Stardate 20020204.1359

(On Screen): The Vice President of Iraq says that if the US doesn't back down on its policies, then it will face an attack which will make September 11 look small.

"Since Sept. 11, they (Americans) have further strengthened the course that led to the events in New York and Washington, their policies have become even more dirty," Ramadan said. "If things continue like this, I believe that America will draw an even stronger backfire. Something more terrible than Sept. 11 will happen."

"It would be a very, very tough response," he added. "American despotism concerns more and more nations every year."

He doesn't say what policies he's referring to, but there can be no question of what they are: the Iraqi trade sanctions, American support for Israel, and American military presence in the mid-east.

What I would say is that we better fucking well not draw such an attack, or he's going to find out what a "very, very tough response" actually is.

Anyway, he's making an empty threat. It's exactly the same kind of rhetoric we heard in 1990 before the Gulf War. (Remember "Mother of all battles"?) It's an Arab cultural thing. Arabs can be extremely formidable fighters; they did, after all, conquer most of the Mediterranean basin at one point. But their battles are traditionally often not all that bloody. It's common for them to wave their swords over their heads, and scream real loud, and boast about how dangerous they are, and to hope to cow the other guy into giving up without a fight. There's a lot of bluster there. That's what happened in 1990; that's what is happening now. Iraq has been making these kinds of threats for the last ten years.

But it would be stupid to discount them entirely, and our intelligence people had better be looking into the possibility that Iraqi agents have been smuggling various noxious things into US territory. The next attack won't be a hijacked aircraft; it's going to be a bomb or attack of some kind which was smuggled into an American city and then set off.

If it does happen, however, one defense against retaliation that isn't going to work is, "You can't prove we did it!"

Iran isn't Arab, but they're doing something of the same kind of thing right now. Like Iraq, they're reacting to being singled out in the State of the Union address, and their reaction is equally to try to puff themselves up to seem as big and formidable as they can. But it's pretty pathetic.

"Our airforce has doubled up its capability and is watching our skies," said air force chief Brigadier General Reza Pardis.

I.e. doubled from ten to twenty jets. Iran's airforce is pitiful; it is small and the aircraft are ancient and in poor repair. They are mostly American jets from the 1960's, acquired by the Shah. They've been cut off from replacement parts ever since the Islamic revolution (except for Ollie's little smuggling job). They also have a dozen or so Russian jets of the same vintage which were flown to Iran from Iraq during the Gulf War. It's never been clear whether the Iraqi pilots were ordered to do that or did it on their own; regardless, so far as I know Iran never gave them back. Phantoms and MiG-21's are not what you would call a serious threat against what we have; it would probably take no more than a couple of weeks to gain control of the air over Iran if need be.

"American threats are nothing new and nothing to worry about because we have the capability to confront them."

Of course, meeting a threat is one thing, but defeating a threat is something else entirely. But that claim pales by comparison to this one:

Iranian navy commander Admiral Abbas Mohtaj told IRNA his fleet was ready to defend his country's waters.

Let me get this straight: they are trying to claim that they are capable of driving off the United States Navy?

Again, it's a huge bluster. In any kind of set-piece battle, the military forces of Iran would have no chance at all against what we can field.

Iraq has been a political thorn in our side for years. North Korea has been a running wound since the 1950's. But Iran is a special case, and I have to wonder if someone is being cagey in Washington.

There is a power struggle going on there right now between the President and Parliament on one side, and the theocracy and judiciary on the other. Khatami has been trying to liberalize and secularize the government, and the theocrats are pulling back. One of Khameini's rhetorical weapons has been to try to accuse Khatami's supporters of being soft on the west. But it is the government which is making these statements about the US, not just the theocrats. By singling out Iran as an enemy, we have given Khatami the opportunity to show himself to be a true-blue American-hating Iranian patriot, and by so doing we've undermined one of Khameini's best political weapons. Hmmm... Is the Bush administration that subtle?

The danger is that if it is taken too far, that we could throw Iran into the waiting arms of Iraq, so that if we end up fighting against Iraq that Iran comes in on Iraq's side. I don't think that is too much of a danger, but it is a risk. The way to minimize that possibility is to ignore Iraq's threats, but to act as if we take Iran's threats seriously, and give them a wide berth for the moment. Having singled Iran out, watch for the anti-Iranian rhetoric to subside, even as the anti-Iraqi rhetoric becomes more heated.