not seen in the British diplomatic service for decades. The Iranians, said the diplomat, were colluding with Sunni Muslim insurgent groups in southern Iraq. They were providing them with deadly terrorist technology that has been perfected by the Iranian-funded Hizbollah militia in southern Lebanon against the Israeli army. And their motivation was to deter Britain from insisting that Teheran abandon its controversial nuclear programme. "It would be entirely natural that they would want to send a message 'don't mess with us'. It would not be outside the policy parameters of Teheran."
This is diplomat-speak for, if Britain wants to confront Iran over its nuclear weapons programme, then Iran feels entitled to blow up young British soldiers.
The off-message tone of the unnamed diplomat's comments sent shock-waves through the oak-panelled walls of the Foreign Office. "It was all very amusing," said one official. "For years diplomats have been under strict instructions not to say anything in public that might upset the Iranians. And then someone gives it to them straight between the eyes."
Perversely, this undiplomatic bout of straight-talking may turn out to have done Mr Straw and the Foreign Office an enormous favour. By baldly stating what the Iranians are really up to in southern Iraq, the diplomat has freed his employers from the obligation of persisting with the charade of constructive engagement with a regime whose only interest in construction appears to be directed at building an atom bomb.
The policy of kowtowing to the Iranians goes back a long way. It started in the late 1980s when Sir Geoffrey Howe, the then foreign secretary, attempted to establish a constructive dialogue with the mullahs in what proved a futile attempt to persuade Teheran to free British hostages in Lebanon. As part of this policy, the British government took the shameful decision to drop its claim that the Iranians had masterminded the Lockerbie bombing that killed 270 people in December 1988, even though British intelligence uncovered significant evidence of Iranian involvement.
Fast forward to 2005, and the British Government continues to play the supplicant while Iran continues to do as it pleases. For the past two years, Mr Straw and his French and German colleagues have argued that the best way to persuade the Iranians to give up their nuclear programme is to pursue a "negotiated solution". As the Foreign Secretary insisted earlier this year, it was "inconceivable" that the US and Britain would take military action against Teheran.
Mr Straw's pacifist tendencies were music to the mullahs' ears, so much so that they expressed their gratitude by breaking the seals at the Isfahan nuclear processing plant and resumed their uranium enrichment programme. This action alone should have convinced the European negotiators to activate their long-standing threat to report Iran to the Security Council for its persistent failure to cooperate with the requirements of the International Atomic Energy Agency, the UN's nuclear watchdog body.
But that was far too confrontational for Foreign Office sensitivities and, at the request of Mohammed ElBaradei, the head of the IAEA, the Europeans gave Iran one last chance to comply. That was in July. Since then, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the new Iranian president, has gone out of his way to humiliate both the Europeans and the IAEA.
When Ahmadinejad addressed the UN general assembly last month, far from offering a compromise on the nuclear issue, he laid into the US and its allies, including Britain, accusing them of sponsoring terrorism. Mr Straw's response? To reassure the Iranians that the crisis between Iran and the West would "not be resolved by military means, let's be clear about that". And even when the IAEA finally agreed to refer Iran to the security council, the timing and manner of reporting Iran was deliberately left open "to allow room for more negotiation", as one IAEA official explained.
Mr ElBaradei's disinclination to make Iran fulfil its international obligations is, of course, one of the reasons that he has been awarded the Nobel peace prize, a decision that will have the mullahs falling about with laughter in Teheran this weekend. (I do believe this was sarcasm :shocked: )This, after all, was the same ElBaradei who said he had no evidence that Libya was building an atom bomb until Colonel Gaddafi saw the light after the Iraq war and publicly renounced his nuclear weapons programme.
Certainly, the longer the West prevaricates over Iran, the more inclined the Iranians are to think they can get their way by resorting to the tactics of the bully. The Iranians clearly do not share Mr Straw's aversion to military action: the moment we try to call them to account, they kill and maim our soldiers in southern Iraq.
With the help of last week's unscripted remarks by that diplomat, Britain and its European allies should face up to the reality of dealing with modern Iran and accept that their policy of appeasement towards the mullahs now lies in shreds.
