The Hidden Mind – Reasoning about Iranian/U.S. conflict

“The key of strategy… is not to choose a path to victory,
but to choose so that all paths lead to a victory.”
(Lois McMaster Bujold, The Vor Game)

Re:

U.S. says Iranian boats harassed warships http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22537199/

Was writing about the Iran-US conflict (my last post on this), but realized later that, while I spent time trying to talk about what is going on, I didn’t take much time to talk about why things are happening.

With an event like this, we don’t want to ask who’s telling the truth, or isn’t. We want to ask who would benefit from an encounter like this, and why.

So:

• Does US benefit from the report of this conflict? I say “not enough.” Sure, it does make Iran look that much less stable, but who’s to convince? The West, and the ’stable’ Middle East are already deeply concerned by political and religious trends in Iran. (Saudi Arabia’s reactions are good to watch, here). On the same front, the report makes the US look even more paranoid/jumpy (i.e. insecure). So we didn’t either fake this or instigate it, just because we don’t benefit enough from the report to justify the risk of our machinations being discovered.
• What if it’d gone to actual conflict? Then we stand far too much chance of things working out badly; worst-case scenario, we murder a bunch of drunk teenagers, with lots of photo ops of floating limbs. Second worse, a bunch of speedboats damage one of our warships; we look weak, have to do something about it… no matter what, this kind of conflict works out badly for the US, especially since we can’t sustain another war right now (even if another war was a good idea on any level…)

So my gut feeling here is that this didn’t originate with the U.S. and that it’s not a fake (esp. given the YouTube vid floating around).

So what about the Iranians? Do they benefit? How?

• Say they do succeed in blowing up a warship - the U.S. has a strong history of responding badly to these kinds of events. Whether or not we have the economical ‘bounce,’ we’ll go after the guy who hit us, no matter what. Iran doesn’t want a conflict with the U.S. at the moment; it has Iraq and Afghanistan as good examples of its own fate. Iran will become more confrontational when and if it gains nuclear weapons (shutting off oil sales to the U.S., perhaps?), but it’s not looking for an open fight now.
  • Also, it’s benefiting from the U.S.’s position at the moment; chaos in the region gives Iran more ’space,’ as it were. The U.S. distracted gives it time to build nuclear weapons, to build a nuclear relationship with Russia – yes, this is really, truly, happening. Iran has been funding insurgents and terrorist organizations in Iraq in order to keep us spread thin. (we’ve proven this, but can’t do anything about it).
• In other words, provoking the U.S. to an openly hostile response is not in any way in Iran’s favor right now.
• So what if the goal was to create martyrs? Aside from “then why didn’t they stick around and die?” I don’t know that one could be sure of leaving identifiable remains. Also, again, a directly hostile encounter with the U.S. could go wrong in far too many ways.
• What about making the U.S. be and look (more) paranoid? This one I would buy, except for the fact that this is already very efficiently done via insurgent funding, and at least, in that case, you can’t prove it’s the Iranians. I really do think Iran wants to lay low until it has nuclear capability; it doesn’t make sense to start a conflict. Note President Bush’s response language: he suggests the Iranians “refrain from such provocative actions that could lead to a dangerous incident in the future.” They got one freebie. They might not have.

What about “the terrorists”? Wouldn’t they benefit?

Terrorist groups are being funded through Tehran. They have a haven, of sorts, in the border of a country the world community (read: the West) can’t directly influence. I don’t think any group would jeopardize that stronghold unless they were sure of doing some serious damage.

– it could have been a test run for something else, of course; a real, serious attack. One wonders…

So unless this was just a simple harassment move, (or unless they really were drunk idiots or something similar), I postulate there’s another player in the game, one who’d benefit from a U.S. confrontation with Iran.

Unfortunately, we’ve made too many enemies recently and we have too much competition (military, economic, and strategic) to allow for easy guessing/analysis this way. My parents both said – right off the bat – that Russia’s involved, but I have a hard time buying it. The Russians do produce a huge amount of oil, so they might not be as devastated by Iran’s collapse as the U.S. … but still, Russia, with Putin at the helm, has made a number of strides toward becoming an economic rather than a military giant. There also seems to be a certain amount of wary respect between the USSR and the USA; two duelists wary of returning to the field. The USSR also wants to prevent a nuclear holocaust, just as we do.

I wonder if they’d provoke us into overtaking Iran now, to prevent an eventual nuclear war…? They have been pulling the bait-and-switch on Iran on actually handing over the power plant supplies …

Russia’s been funding Tehran’s nuclear power interests; helping with power plants, etc. I don’t believe they have much to gain from a devastated Iranian economy, either. Nor do they want to go for round II with the United States. (Not yet?)

So now I’m looking for a player that’s not heavily invested in Iran, that doesn’t want to see Tehran gain nuclear capability and/or that would greatly benefit by watching the U.S. utterly bankrupt itself via one more invasion (i.e., not an Iranian ally);

The Chinese come to mind (although I don’t know much about their investment in Iran). Saudi Arabia? This doesn’t seem India’s style, and they’ve got major famine issues coming up, even as the middle class rises like a meteor. I’d say they’re too busy, and too dependent on a stable U.S., to be playing this kind of game. It’s not Brazil’s arena, either, and the E.U. (we’d all like to think) is largely past these kinds of games.

