Sunday, October 28, 2012

The WWIII may be postponed till further notice


The situation around Iran continues to provide a convenient turf for speculations over the World War III scenarios. However, it seems that the chances for a new world war are not higher than usual. Let's examine the positions of the two sides of this conflict: Iran and the Western alliance.

There are several factors that indirectly demonstrate that the West has no real intention to start the war, although it has taken measures to be seen as if it does.  First, Iran is objectively far beyond any country the US has been fighting with overtly since the end of the World War II. This fact is widely recognized by the Pentagon officials, who publicly doubt the ability to win the war by any means short of deployment of the ground forces.

However, beyond this point, the strategy chosen by the US and Israel for dealing with Iran is conspicuously silly if viewed as a prelude for an attack. Israel and the US ratcheted up the rhetoric without making any moves. As a result, Iran has been shown a stick and than has been given almost a decade to thoroughly prepare itself both militarily and politically for the upcoming war. Undoubtedly that Iran of today is much more capable of inflicting grave casualties both in Israel and among the American troops deployed in the Middle East than it has ever been before.

On the other hand, from the Iranian side the current policy of the US and the West in general should look eerily reminiscent of the very successful American strategy of the the end of eighties, when they bluffed the Soviets into believing that they were on the verge of developing an ambitious star-war program, which would have presumably given the Americans an absolute edge in any future nuclear conflict with the Soviets. The fact was that the US was not, at that time and it is unlikely to be now, anywhere near possessing the technology or resources to realize this program.

The Soviets, however, perceived the danger as very real and started their own counter program, which overstrained the economy, taxed as it was by the war in Afghanistan, the necessity to prop up client "socialist" or "progressive" regimes around the world and, critically, low oil prices. All this created acute discontent and division among general Soviet population and implosion of the Soviet system.

Perpetual explicit Israeli threats and implicit American threats have triggered a serious military build up on behalf of Iran. The missing link was the oil prices which stayed relatively high and even increased (ironically to the great extent as a result of the threats themselves). Only recently this issue was partially resolved when the Europeans and to a lesser extent other American allies acquiesced to the demands of cutting down imports of Iranian energy products. Recent fall of the rial and protests of against worsening of the economic situation may signify a possible success of this strategy.

Thus the West and especially Israel are not well poised to attack Iran now, when there are real signs that the policy of attrition bear fruits. Iran, on the other hand, is in a very different situation. It apparently has spent a fortune on its rearmament. The Iranian news channels present every couple of weeks a new exemplar of expensive military hardware. Even if the effectiveness or combat characteristics of these weapons systems are widely exaggerated, the development, maintenance and manning these new weapon systems represent heavy financial commitment.

Although a strong country, Iran cannot sustain this level of the effort indefinitely, especially on the background of the mounting economic hardships. Having spent so much money on arms, Iran should be greatly tempted to start the war. However, it can ill afford to be seen as an aggressor, a status that would probably undermine the support it can draw from the non-allied states and greatly increase the repercussions in the case of defeat. So in the current situation it looks like one side does not want to start the war, while the other cannot afford it.

Finally, the Iranian rearmament is, paradoxically, very reassuring in terms of the possible development of the Iranian military nuclear program. If indeed the development of the conventional weapons is not a sham, it would be somewhat irrational to spend so much effort in refurbishing the conventional army if Iran is on the verge of attaining virtual immunity in the very near future. These spendings point to either lack of interest in developing nuclear weapons or at the very least to Iran being at the relatively early stage of this program.

In summary, despite all of the bellicose rhetoric by both sides, the war does not seem to be imminent. It also looks like the rift over Iran between Netanyahu and Obama is either superficial or outright orchestrated. Now we can sit down and relax, of course, if other world's problems do not bother us as much.