Bush & Iran

Observations on Bush's 2007 State of the Union as watched in Cairo:

Bush shifted his Middle East focus away from Iraq to Iran. The speech issued a strong renewal of his de facto declaration of war on the Islamic regime in Tehran. Readers will recall Bush's post-9/11 "axis of evil" SOTU speech in 2002 that spoke of Iraq, North Korea and Iran "and their terrorist allies...arming to threaten the peace of the world...by seeking weapons of mass destruction." The President said that "in any of these cases, the price of indifference would be catastrophic." Fourteen months later, Bush initiated the war in Iraq that toppled Saddam's regime. As for South Korea, the U.S. is now "pursuing intensive diplomacy," as Bush said last night. But Iran remains in Bush's cross-hairs. Starting off saying that "to win the war on terror we must take the fight to the enemy," Bush was at pains to explain that Al Qaeda's Sunni extremists "are just one camp in the Islamist radical movement." He said "it has also become clear that we face an escalating danger from Shia extremists...determined to dominate the Middle East [and] known to take direction from the regime in Iran."

Bush didn't seem inclined to actually attack Iran. Despite the tough talk, Bush didn't provide many details about his strategy to "take the fight to the enemy." He talked about removing "the conditions that inspire blind hatred" behind terrorism. He said U.S. troops needed to remain in Baghdad to prevent a war involving Iranian-backed "Shia extremists" that "could spill out across the country [drawing] the entire region...into conflict." He talked about working with Arab states to support the Iraqi government and with the U.N. to prevent Iran from getting nuclear weapons. No threats or promises of U.S. military action, however, as when Bush categorically warned in his 2003 SOTU that the U.S. "will lead a coalition to disarm [Saddam].

Bush seemed confused about how to handle Iran. That may help explain why he is not inclined to start a war with Tehran just yet. In fairness to Bush, the situation is confusing and complex. A little more than a month ago, in an effort to calm the crisis in Iraq, Bush was actually hosting at the White House Abdul Aziz Hakim, leader of what is arguably the most powerful armed Iraqi Shiite faction, which has received strong backing for decades from--you guessed it--the Islamic Republic of Iran. (Bush didn't mention, of course, the irony that it was his destruction of Saddam's secular, militaristic, Sunni regime, which the U.S. long used as a bulwark against Iran, that nicely facilitated the "escalating danger" he now sees from the Shiite Islamic Republic.) Bush's speech also suggests that somehow Iran is working toward chaos in Iraq. No doubt Iran wants to influence events there, perhaps even indirectly control the country. But few experts believe that Iran wants chaos in Iraq or that it would serve Iran's interests. For a start, an ethnic breakup of Iraq would threaten to spill over and destabilize Iran's own ethnic mosaic. Bush's simplistic equating of Iran's regime with Al Qaeda also either showed an ignorance of Middle East politics or reflected a propaganda effort to demonize Iran. To what end? If he is not going to adopt "intensive diplomacy" as he did with North Korea, what is holding up another U.S.-led "coalition to disarm," this time directed against the ayatullahs? Bush's confusion, apparently.

Bush stated an apparently new belief that terrorism has roots. In his 2002 SOTU, Bush referred to "enemies," "terrorist underworld," "terrorist cells," "terrorist training camps" and "terrorist parasites" opposed to "freedom." In the 2003 SOTU, Bush spoke about terrorism as "a man-made evil," "an ideology of power and domination," practiced by "shadowy terrorist networks," "a brutal dictator" and "outlaw regimes." But last night, he expressed a more nuanced understanding, referring to "the conditions that inspire blind hatred and drove 19 men to get onto airplanes and come to kill us." What conditions? Bush was a little vague, probably so as not to upset American allies. But he implied that the conditions included a lack of freedom and human rights in the Arab world. He's emphasized that before. He implied that another condition was the lack of a settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. That would be in line with what Arab leaders have long been stressing to Washington. Bush said the U.S. has a "diplomatic strategy...in the fight against extremism," adding four sentences later: "we're pursuing diplomacy to help bring peace to the Holy Land, and pursuing the establishment of a democratic Palestinian state..."

--By Scott MacLeod/Cairo