Chapter One: NOAM CHOMSKY
U.S. War with Iran: Covert and Overt
Part One
May 30, 2019
Let’s talk about Iran in the context U.S. foreign policy following World War II. Washington laid out its Grand Area Strategy, and Iran took on enormous significance because of its oil wealth.
Oil wealth and strategic position. It was taken for granted in the Grand Area Strategy planning that the United States would dominate the Middle East—what Eisenhower called the “strategically most important part of the world,” a material prize without any analogue.
The basic idea of the early stage of the Grand Strategy and the early stages of World War II were that the U.S. would take over what they called the Grand Area, of course, the Western Hemisphere, the former British Empire, and the Far East. The U.S. assumed that Germany would probably win the war, so there would be two major powers, a Germany-based power with a lot of Eurasia, and the United States with this Grand Area. By the time it was clear that the Russians would defeat Germany, after Stalingrad and then the great tank battle in Kursk, the planning was modified, and the idea was that the U.S. control of the Grand Area would extend to as much of Eurasia as possible, and include of course Middle East oil resources.
There was a conflict over Iran right at the end of the Second World War. The Russians supported a separatist movement in the north. The British, of course, controlled it, and they wanted to maintain control. The Russians were essentially expelled. Iran was a client state and under the control of Britain. There was, however, a nationalist movement, and the Iranian leader, Mohammad Mossadegh, led a campaign to nationalize Iranian oil.
The British, obviously, didn’t want that. They tried to stop this development, but they were in their post-war straits and were unable to do it. They called in the U.S., which basically took the prime role in implementing a military coup that deposed the parliamentary regime and installed the shah, who was a loyal client.
As long as the shah remained in power, Iran remained one of three pillars of U.S. control of the Middle East. The second pillar was Israel, with which the shah had very close relations. The shah’s relations with Israel were not formal, because theoretically the Islamic states were opposed to Israel. Nevertheless, relations were extremely close, and were revealed in detail after the shah fell. The third pillar was Saudi Arabia, so there was a tacit alliance between Iran and Israel, and even more so between Israel and Saudi Arabia, under the aegis of the United States.
In 1979, the shah was overthrown. At first the U.S. considered impelling a military coup that would restore the shah’s regime. That didn’t work. Then came the hostage crisis. Shortly after, under Saddam Hussein, Iraq invaded Iran. The U.S. strongly supported Iraq’s invasion of Iran, and even directly intervened to protect Iraqi shipping in the Gulf. A U.S. missile cruiser shot down a civilian Iranian airliner in commercial air space, killing 290 people. It was a very murderous war. Saddam was using chemical weapons. The U.S. pretended not to know about it, in fact, tried to blame Iran for it. U.S. intervention pretty much convinced the Iranians, if not to capitulate, then to accept an arrangement far less than they hoped for. Eventually there was a peace agreement.
The United States, under the first Bush, immediately turned to severe threats and sanctions against Iran. The Bush administration invited Iraqi nuclear engineers to the U.S. for advanced training in nuclear weapons production, which, of course, was a serious threat to Iran.
It’s ironic that when Iran was a loyal client state under the shah in the 1970s, the shah and other high Iranian officials made it very clear that they were working to develop nuclear weapons. At that time Henry Kissinger, Donald Rumsfeld, and Dick Cheney were pressuring American universities, primarily MIT, to bring Iranian nuclear engineers to the U.S. for training, though, of course, they knew they were developing nuclear weapons. When Kissinger was later asked why he had supported Iranian nuclear weapons development when the shah was in power, he said, very simply, “They were an ally then.”
The sanctions against Iran got harsher and more intense. There were negotiations about dealing with the Iranian nuclear programs. According to U.S. intelligence, after 2003 there was no evidence that Iran had nuclear weapons programs, but they were probably developing what’s called a nuclear capability, which many countries have, that is, the capacity to produce nuclear weapons if the occasion arises. In 2015, the U.S and Iran finally agreed to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action—informally called the Iran Nuclear Deal.
Since then, according to U.S. intelligence, Iran has completely lived up to their side of the agreement. There is no indication of any Iranian violation. Despite this, the Trump administration pulled out of the agreement and has sharply escalated U.S. sanctions against Iran. Now there is a new pretext: It’s not nuclear weapons; it’s that Iran is meddling in the region.
Unlike the United States
Or every other country. In fact, what they’re saying is that Iran is attempting to extend its influence in the region. Iran must become what Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has called a “normal country,” like us, Israel, and others, and never try to expand its influence. Essentially, Trump has been saying to Iran: Just capitulate. Pompeo has said that U.S. sanctions are designed to reduce Iranian oil exports to zero, and that the U.S. has extraterritorial influence: it threatens other countries to either capitulate to U.S. sanctions or be excluded from world financial markets, which are dominated by the United States. So the U.S., as the world’s leading rogue state, enforces its own unilateral decisions on others, thanks to its power. While serving as national security advisor, John Bolton wanted to bomb Iran. My speculation is that the Trump regime will try to keep Iran off balance and intimidated—and to intimidate others—so that they don’t try to interfere with U.S. sanctions.
