IRAN

Mideast tension fueled primarily by Iran’s ambitions and the perceived US/Israeli response now commands center stage, world media. Our task at this center is to anticipate change in this region, change that may affect the security of the United States; that is, close the pattern ahead of most other observers. What follows is extracted from our June and December 2007 posts.

Clients were alerted November 2004 that Iran’s nuclear ambitions would become the key issue on Rice’s plate. Then in a sketch of May/06 we predicted the following: The International Atomic Energy Agency would continue to suffer from impotency, the same malady affecting its parent; Russia and China would remain squeamish, for the near term blocking any meaningful sanctions birthed by the Security Council and finally, that the US, the UK and a coalition would decide to impose sanctions outside the UN framework. One of these (we hoped) would be the blockage of gasoline imports.

It is far more effective for us to target Iran’s economy, to go on the offensive and undermine the Ahmadinejad government in that manner than to select the military option. This is directly out of Reagan’s book. The Iranian people become the proxy for (now pathetic) Western diplomacy. This is a radical change in approach - target societies and let them do the work for you. See our sketch of Feb/07 and that of Mar/07 for more on this process but it is not cosmic in dimension or complexity, does not take more than an hour or so away from the ball game to understand.
We recommended then the complete blockage of gasoline imports by the US Navy Fifth Fleet. Iran has no capabilities to stop us. The government would not survive the economic catastrophe. The blockade would be lifted when the new government adopted complete transparency in 1) abandoning their nuclear ambitions and 2) ceasing any complicity in Mid Eastern affairs, those of Iraq and Lebanon in particular. The Iranian people would see to that. Unfortunately there are some of our "allies" who disagree, Russia chief among these. In addition to selling Iran a $1 billion nuclear plant and being a major supplier of arms and aircraft, Russia was then, through a private banking conglomerate (Alfa Group) looking to invest $300 million to develop Iran’s infant cellular-phone industry. Being who they are the Russians are naturally anxious to water down any sanction which may curtail this activity.

The release of the National Intelligence Estimate, 2007, temporarily conspired to dislodge the Iranian nuclear threat from center stage. The NIE’s facile conclusions, actually a coup engineered by ex-State officials who have been chronic appeasers, had to be accepted by the Bush administration because if not the report would have been leaked and the administration would have been accused of a cover up.Very little had changed. Our view Dec/07 was that Iran has simply delayed warhead production so it can buy time for the more difficult task of enriching uranium. That’s the hard part. Once you have the fuel any fool knows you can make the bomb in months.

Finally, we noted that 1) although we and others had been a paladin for tough sanctions all along, the release of the NIE gave both Russia and China the excuse to back away from meaningful sanctions, and 2) that this piece of dagger diplomacy made an Israeli attack even more likely.

And that is exactly what has transpired.

Robert Craven