Maybe Iran Supports Terrorists--And Your Point Is?

President George W. Bush has alleged numerous times that the Iranian government has directly aided and supplied anti-American terrorists working in Iraq. Many have argued that this is part of an attempt to lay the ground for war with Iran and justify his policy of ordering United States soldiers to kill "Iranian agents" in Iraq--a loose categorization that could include diplomats as well as paramilitary forces. But the Bush administration has not yet produced convincing evidence of Iranian support for terrorists. Given Iran's historical support for terrorist groups such as Hezbollah and Hamas, the possibility that Tehran is supplying Iraqi terrorists cannot be ruled out. But using this support as a pretext for war is both hypocritical and irrational.

It is hypocritical because it has been (and still is) a tenet of American foreign policy to back violent anti-Iranian groups. The anti-Iranian Marxist terror group Mujahideen E-Khalq (MEK) enjoys prominent backing from Washington. In the 1980s they were the proxy warriors employed by Saddam and, by extension, his American backers against Iran. In addition to being a fanatical group of terrorists, Human Rights Watch has categorized them as a "cult." Though classified by the State Department as a terror group, MEK has long had the ear of the Washington establishment. They maintained a DC office until 2003 and when MEK came under attack by Air Force bombers in northern Iraq, 150 legislators signed a letter of support protesting the MEK's treatment.

Members of both parties also agitated in 2005 to have them removed from the State Department terror list The neoconservatives also love MEK: Richard Perle gave a speech at a 2004 MEK fundraiser (although he later claimed to have been duped, an unlikely explanation given the group's prominence on Capitol Hill); the Washington Institute for Near East Policy recommended in 2005 that Bush use them as an insurgent militia in Iran (a suggestion likely to be followed should America invade Iran); and in the same year Bush cited the MEK as a source for his claims about Iran's nuclear program.

The MEK is not the only guerrilla organization Washington is grooming as an auxiliary guerrilla force. The New Yorker's Seymour Hersh reported that Israeli and US military intelligence units are equipping and directing a Kurdish militant group called the Party for Free Life in Kurdistan (PJAK). PJAK's 3,000 troops in northern Iraq have killed over 120 Iranian soldiers in cross-border raids. Hersh noted that the Pentagon had given PJAK a list of targets within Iran and has intended to use them to foment insurrection in Southern Iran. Similar relationships with Azeri and Baluchi tribesmen within Iran have been established, and in the event of a war the Pentagon will call on them.

Support for terrorists--all terrorists--is morally bankrupt. But, unfortunately, it is a common "external balancing" strategy. There are few better ways to hobble adversaries whom one cannot strike directly than handing some money and ammunition to their bitter enemies. In the 1980s, the United States supplied weapons to Afghan guerrillas to bleed the superpower Soviets into submission--a necessity given fears that they would invade U.S. ally Pakistan or push on into the oil fields of the Middle East. The Soviets in turn backed many anti-American guerrillas and terrorists. It was also the strategy involved in the 1980s when Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush backed Saddam Hussein to act as a buffer against theocratic Iran. War by proxy has become the accepted means of states, especially nuclear-armed ones, to try to alter the balance of power.

Whether Iran is merely politically cultivating Iraq's militias or supplying them with weapons, it is responding to a hostile situation. Iran has been surrounded on all sides by hostile Western powers: two U.S. client states in Iraq and Afghanistan; NATO forces in Turkey; and American ally Israel, the greatest military power in the Middle East. In addition, America has backed three of Iran's enemies, MEK, PJAK, and Saddam Hussein.

Believing themselves at imminent risk of invasion, the Iranians are attempting to loosen American control of Iraq. The Iranians hope to turn Iraq into a client state that can be used as a buffer against American power, and so far they've largely been successful. The ruling Shiite government in Iraq and many of the Shiite militias have strong links to Iran. Members of the Iraqi government engage in warm diplomatic summits with Iran while the Bush administration threatens the Iranian government over their nuclear program.

The Iranian bluster on nuclear weapons may also be part of a larger "external balancing" strategy. After the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime, the U.S. Army did a survey of internal regime documents--the Iraqi Perspectives Project (IPP)--and discovered that Hussein had made a strenuous effort to project to Americans a false image of Iraqi possession of WMDs. The thinking behind it, the Army researchers reasoned, was that Hussein believed that America would not invade him if they believed he really had WMDs. He had paid attention to the American policy of deterrence and détente with the Soviet Union, as well as American diplomatic engagement with blustering, nuclear-weapon-coveting North Korea and concluded that the same would hold true with him. Iran's leadership has apparently come to the same conclusion. The IPP also determined that Hussein had directed a great deal of his bluster not at the United States but domestic audiences in an effort to preserve a strong public image.