We have absolutely zero right to impose any sanctions on Iran. None. It’s taken for granted in all discussion that somehow this is legitimate. There is absolutely no basis for that.
But also, the tensions can easily blow up. Anything could happen. A U.S. ship in the Gulf could hit a mine. Some commander might say, “Okay, let’s retaliate against an Iranian installation,” and then an Iranian ship could shoot a missile. And you’re off and running. So it could blow up.
Meanwhile, there are horrible effects all over the place, the worst in Yemen, where our client, Saudi Arabia, with strong U.S. support—arms, intelligence—is in fact creating what the U.N. has described as “the worst humanitarian crisis in the world.” What’s happening is pretty clear, it’s really not controversial.
If there is a confrontation with Iran, the first victim will most likely be Lebanon, which could be simply wiped out. As soon as there’s any threat of war, Israel will be unwilling to face the danger of Hezbollah’s missiles, which are probably scattered all around Lebanon by now. So it’s very likely that the first step prior to direct conflict with Iran would be essentially to wipe out Lebanon, or something like it.
And those missiles in Lebanon are from Iran.
They come from Iran, yes.
So what is Iran’s strategy in the region? You hear this term, the “Shi’a arc,” referring to the Shi’a population in Iraq, Bahrain, Lebanon, and Syria.
The Shi’a arc is a Jordanian concoction. Of course, Iran, like every other power, is trying to extend its influence. It’s doing this mostly in Shi’a areas, naturally. Iran is a Shi’ite state. In Lebanon it seems that the Shi’ite population is the largest of the sectarian groups. We don’t have detailed records because they can’t take a census—it would break down the fragile relationships that exist there in the sectarian system.
The Shi’ite population has a political representative, Hezbollah, which is in the Lebanese parliament. Hezbollah developed as a guerilla force when Israel was occupying southern Lebanon after its 1982 invasion. This was in violation of U.N. orders, but Israel pretty much stayed there, in part through a proxy army. Hezbollah eventually drove Israel out. From the U.S. perspective, that turned them into a “terrorist force:” You’re not allowed to drive out the invading army of a client state.
Since then Hezbollah has served Iranian interests. It has sent fighters to Syria who are a large part of the support for the Assad government. Technically, that’s quite legal. Assad’s regime was the recognized government. It’s a rotten government, so on moral grounds you shouldn’t do it. But you can’t say, on legal grounds, that you shouldn’t support Assad. The U.S. was openly trying to overthrow the government. That’s not a secret.
Finally, it became clear that the Assad government would maintain control of Syria. There are a few pockets still left unresolved, the Kurdish areas and others, but Assad pretty much won the war, which means that Russia and Iran will have dominant roles in Syria.
In Iraq there was a Sunni dictatorship under Saddam Hussein amid a Shi’ite majority. The U.S. invasion destroyed the Sunni dictatorship, and the Shi’a population gained a substantial role. In effect, the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq handed the country over to Iran.
So, for example, when ISIS was close to conquering Iraq, it was the Shi’ite militias that drove them back, with Iranian support. Now they have a strong role in the government. In the U.S., this is considered Iranian meddling. But I think Iran’s strategy is pretty straightforward. It’s to expand their influence in the region as much as possible.
As far as their military posture is concerned, I don’t see any reason to question the analysis of U.S. intelligence agencies. It seems accurate. In their presentations to the U.S. Congress, they cite Iran’s very low military expenditures by the standards of the region, expenditures which are dwarfed by countries such as the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, and Israel. Iran’s military doctrine is essentially defensive, designed to deter an invasion long enough for diplomatic efforts to be initiated. According to U.S. intelligence, if the Iranians have a nuclear weapons program, it would be part of their deterrent strategy.
That’s the real Iranian threat. It has a deterrent strategy, what the U.S. State Department calls “successful defiance.”[1] For states that want to be free to rampage in the Middle East, deterrence is an existential threat. You don’t want to be deterred. The U.S. and Israel want to be able to do what they would like, free to act forcefully in the region without any deterrent.
And it seems another component may be the threat of a good example.
There’s also that. But I don’t think that’s true in the case of Iran. The Iran government is miserable—a threat to its own people. I think that’s fair enough to say. Cuba was quite different. Looking back at declassified internal documents from the State Department in the early 1960s, there was great concern that, as Arthur Schlesinger, Kennedy’s close adviser, particularly on Latin American affairs, said, “The problem with Cuba is the Castro idea of taking matters into your own hands, which has great appeal to others in the region who are suffering from the same circumstances as Cuba was under the U.S.-backed Batista regime.”
That’s dangerous. The idea that people have the right to take things into their own hands and separate themselves from U.S. domination is dangerous and unacceptable. That’s successful defiance.
Another theme that plays out after 1945 is Washington’s resistance to independent nationalism.
Yes, but that’s automatic for a hegemonic power. The same was the case when Britain and France were running most of the world. The Washington Consensus doesn’t tolerate independent nationalism. That was made quite explicit after the Second World War. The first concern of the U.S. was to ensure that the Western Hemisphere was totally under its control.
