The following piece is part of an ongoing series of OffTheBus reports by citizen policy experts critiquing different aspects of Campaign 08.
The problem with trying to determine if the U.S. actually is going to bomb Iran is that you can't get a straight answer from anyone.
Prior to the invasion of Iraq in 2003, President Bush constantly said he had not yet made a decision and all options were on the table. We since have learned that the decision to invade Iraq had been made for a long time. So, you can't ask the Bush administration.
You can't ask mainstream media or the political pundits. They don't like being asked questions. They like to do the asking and then tell you what the answers mean, even when they really don't understand the issue.
You also can't really ask the candidates. Only Sen. Barack Obama has specifically put the president on notice not to bomb Iran. Speaking in Clinton, Iowa, in September, he said, "George Bush and Dick Cheney must hear loud and clear from the American people and the Congress: You do not have our support, and you do not have our authorization, to launch another war."
Sen. Hillary Clinton, again appearing to cover all bets, has gone on record as supporting the Kyl-Lieberman Resolution, labeling the Iranian Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist organization, which would give Bush authority to attack IRG camps in Iran, and, on the other hand, she has voiced support for Sen. James Webb's proposed legislation requiring Bush to seek Congressional approval prior to any attack on Iran.
Other Democrats have been vague in their responses because they feel they have to appear strong on foreign affairs and that they are considering all alternatives or because they have little foreign policy experience and don't want to sound stupid in public.
Some Republican candidates, however, don't seem to fear sounding stupid. GOP pack leader Mitt Romney seems convinced that we are facing the threat of not just the jihadists but their quest to impose a global Islamic caliphate across the entire world. This so worries him that he devoted an issues section on his web site to the subject. We're not going to have to bomb just Iran - we may have to be ready to bomb the entire Muslim world.
Rudy Giuliani has not specifically said he would advocate bombing Iran. He lets his new national security and foreign affairs policy expert, one of the neocon founding fathers, Norman Podhoretz, do that for him. Podhoretz said if Bush bombs Iran, "as I hope and pray he will," it will cause increased anti-American feelings throughout the world but Middle Eastern and European countries secretly will applaud the action. Much like how we were secretly greeted with flowers in Baghdad. Podhoretz also fears the threat of not just terrorists but of Islamofascists as well. They're everywhere, don't you know, and they hate us for our freedom and want to chop our heads off. So much for finding some ground for diplomacy so, for Podhoretz, bombing is the only answer.
So, where do you go for honest answers on whether the U.S. will bomb Iran or seek "regime change" there, to free the Iranian people from despotic mullahs and give them freedom and prosperity, as we did in Iraq, and to save Western civilization from nuclear holocaust?
Well, you really have to consult a map. Not just any map. You need a Middle East Oil and Gas map. Suddenly you see that it's not about freedom, democracy or elections. It's all about the oil. It's about U.S. oil security in a world of increased demand and declining resources. It's also not just about Middle East oil. It's also about Caspian Sea oil.
Prior to the invasion of Iraq, after the Gulf War of 1990-91, Saddam was granting oil leases to China, Russia, Germany and France, but not the U.S. He also decided to stop using the U.S. dollar as a base hard currency for trading in oil and shifted to the Euro.
With the invasion, the U.S. not only had some control over the entire Persian Gulf region's oil production, but had military forces stationed there to protect both production and shipping. The single piece missing from the puzzle, however, is Iran.
We used to control Iran, when we overthrew the freely elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh in 1953 and imposed a cruel dictator, Shah Reza Pahlavi, in his place until the Iranian revolution of 1979. We've wanted it back ever since.
With regime change in Iran, the U.S. would have some political or military control over all countries bordering the Persian Gulf. Our oil would be safe.
But, looking a little farther north on the map, we have the Caspian Sea, which is supposed to become a large source of oil and gas as it is developed over the next decade. And, who controls that oil and gas, you ask. Why, we do.
Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the U.S. has pumped billions into the Caspian area in the form of economic and military aid. We have a U.S. military presence in the Ukraine, Georgia,
Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and elsewhere. That, effectively, rings the Caspian Sea, with the exception of a small Russian section on the northwest coast.
In order to secure the entire petroleum-rich region of the Caspian Sea and Persian Gulf, the U.S. only needs to fill in that missing puzzle piece of Iran, a large puzzle piece, one that contains the world's fourth largest known oil and gas reserves.
The foreign policy concern here, one that is far more serious than terrorism, jihadists, Islamofascism, or al Qaeda, is also a concern that few are willing to openly discuss. It is that if the U.S. doesn't exercise influence over this area, the entire region could fall under the influence of Russia and China. If Russia and China are in control or the world's largest oil and gas region, Europe soon would follow to their side and the world would no longer need to hold hard currency in U.S. dollars in order to buy and trade oil, it would switch to the Euro. Since the U.S. dollar already has fallen to 70 cents against the Euro, the U.S. economy would then collapse.
Bush seems to have an aversion to diplomacy, preferring to merely tell foreign leaders what they need to do to support U.S. interests, and, it appears that foreign policy considers it vital for Iran to be pulled back into the U.S. sphere of influence.
So, the question of whether the U.S. will bomb Iran, or somehow otherwise effect regime change in Iran, probably already has been made. The real question is how to devise a trigger that would be palatable to the American public.
Several balloons already have been floated. They include: Iran supports Iraqi insurgents who are killing U.S. soldiers; Iran is developing nuclear weapons that threaten Israel and the U.S.; Israel will strike Iranian nuclear facilities and the U.S. will be compelled to support its ally; and Iran will attack a U.S. warship in the Persian Gulf, sparking retaliation.
In any event, it appears that the decision to bomb Iran probably has been made. It also appears that there is little being done to stop it by the public, by the media, by Congress or by the various candidates for president in 2008.
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