So here’s a random thought: the U.S. crushing Iran would be bad for Iran - but it’d be good for anyone wanting to unite the Middle East in some kind of Islamic Jihad. Iran’s an Islamic spiritual center, I believe. It’s basically a theocracy masquerading as a democracy (remember this slide?: Iranian Power Structure). The kind of leader or group that’d benefit from an Islamic Jihad also benefits from the U.S. looking bad, from Iran looking bad, from tensions rising, from martyrs created.

For that invisible player, there was no outcome for that little standoff that wouldn’t be beneficial. This is the invisible player for whom all paths lead to victory.

Now all we need is a name.

The Iran-U.S. War, incoming

U.S. says Iranian boats harassed warships
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22537199/

WASHINGTON – Iranian boats harassed and provoked three American Navy ships in the strategic Strait of Hormuz, threatening to blow up the vessels, U.S. officials said Monday.

Iran’s Foreign Ministry said Monday the confrontation was “something normal” and was resolved, suggesting the Iranian boats had not recognized the U.S. vessels. National Security Council spokesman Gordon Johndroe said the Bush administration urges Iranians “to refrain from such provocative actions that could lead to a dangerous incident in the future.”

When considering a news source w/two sides like this, I try to put it through a thought-grid of sorts:

• Both sides are telling the truth
• Neither is
• Only one side is
• There’s something bigger going on

So: Iran is telling the truth, and they just can’t recognize U.S. warships. … which always carry flags, as i remember …? So they’re idiots (unlikely), or they’re trying to provoke something (implied by the U.S. statement), or they never existed.

I think that’s slightly unlikely, if only because faking something of this magnitude would have someone up in flames.

So perhaps the Iranians were just harassing the U.S. to make a point, that it’s their space.. and the U.S. took the moment to make a point; we’ve got muscles, and we’re not afraid to use ‘em.

We have to read intentionality, too; what does ‘threatening’ mean in this context? (that’s what US soldiers said of villagers during the Vietnam War, too, and sometimes the villagers had guns, and sometimes they had fishing poles …)

This is the bit that really worries me: “The Bush administration urges Iranians “to refrain from such provocative actions that could lead to a dangerous incident in the future…”

That’s a pretty damn clear signal, if you ask me. — “don’t make me come back there…”

So i suspect there was an incident; the Iraqis trying to make a point (bad idea, badly carried out), the U.S. using the incident to make their own on the international stage (“don’t mess with Texas,” heh).

But what’s the bigger picture here? The U.S. sees Iran as dangerous, by virtue of its Muslim government (Achmadinijad is only nominally head of state; he was elected and is effectively controlled by a set of mullahs… well, here, check this out:

Note that the president (Achmadinijad, who made all the noise at Columbia University during the UN meetings in NYC) is not the supreme ruler. The supreme ruler and armed forces hold a great deal of power and they’re nominally elected from .. well, aside from some citizen input to the “Assembly of Experts” (not ‘balanced’ elections in US terms), the overriding power-granting force in Iran rides with spiritual and military leaders.

Achmadinijad is basically a puppet wielded by the magician that is the larger government of Iran. He exists to distract the viewer while the magician performs the impossible.

This all makes the U.S. nervous. Meanwhile Iran, looking at a growing power vacuum in the Middle East, seeing schisms between even the U.S. and old allies (Saudi Arabia, etc) – feels it can move quickly in the gap to gain nuclear weapons – and, therefore, bargaining power.

Also it feels untouchable, perhaps? This might explain the nonsense.

We could also postulate it’s got an ace up its sleeve, and is hoping to provoke the U.S. into war.

We could argue this all serves a greater purpose; the U.S. cannot extend into another war/occupation. Cold hard numbers and the collective American will says no; a refusal to respond to a blatant act of terrorism would give the signal to the rest of the world that the U.S. was in retreat – we’d lose face – while another major military commitment, along with the inevitable concomitant loss of prestige and goodwill in the world community – that’d be disastrous for us as well.

So what I want to know is, what’s going on here, why, and how? I don’t for one minute believe, as Iran says, that it was all just a case of mistaken identity.

“the side of Iran visitors rarely see”

A little vid from CNN about “the side of Iran visitors rarely see”

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/20754821#20754821

I’ll post it in videos too.

The author effuses about nonmarried couples holding hands, in public (!!!!) and about a woman showing her own horse – at a high-class country club. If you go up in the mountains, he says, the police don’t go up (to the resorts and Very Nice Looking towns) very often. People are freer.

Oh, and there was the obligatory shot of an Iranian saying “I won’t talk about US politics, but the people are very very nice… We want better relations with the US…”

I don’t like feeling so cynical about the whole thing, but this vid really bothers me. The assumptions are manifold, and obnoxious;

• U.S. values are ‘better’ than Iranian ones.
• Breaking Iranian values (or relaxed restrictions of said values) means it’s a better, ‘freer’ society. (the assumption is that approaching U.S. values is a good thing and that this is all representative of a pro-U.S. shift in greater Iranian culture..)
• The privileges of the upper class as demonstrated here (anyone who collects cars like that is upper class) are reflective of hidden – yet existent! – Iranian freedoms that are simply invisible to the U.S.

