The U.S. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Martin Dempsey, has always cautioned against a go-it-alone approach, but he appeared to up the ante this week by saying Washington did not want to be blamed for any Israeli initiative.
"I don't want to be complicit if they (Israel) choose to do it," Dempsey was quoted as saying by Britain's Guardian newspaper on Friday, suggesting that he would view an Israeli attack as reprehensible or illegal.
Thanks to General Dempsey for making this point.
An attack on Iran, by Israel alone or by some U.S. led gang, would indeed be highly illegal. It would a war of aggression and thereby a supreme crime.
Most countries of this world would certainly point this out. The 120 members of the Non-Aligned Movement, which are currently holding a huge conference in Tehran, have given their unanimous backing to Iran's nuclear program:
[T]he final result of the Nonaligned Movement’s meeting, the biggest international gathering in Iran since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, amounted to the strongest expression of support for Iran’s nuclear energy rights in its showdown with the West. The unanimous backing of the final document undercut the American argument that Iran was an isolated outlier nation.
The Tehran Declaration document not only emphasizes Iran’s right to peaceful nuclear energy but acknowledges the right to ownership of a full nuclear fuel cycle, which means uranium enrichment — a matter of deep dispute.
There is no "deep dispute" about Iran's right to a full nuclear fuel cycle. The wide majority of the countries in this world stand fully behind that. Only the U.S. and a handful of its allies see this different.
As we said the isolation of Iran is a myth.
With the backing of all these countries Iran will also keep enough economic connections to evade any of the unilateral sanctions the U.S. and its stooges try to strong-arm against it. Indeed these sanctions are now incentives for the majority of states to permanently circumvent the global institutions the west has under control and is using against Iran.
When the global financial SWIFT system is used to prevent money transfers to Iran the countries who will keep working with Iran will create new systems. Once those are established SWIFT will never again have the standing it had before. Instead of buying Iranian oil in US dollars more and more countries will use other currencies. Once they have worked out how to do this they will never return to the dollar.
With the sanctions on Iran the U.S. and the west are hurting themselves. Therein lies a danger. In 2000 the sanctions on Iraq were on the verge of breaking down. The damage they did on the Iraqi population had become too visible. But instead of lowering the sanction regime or negotiate a peaceful outcome the U.S. attacked Iraq. A somewhat similar mechanism might come into play should the sanction regime on Iran, as can be expected, turn out to be ineffective while creating damage to the global role of the United States.
It is unlikely that the U.S. would then climb down. But an open attack on Iran, which even under attack can control the oil flow from the Gulf, carries, besides being completely illegal, too much economic risk. I find it therefore likely that U.S. will rather try something different to bring down the Iranian state. One not yet tried option would be to incite and support some violent ethnic insurgencies within Iran. The Azeris in the north, supported by an Israel friendly Azerbaijan, and the Balochs in the south east of Iran are prime candidates for such a scheme.
When that will turn out to not have the wished for effects all options may again be on the table.