Iran's nuclear program serves a similar purpose as Hussein's phony WMDs. As the New York Times reported, Iran's nuclear program has been marked by a lack of resources and comical incompetence. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's rantings distract (or try to distract) domestic audiences from his incredible mismanagement of Iran's domestic policy and the tyranny of his theocratic militarist regime.

What President Bush misunderstands by taking real or perceived Iranian support for insurgents as a potential justification for war is that provocation alone is not a justification for war--otherwise war merely becomes a tool for revenge. Nations rarely go to war to punish each other for real or perceived moral slights, but they often use those slights for ulterior purposes. In general, something as serious as war, especially unilateral war against a potent regional power, should only be undertaken as a necessity--when all other paths have failed, the state in question poses an unambiguous threat to another's security, and the gains to one's security by going to war outweigh the inherent risks. And in both Iraq and Iran's cases it clearly doesn't. An American attack on Iran would make the after-effects of Iraq look silly in comparison.

Tied down in Iraq with scarcely enough troops to even begin the task of invading and occupying a large country like Iran, the U.S. cannot coerce Tehran into ceasing its sponsorship of Shiite groups and its nuclear program. Carrying out bombing attacks would not stop the nuclear program--it would only set it back for a couple years. This is hardly the result that the United States should risk so much for.

Iran, on the other hand, has plenty of leverage over the United States. They could trigger a bloody uprising of their Shiite intermediaries in Iraq. Military analyst Patrick Lang notes that the American Army depends on a series of cumbersome supply lines stretching back to Kuwait--supply lines that could targeted by guerrillas should such a general uprising occur. Elite Revolutionary Guard units could be dispatched to sow havoc in Iraq. Iranian agents throughout the Gulf could attack oil facilities. Aid to Hezbollah could be stepped up, resulting in a bloody assault against US allies and interests in the gulf. The Straits of Hormuz could be closed, causing a massive increase in oil prices. The Iranians could withdraw from the Non-Proliferation Treaty and intensify their nuclear program. And, as international security specialist Paul Rogers notes, in a Middle East that is fast becoming divided between Shiites and Sunnis, Shiites all over the Mideast would view an attack against Iran as an attack on them.

Iran does not pose an existential threat to American security. The most they are prepared to do without provocation is use their Shiite agents to harass American efforts to build a client state in Iraq. In any case, building a prosperous and secure pro-American Iraqi state has become virtually impossible. Even if the Iranians were removed from the picture, the pressing problems that plague American troops in Iraq would be unchanged.

It is true, as many state, that the Iranians, especially Ahmadinejad, harbor a desire for Iran to become a Middle East great power. It is also true that the Iranians loathe Israel. But the Sunni countries in the region will never allow Iran to dominate the region, and an Iranian nuclear strike against nuclear-armed Israel would redefine the term "suicide bombing." There is little indication that the mullahs, who hold the real reins of power in Iran, have much interest in pursuing drastic actions that could lead to destabilization within Iran itself. They care more about maintaining their own power than playing Napoleon. As a former Iranian military man revealed in an interview with Forward magazine, the regime and the armed forces have become a "mafia" reveling in profitable graft and corruption.

Until very recently, the Bush administration has not put any effort into diplomacy with Iran, diplomacy that could resolve Iran's concerns about its own security. Instead, they've repeatedly threatened it in extremely bellicose language. In fact, in 2003, the Iranians under Mohammed Khatami offered the Bush Administration a comprehensive peace deal--they promised an intensive crackdown on Al-Qaeda terrorists hiding out in Iranian territory, submission to harsh International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspections, a halt in material support for Palestinian terrorist groups, joining with Egypt and Jordan in making peace with Israel in return for an Israeli drawback to pre-1967 borders. The only thing that they didn't offer was to reinstate the rule of the Shah. The Bush administration did not even respond. Now they are stuck with the Ahmadinejad regime, which certainly will not offer them a comparable diplomatic package.

Now that Iran's mullahs are in the process of reining in an increasingly weakened Ahmadinejad, negotiating with Iran has the most chance of ending the crisis, provided that the Bush administration negotiates in good faith. Yet despite the Bush administration's recent diplomatic overtures to Tehran, this isn't likely. Possessed of a quasi-religious mission to remake the Middle East, they are determined to war with Iran, no matter the cost.