ESSAY: HOW TO OPEN PANDORA'S BOX

Think of it this way, PAUL WILLIAM ROBERTS explains: Iran is four times the size of Iraq, has more than twice as many people and hasn't really done anything wrong

PAUL WILLIAM ROBERTS

This week marked the Ides of March, which in the Middle East is a date to beware with good reason. It's the beginning of War Season, the three-month period during which conditions in the region are generally at their best for the U.S. military -- or for its equipment. It is thus the best time to attack any country from Syria to, say, Iran. Given all the sabre-rattling of late, should the Iranians worry? They are about to celebrate Nowruz, the ancient Persian new year, on Monday, and haven't exactly been behaving like people trying to avoid a war, have they?

Yes, on Thursday, they offered to at least discuss what's going on in Iraq and Afghanistan with the United States. But that is not the big bone of contention. The U.S. media have done their job. Even an unemployed farm labourer in Alabama who doesn't realize that a million fellow Americans are of Iranian descent can still tell you the real reason that President George W. Bush is threatening to take action.

Everyone now feels certain that Iran has begun to build nuclear weapons in violation of international law, and that, even though the Security Council started to debate the issue yesterday, the United Nations is too weak to do anything about it. (The greedy Russians, Chinese and maybe even the French would block any vote to sanction because they're scared of losing business.)

So, it will once again fall to Washington's Globo-Cop to do the right thing and bomb those offending nuclear sites on our behalf.

As long ago as late January, a Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll found that 57 per cent of Americans would like to see military intervention if "Iran continues to produce material that can be used to develop nuclear weapons."

But the poll's question was a tricky one, because Joe Public hears "material that can be used to develop nuclear weapons" as simply "material to develop nuclear weapons." By that yardstick, someone who purchases a digital clock ought to face arrest because it too "can be used" to build a nuke. This is why polls don't deserve the awed respect we now accord them.

And U.S. political pundits who speculate about UN sanctions against Iran for violating the 1970 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty should read the thing. The NPT gives signatories "the inalienable right . . . to develop research, production and use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes," and the Iranians have wanted to build atomic power plants for at least 20 years.

Since the United States is also a signatory, its government has already acknowledged Iran's right to conduct peaceful atomic research; indeed it could be viewed as failing in its requirement to assist with such research.

Of course, most nuclear reactors require enriched uranium fuel, which also can be used to make a nuclear weapon.

There is, in fact, no hard evidence that Iran intends to do this, but it is a reasonable assumption, given the obvious security benefits that having a nuclear weapon invariably brings a small but strategically vital country that also has the world's third-largest supply of the greatest natural resource in history.

For example, since North Korea's plans for producing such a weapon proved to be a good deal more advanced than Washington believed they could be, you could be forgiven for wondering if Kim Jong-il quit or was turfed out of the Evil Axis. It is worth noting, too, that if Iran decided it needed to produce nuclear weapons for self-defence, it could withdraw from the treaty with three months' notice.

There is no doubt that Iran may build such weapons, and, amid the rattling of those sabres in Washington, it has also been possible to discern something rattling over in Tehran, leading some observers to speculate about what, besides sheer folly, may have emboldened the Iranians to risk war with the United States. Aren't they close enough to Iraq already? Have they, like the North Koreans, also been more promiscuous in atomic research than Washington imagined?

This seems unlikely, but given that both sides realize they're in what amounts to a state of mutually assured destruction, anyone inclined to cheer on the war effort against Iran should first take a look at what has suddenly given the ayatollahs such big brass cojones, and attitude to match. It is simply the knowledge of what is bound to happen if U.S. forces actually pull the trigger on a nation almost four times the size of Iraq with more than 2.5 times the population.

Generally, the consequences of such an attack are limited to a discussion of what impact a reduction of Iranian oil exports would have on the world economy.

Oil prices would certainly rise, but this problem is dismissed as minor since Western nations have sufficient emergency stockpiles to cover the lack of Iranian exports for several months. Iran is also too dependent on oil revenues to restrict exports for very long. Thus, it is usually argued that a thorough bombing of Iran's nuclear facilities will not affect much, and they'll just take their medicine with a grimace as usual.

