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Give credit to Bob Gates. The major theme for the press of the third WikiLeaks doc dump in six months is the breadth of closed-door enthusiasm for a U.S. military strike on Iran coming from Gulf Arab capitols. Yet here’s the defense secretary earlier this month, publicly warning about the consequences of any such thing. Those governments are positively freaked out about Iran’s conventional military strength; its missile capabilities; its support for terrorism; and its potential nuclear program; and throughout the documents, they want to borrow the U.S. military to take care of it. It can’t be pressure-free for Gates to tell them to trust the sanctions or to point out the negative implications of another regional war.
And it’s understandable for clients to ask the patron to deal with the threat next door. That’s why clients seek patrons. Something I’ll be monitoring WikiLeaks to see: did these same governments raise the Iran threat when discussing a prospective U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2002 with the Bush administration, or did the subsequent rise in Iranian regional influence only become vivid for them after the occupation began? In either case, it’s hard not to wonder if Gates’ successor will be as even-keeled as he’s been when it comes to Iran. (Juan Cole has a less charitable view.)
What do I mean “even-keeled”? As my boss Noah Shachtman reports, WikiLeaks also showed a far-reaching effort by the U.S. to monitor Iran’s covert missile purchases. And I’ll have something later today about a looming missile sale that became a massive behind-the-scenes geopolitical issue. There’s more than one way to deal with Iran; certainly not simply a bellicose way; though I suspect Steve Walt would consider the entire thrust of U.S. policy toward Iran to be coterminous with an eventual confrontation.
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Sanctions aren’t working if the North Koreans are supplying Iran with longer-range missiles that can reach Western Europe.
Prof Cole’s point appears to be that Gates is two-faced.* Which he might be, but which doesn’t gainsay your point. He does deserve credit for not caving to the bomb-Iran cabal.
*Gates probably IS two-faced, one public and one reserved for government-to-government tetes a tete (so to speak). It’s like saying that Lance or Alberto or Jan Ullrich probably uses EPO: Deplorable under most conditions but within the context of the Tour it’s nothing.
“That’s why clients seek patrons.”
Come on, you’re either deliberately twisting or misreading this situation. Clients seek patrons for protection, yes. But these fat cats were egging the US govt to attack Iran in a pre-emptive mode. It’s as if they’ve been wearing eye-shutters for the past ten years. I would like to think that rational Arab leaders would at the least understand the limitations of US “pre-emptive” strikes into Muslim countries, in particular when we’re overextended into Iraq and Afghanistan.
If the Arab states weren’t buying billions of dollars of military gear and didn’t have US/French/British bases all throughout, they MIGHT have a justification in asking us to take out Iran. But that’s not the case, is it? They have no justification thinking that Iran is going to attack them with conventional arms in an effort to expand the Persian empire over the Arab states. It’s ludicrious.