In any society, there exists an upper class. It will have more privileges than the lower class. (That’s easily as true in the U.S. as anywhere else in the world.)

The freedoms of the upper class often have little to do with anything going on in the rest of the country.

Maybe this video truly is representative. I just have a hard time buying it, somehow …

More from Istanbul

What I got trying to access wordpress.com from Istanbul…

Bu siteye erişim mahkeme

kararıyla engellenmiştir.

Access to this site has been suspended with decision of Court.

And when trying to access lningram.wordpress.com (this site specifically):

Bu siteye erişim mahkeme kararıyla engellenmiştir.

T.C. Fatih 2.Asliye Hukuk

Mahkemesi 2007/195 Nolu Kararı

gereği bu siteye erişim

engellenmiştir.

Access to this site has been suspended in accordance with decision no: 2007/195 of T.C. Fatih 2.Civil Court of First Instance.

… pretty interesting, no?

Istanbul

Soooo… I thought I’d post Istanbul pictures. (If you’re not sure where Istanbul is, go here to find out…)

So this is Sultanahmet, the old city. I loved the cobblestone streets. The hotel was about three blocks from here.

Down the street a little (to the right of picture 1; if you keep going down the sidewalk, you come to the Hagia Sophia and the Blue Mosque..):

David took this picture, and I really really like it; this is the Blue Mosque, seen through the trees on a cloudy day …

The Blue Mosque, from just inside the courtyard:

Wiki notes that the Sultan Ahmed Mosque (named after said Sultan, and a.k.a. the Blue Mosque) was built between 1609 and 1616, and that it stands as the “culmination of two centuries of Ottoman mosque development. It is,” (we are also told), “the last great mosque of the classical period.” There’s more links, if you care to go on :)

This shot (the Hagia Sophia behind us, Blue Mosque in front) really contains a great deal of Sultanahmet (the old city) as it stands today …

Hagia Sophia in the rain. I love doorways, windows, rainy days …

Beautiful, no?

General Abizaid

I was talking with Madiha and Ben after dinner yesterday evening, and have some thoughts on communications/conflict/sustainable development/technology for you, but first, about the dinner and today’s talk:

We ate with General Abizaid (no, really, I’m serious) and then spent some time talking about the Middle East, U.S. actions in the region, etc. Abizaid was quieter than I expected – someone I wouldn’t at first have taken for 4-star general. He was quietly impressive; the more time we spent talking, the more obvious the depth of his thought process. He wasn’t trying to prove himself, as so many academics do when you speak to them (part of the reason I’m thinking of stepping outside the academic system for a while), and he wasn’t interested in fluff. He was genuine, obviously used to leading people, handled all of us really well. Remembered our names. Looked each person in the eye. Made a few jokes to set us at ease.

And then, after introductions – and after all of us finished our Thai food, with chopsticks – he gave us a bit of a talk. Said there are four specific movements in the middle east that bear watching right now:

1. Sunni fundamentalism
   • This is what we’ve seen so far with Al-Qaeda etc.
2. The rise of Shi’a Extremism
   • We’re especially concerned that extremism not take hold in any government – right now, it’s contained to the fringes of society, but if it were to take hold (especially in a country like Pakistan, which has nukes), the balance of power/ideology could shift dramatically, and very much not in our direction
3. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict
   • Is providing a rallying point for terrorists, and is a long-term conflict sitting in the backyard of the Arab states. Helping with the peace process here will demonstrate our own good intentions and might significantly decrease tension in the region.
4. Instability and a possible move toward extremism in Pakistan and Saudi Arabia

In the talk today (today is Wednesday), he put #4 in with #2, and his #4 was the U.S. need to wean ourselves from our dependence on Middle Eastern oil.

He had quite a bit to say, but mostly he talked about these four points. A few other notes I found interesting:

• He said our involvement in the Middle East right now is 80% military and 20% other (say, anthropology, cultural understanding, education, etc etc) – we need to reverse that percentage
• He said that no one can ‘control’ the Middle East (“5000 years of history…”) but that we can help the people there achieve stability.
• Said that Al-Qaeda didn’t (necessarily) want to take over Iraq – the idea is to keep it in chaos so that insurgent and terrorist groups will have a “haven”
  • (to me this sounds very much like Iran’s interests in the region…)
• And so on and so forth.

In any case, it was really interesting to meet someone of his stature and experience. I wanted more time to talk with him, to figure out where he was coming from, but it wasn’t to be.

A few other interesting things: the dean was only choosing older people to ask questions — i think to keep the questions balanced and not too loaded, although there weren’t that many students raising their hands. Also, I noticed that sometimes he would reframe the questions in a way that meant they were similar to the original question asked, but not identical…

Alright, enough of this post (i’ve been typing a sentence here and there for a couple days, and now it’s Thursday… on to the next thing)