Here's a different scenario, and the one most likely playing to thunderous applause in the corridors of theocratic power in Qom and Tehran: Iran has already promised to retaliate, and there are nearly 1,000 missiles in place that could be fired at targets around the Persian Gulf, such as ships, airbases, refineries and oil terminals. Supertanker traffic through the Gulf will thus halt for a few weeks, particularly if insurers like Lloyds of London threaten to cancel their coverage of any ship entering a war zone, as they probably will.

The ships' badly paid crews also may refuse to sail, and Arab oil workers will take time off because of the real and present missile danger, if not out of sympathy after watching Al-Jazeera's TV coverage of Muslims yet again being pounded by high-tech weaponry. (That's bound to cause riots and strikes across the Islamic world anyway.)

It is not at all unreasonable to assume that no oil will leave the Persian Gulf for at least two weeks, stopping some 25 per cent of the world's supply. Anti-U.S. oil producers such as Venezuela also may add to this with sympathy reductions in their exports.

This will not be welcomed by U.S. allies such as Germany and Japan, which import all their oil. India and China are not just major consumers of Iranian oil, they are major investors in the country, and so will be especially miffed.

Now, China and Japan are America's biggest creditors, so they could easily vent their displeasure by dumping a few billion dollars from their foreign currency reserves to help offset dollar-based oil prices by forcing a weak dollar even lower.

You also can be sure that, three years after that invasion, things next door in Iraq won't quiet down for the new war. The resistance will step up attacks because U.S. planes will be busy over Iran -- which may explain why U.S. forces there have been consolidating their bases recently. This effort includes the shifting of a whole brigade to protect Kuwait City's port, which is barely 100 kilometres from the Iranian border. Since the 1979 revolution, Tehran has often muttered darkly about its right to Kuwait's oil fields.

Iran will presumably have little compunction about sending the Iraqi resistance fighters killing machines much more advanced than what they currently provide them. Thus far, they have been cautious not to send anything easily trace- able, I was recently told by a member of the British SAS stationed in Basra, because they don't wish to give the Americans a way to link them to terrorism.

But clearly they haven't been cautious enough, since this week President Bush said components from Iran were being deployed in the powerful roadside bombs being detonated in Iraq, and last week Donald Rumsfeld said Iranian Revolutionary Guard personnel had been detected crossing the border. However, America's top soldier, Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, later told a Pentagon briefing there is still no proof that Iran's government is responsible for such incursions.

Once the bombs fall, though, the gloves will come off, and we can expect to see in Iraq such weapons as .50-calibre rifles able to punch through body armour, multiple rocket launchers, and newer kinds of shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles. The American death toll will grow.

Iran may well shut down Persian Gulf ship traffic entirely, by blockading the Straits of Hormuz with sea mines and small attack boats, and by sinking ships. Around 40 per cent of the world's crude passes through this two-mile-wide channel, where Iranian forces are already situated, ashore at the head, and on heavily fortified islands.

Such a move has in fact been feared for decades, and a good deal of U.S. military planning focuses on options to counter it. When Rear Admiral L. E. Jacoby, director of naval intelligence, testified before the U.S. Senate's armed-services committee in 1999, he noted that Iran had deployed its new Russian-supplied Kilo-class submarines as part of a plan to block the Straits in times of crisis. The subs were to be used to lay mines and fire advanced torpedoes at ships attempting to enter or leave the southern Gulf.

"Iran, making maximum use of the advantages afforded by geography, has developed a sophisticated, layered defence plan for the southern Gulf and Straits of Hormuz, designed to deny access to this critical area in time of crisis," the admiral said, describing such a defence as one "which includes minefields, anti-ship cruise missiles and swarming small craft."

Nearly all U.S. military supplies to Iraq are also shipped through the Persian Gulf, it is worth remembering, so the U.S. forces would be among the first to suffer the effects of a blockade. If the Iranians sank a few ships there, it could well take weeks to remove them, which would happen only after the straits had been secured by U.S. military.

That would not an easy job, since it would require a major amphibious landing to capture island and coastal defences that Iran has had fortified for decades. The effort would need somewhere around 30,000 U.S. troops and involve a few weeks of bloody combat -- possibly even more, since there will probably be no time to lay waste to Iranian defences by air.

