The Iranian threat

Noam Chomsky

The dire threat of Iran is widely recognized to be the most serious foreign policy crisis facing the Obama administration. General David Petraeus informed the Senate Committee on Armed Services in March 2010 that “the Iranian regime is the primary state-level threat to stability” in the U.S. Central Command area of responsibility, the Middle East and Central Asia, the primary region of U.S. global concerns. The term “stability” here has its usual technical meaning: firmly under U.S. control.

“They are gearing up totally for the destruction of Iran,” according to Dan Plesch, director of the Center for International Studies and Diplomacy at the University of London. “U.S. bombers and long range missiles are ready today to destroy 10,000 targets in Iran in a few hours,” he said. “The firepower of U.S. forces has quadrupled since 2003,” accelerating under President Obama.

The increasing threats of military action against Iran are, of course, in violation of the United Nations Charter, and in specific violation of Security Council Resolution 1887 of September 2009, which reaffirmed the call to all states to resolve disputes related to nuclear issues peacefully.

Some analysts, who seem to be taken seriously, describe the Iranian threat in apocalyptic terms. Amitai Etzioni warns that “the U.S. will have to confront Iran or give up the Middle East,” no less, because a regional alliance might take shape independent of the United States. In the U.S. army journal Military Review, Etzioni urges a U.S. attack that targets not only Iran’s nuclear facilities, but also its non-nuclear military assets, including infrastructure — meaning the civilian society.

What exactly is the Iranian threat? An authoritative answer is provided by military and intelligence reports to Congress in April 2010. What concerns the military and intelligence assessments is an Iranian threat to the region and the world that is not military. Iran’s military spending is “relatively low compared to the rest of the region,” and of course minuscule as compared to the United States. Iranian military doctrine is strictly “defensive, designed to slow an invasion and force a diplomatic solution to hostilities.” Iran has only “a limited capability to project force beyond its borders.” With regard to the nuclear option, “Iran’s nuclear program and its willingness to keep open the possibility of developing nuclear weapons is a central part of its deterrent strategy.”

But Iran’s threat goes beyond deterrence. It is also seeking to expand its influence. Iran’s “current five-year plan seeks to expand bilateral, regional and international relations, strengthen Iran’s ties with friendly states, and enhance its defense capabilities. Commensurate with that plan, Iran is seeking to increase its stature by countering U.S. influence and expanding ties with regional actors while advocating Islamic solidarity.”

In short, Iran is seeking to “destabilize” the region, in the technical sense of the term used by Petraeus, who is now Director of the Central Intelligence Agency. In the official doublespeak, U.S. invasion and military occupation of Iran’s neighbors is “stabilization,” while Iran’s efforts to extend its influence in neighboring countries is “destabilization,” considered an illegitimate exercise of sovereignty that interferes with U.S. plans for global domination.

Specifically, it threatens U.S. control of Middle East energy resources, a high priority of planners since World War II. As the late U.S. diplomat Adolph Berle advised, expressing a common understanding, control of these resources yields “substantial control of the world.”

No sane person wants Iran — or anyone — to develop nuclear weapons. One obvious way to mitigate or eliminate this threat is to establish a nuclear weapons-free zone (NWFZ) in the Middle East. That issue arose again in May 2010 at the review conference on the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty at United Nations headquarters. Egypt, as chair of the 118 nations of the Non-Aligned Movement, proposed that the conference back a plan calling for the start of negotiations in 2011 on a Middle East NWFZ, as had been agreed by the West, including the U.S., at the 1995 NPT review conference.

But Washington holds to a double standard, still formally agreeing but insisting that Israel be exempted, and has given no hint of allowing such provisions to apply to itself. Washington insisted that no proposal can be accepted that calls for Israel’s nuclear program to be placed under the auspices of the IAEA or that calls on signers of the NPT, specifically Washington, to release information about “Israeli nuclear facilities and activities, including information pertaining to previous nuclear transfers to Israel.”

President Obama’s technique of evasion is to adopt Israel’s position that any such proposal must be conditional on a comprehensive peace settlement, which the U.S. can delay indefinitely, as it has been doing for 35 years with rare and temporary exceptions.

Obama’s rhetorical commitment to non-proliferation has received much praise, even a Nobel Peace Prize. As often, however, rhetoric and actions are misaligned, in fact are in direct contradiction in this case. Instead of taking practical steps toward reducing the truly dire threat of nuclear weapons proliferation, the U.S. is taking major steps toward reinforcing its control of the vital Middle East oil-producing regions, by violence if other means do not suffice.

That is understandable under prevailing imperial doctrine, however grim the consequences — yet another illustration of “the savage injustice of the Europeans” that Adam Smith deplored in 1776, with the command center since shifted to their imperial settlement across the seas.

Noam Chomsky is a professor emeritus in the Department of Linguistics & Philosophy at MIT, where he has worked for over 50 years. He is an activist known for his critiques of U.S. foreign policy and contemporary capitalism. Chomsky is the author of over 100 books. This article is edited from Al Jazeera, November 24, 2011, and reprinted in PeaceMeal, Nov/December 2011.

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.)