Haaretz
Tevet 26, 5767
My latest Slate article (published just before
the weekend) deals with the aftermath of President Bush's speech, and asks
whether it amounted to a declaration of war against Iran. You can read the
piece in full here, or just a couple of
paragraphs here:
Sen. Joe Biden, D-Del., spotted it. At the end of
the Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing with Secretary of State
Condoleezza Rice, Biden looked sternly at the secretary and made one last
point: "If the president concluded he had to invade Iran ... or Syria in
pursuit of these networks, I believe the present authorization granted the
president to use force in Iraq does not cover that and he does need
congressional authority to do that ... I just want to set that marker."
So, the marker was set, but on the ground, events were already
moving ahead of it. On Thursday, U.S. forces raided Iranian targets in
Irbil, Iraq, and detained five Iranian officials. As he mentioned in
Wednesday night's speech, President Bush has ordered a second aircraft
carrier, along with its support ships, to the Gulf. "Succeeding in Iraq
also requires defending its territorial integrity and stabilizing the
region in the face of extremist challenges," said the president. "This
begins with addressing Iran and Syria."
No doubt old comparisons
will soon be made: If Bush was once Lyndon Johnson and Iraq Vietnam, the
president will now become Richard Nixon and Iran will serve as neighboring
Cambodia. "Some of us remember 1970, Madam Secretary," Sen. Chuck Hagel,
R-Neb., told Rice. "And that was Cambodia, and when our government lied to
the American people and said we didn't cross the border going into
Cambodia, in fact we did."
Some of the reasons for escalation are
strikingly similar: supply routes, material support, insurgency
sanctuaries. It's a tempting comparison. But it is also misleading, as the
president recognized in his speech when he declared, "We will work with
others to prevent Iran from gaining nuclear weapons and dominating the
region." Cambodia never tried to acquire nuclear weapons, nor did it
pursue regional dominance.
National Intelligence Director John D.
Negroponte expressed his concern during a Senate Intelligence Committee
hearing Thursday: "Iran's influence is rising in ways that go beyond the
menace of its nuclear program," he said. If threatened, it might retaliate
with terror attacks - with the help of its ally Hezbollah - "against U.S.
interests." The rocket attack on the U.S. Embassy in Greece Friday morning
serves as a sobering reminder of the many options terrorist organizations
can quite easily pursue.
"The Iranians need to know, and the
Syrians need to know," said Rice in yesterday's hearing, "that the United
States is not finding it acceptable and is not going to simply tolerate
their activities to try and harm our forces or to destabilize Iraq." This
drops the ball, yet again, on the Iranian side of the court. It is high
noon: If Tehran doesn't stop its nefarious activities - and assuming
Washington doesn't go back on its pledge to "not tolerate" - someone,
somewhere, is going to pull the trigger.