When these problems are taken into account, it makes military sense to secure the Hormuz Straits before any action is taken by the Iranians. But the U.S. Navy won't contemplate such an operation until all of Iran's submarines have been sunk, which might take a week or more.

Furthermore, any seizure of the Straits will require ships to operate within the range of Iranian anti-ship missiles. One can imagine the outrage and woe of reactions back home to the spectacle of a sinking U.S. Navy warship on CNN.

But, assuming the straits can be easily secured, what will the U.S. military then do with them? An occupation lasting decades seems the only answer, and under constant threat of attack from Iranian artillery fire. Besides, Iran could still menace the Gulf with anti-ship missiles and fire artillery from many other places along its ample coastline.

What would happen, though, if the invasion stalled and the straits were not reopened swiftly? The emergency oil stocks utterly vital to the economy of the industrial world would begin to run out, along with supplies to some 150,000 U.S. troops stranded in Iraq and Kuwait. It is then not at all far-fetched to contemplate history's most ignoble and empire-quashing retreat through the deserts of Iraq and Jordan and into Israel, particularly if thousands of Iranian soldiers pour into Iraq to assist in the attacks on U.S. military camps.

These, then, are the chilling facts that have made Iranians so cocky of late, to be sure -- and it is hard to say why they should not feel so self-assured. It truly is a MAD scenario, son of the Cold War, thus one only a lunatic would contemplate. The risks are too grave, the benefits not at all clear.

It may be argued that there is no choice, that the leadership in Tehran is crazy and cannot be allowed to possess nuclear weapons at any cost. But even by the somewhat baggy U.S. standards of crazy, are they crazier than the leaders of China, the Soviet Union and now North Korea?

America has always grumbled when other nations were thought to be acquiring nukes, and it is always the end of the world that is at stake if they succeed. China, India, Pakistan, it was the same story every time, but in the end the United States grumpily learned to live with a more even playing field.

While the interminable occupation of Iraq has strained the U.S. military, it could easily pull off the "precision" attacks on Iranian nuclear facilities that Mr. Bush threatened yet again on Thursday, although the results would be too uncertain to promise the public beforehand.

At any other time in recent history, one would be able to presume that sanity would eventually prevail in Washington before such a disastrous series of events was triggered.

But consider this: Defusing this increasingly tense situation wouldn't be all that difficult. The open U.S. threat of bombing is one good reason Iran has given for refusing to allow inspectors to keep monitoring its nuclear activities -- the inspections could provide targeting information. Instead of attacking, Washington could reaffirm its commitment to the non-proliferation treaty by acknowledging Iran's right to enrich uranium and promise to remove the military option -- if the inspectors are allowed back in.

Granted, Iran has refused Russia's offer to enrich uranium for it, and thus end the desultory conflict. Although they have trouble answering if asked what day it is, Tehran would probably agree to such an offer from Washington. If not, a truly good case could be made for imposing sanctions.

This will be wearyingly obvious to most world leaders -- except those in Washington, where it has become increasingly difficult to distinguish between arrogance and ignorance. The tacit understanding among western governments of why no solution to the stand-off is needed or required is alone a sure sign that someone wants to unleash the dogs of war.

Cynicism on its own must be near flash point, too, since we finally have two films from Hollywood that actually address the real world in its own terms without flinching.

Syriana demands our outrage to stop the lethal madness, but Lord of War takes another approach. The film stars Nicolas Cage as a soulless arms dealer so deadpan that he makes Buster Keaton look like Jim Carrey. "I was going to tell you to go to hell," says the cop on his tail, "but you're already there." Unlike Syriana, it trades disgust and despair for wry amusement. since the tipping point was passed years ago and hell is now home.

Faust floats down like a leaf, and the last observation just lights the gentle burners beneath him: Compared with nations, men like the Cage character are small potatoes in the weapons biz. The five biggest arms dealers on the planet are the five permanent members of the UN's Security Counsel.

Toronto-based writer Paul William Roberts, the author of A War Against Truth: An Intimate Account of the Invasion of Iraq, is currently completing a novel set in the future.