In February 1945, the U.S. called a hemispheric conference in Chapultepec, Mexico. The main theme of the conference was to end any kind of “economic nationalism.” That was the phrase that was used. The State Department internally warned that Latin American countries were “infected”—I’m virtually quoting now—“by the idea of a new nationalism,” which meant that the people of the country wanted to be the first beneficiaries of their country’s resources. That would be intolerable to any empire. The first beneficiaries must be U.S. investors. Any philosophy espousing new nationalism must be crushed. The Chapultepec conference of 1945 warned all present that economic nationalism would not be tolerated.
There is one unmentioned exception to the rules. The United States is permitted to follow policies of economic nationalism. The U.S. poured massive government resources into what became the high-tech economy of the future: computers, the internet, and so on. U.S. economic nationalism is the usual exception. But for the others, they cannot succumb to the idea that the first beneficiaries of a country’s resources should be the people of that country.
This is framed in all sorts of nice rhetoric about free markets and so on and so forth, but the meaning is quite explicit.
You recently said that any concern about the issue of Iranian weapons of mass destruction (WMD) could be resolved by heeding Iran’s call to establish a WMDF-free zone in the Middle East. Almost no one knows about this because it’s barely—if ever—reported in the media.
It’s not a secret. And it’s not just Iran’s call.
The proposal for a nuclear-weapons-free zone in the Middle East and extended to a WMD-free zone originated from the Arab states. Egypt and others initiated that back in the early 1990s. Several such zones have been established in other parts of the world. Look at them. They are not in effect because the U.S. has not accepted them. But they’re theoretically there. A WMD-free zone in the Middle East would be extremely important.
Iran and Arab states, the nonaligned countries, the G-77—by now that’s about 130 countries—have all pushed for this for a long time. Europe, with the exception of England, tacitly supports it. In fact, there is almost total global support for it, adding to it an inspection regime of a kind that already exists in Iran. It would eliminate concern over nuclear weapons and weapons of mass destruction.
There’s only one problem: The U.S. won’t allow it. The issue comes up frequently at the review sessions of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, the most recent of which was in 2015. President Obama blocked it. And everybody knows why. If you look at the arms-control journals or professional journals, they’re all quite open about it, because it’s obvious. If there were such an agreement, Israel’s nuclear weapons would come under international inspection. The U.S. would be compelled to formally acknowledge that Israel has nuclear weapons. Everybody knows that it does, but you’re not allowed to formally acknowledge it. Why? Because under U.S. law, if you formally acknowledge it, U.S. aid to Israel would have to terminate. It would also mean that Israel’s weapons would have to be inspected, not just nuclear arms, but biological and chemical weapons as well. That’s intolerable, so we can’t allow that. Therefore, we can’t move towards a WMD-free zone, which would end the problem.
The U.S. has shown a special commitment to this, along with Britain. When both countries were planning their invasion of Iraq, they sought desperately to find some legal cover for it so it wouldn’t look like direct aggression. They appealed to a 1991 U.N. Security Council resolution that called on Saddam Hussein to end his nuclear weapons programs, which in fact he had done. But the pretext was he hadn’t done it and had violated that resolution; therefore, that was supposed to give some legitimacy to the invasion.
Article 14 of the U.N. resolution commits its signers, including the U.S. and Britain, to work for a nuclear-weapons-free zone in the Middle East. So the U.S. and Britain have a unique responsibility to do this. Try to find any discussion of this.
The militaristic nature of U.S. foreign policy can bring big paydays to many companies. For example, Lee Fang, writing in The Intercept, reports, “Large weapons manufacturers,” like Lockheed Martin and Raytheon, “have told their investors that escalating conflict with Iran could be good for business.”
I don’t think it’s the major factor, but it certainly is a factor. It’s what’s called “good for the economy” if you can produce material goods that you can sell to other countries. The U.S. is preeminent in military force. That’s its real comparative advantage. Other countries can produce computers and TVs, but the United States is the largest arms exporter. Its military budget overwhelms anything in the rest of the world. It’s almost as large as the rest of the world’s military budgets combined. The increase in the U.S. military budget under Trump is greater than the entire Russian military budget. China is way behind. And the United States is way more technologically advanced in military hardware. So that’s its comparative advantage, and I think its primary focus has been ensuring that the world remains pretty much under its control.
I think Trump’s Iran policy is largely done for domestic purposes. If the Trump strategists are thinking clearly—and I assume they are—the best way to approach the 2020 election is to concoct major threats all over: immigrants from Central America coming here to commit genocide against Americans, Iran about to conquer the world, China doing this and that. And then our bold leader with the orange hair, the one person who is capable of defending us from all of these terrible threats, not like these women who won’t know how to do anything, or sleepy Joe, or crazy Bernie. That’s the best way to move into an election. That means maintaining tensions, but not intending to actually go to war.
[1] This is the term the State Department used in the early 1960s to explain why the U.S. cannot tolerate the Castro regime—because of its “successful defiance” of the United States.
Les mer
