De Ja Vu All Over Again

The following story, cited by the estimable Cap'n Ed, got me to thinking of pregnant historical parallels:

More than forty major international banks and financial institutions have either cut off or cut back business with the Iranian government or private sector as a result of a quiet campaign launched by the Treasury and State departments last September, according to Treasury and State officials.

The financial squeeze has seriously crimped Tehran's ability to finance petroleum industry projects and to pay for imports. It has also limited Iran's use of the international financial system to help fund allies and extremist militias in the Middle East, say U.S. officials and economists who track Iran.

The U.S. campaign, developed by Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, emerged in part over U.S. frustration with the small incremental steps the U.N. Security Council was willing to take to contain the Islamic republic's nuclear program and support for extremism, U.S. officials say. The council voted Saturday to impose new sanctions on Tehran, including a ban on Iranian arms sales and a freeze on assets of twenty-eight Iranian individuals and institutions.

If you're like me, you roll your eyeballs when you see articles like this. Imposition of economic sanctions never succeeds in coercing enemy regimes; it just punishes their enslaved populace while their dictatorial rulers obtain what they want and need from "alternative" sources and steadily erode away the sanctions regimes themselves. Saddam Hussein is a most pertinent case in point. Consequently such a policy that abjectly failed in Iraq is even less likely to succeed in bringing down the mullahgarchy next door. It just wastes time that we could be putting to much better use by initiating the inevitable war with Iran ourselves, on our own terms and timetable rather than waiting for them to strike first.

However, then I perused the wrinkle that Mr. Morrissey appended to the above quote:

The US has targeted the Revolutionary Guard with its attempts at isolating the Iranians. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has transformed the Guard into an economic powerhouse in Iran, a major defense and civilian contractor even outside of its arms trading. This has made the Guard very loyal to Ahmadinejad, and the sanctions aim to both drive a wedge between the Guard and the president and also to cripple their ability to prop up the current regime....

The Bush Administration has successfully conducted an indirect war on Iranian interests, and it is a progressive war. The effects of these efforts will be cumulative, and the Iranians have not much time left before their economy begins to completely collapse under the weight of them. Oil production accounts for 80% of their exports, and once those facilities start to fail, they will have nothing left with which to bargain - and it will take years to repair the damage. When they reach that stage, Iranians will find plenty of motivation to shake off the disastrous reign of the mullahcracy, and even the Revolutionary Guard will not find much motivation to protect them. [emphases added]

None of the above will prevent the mullahs from going nuclear, of course, which is supposed to be the raison d'etere of our Iran policy. However, because of the years we've already wasted dithering and appeasing the Islamic "Republic", that outcome is a fait accompli. The mullahgarchy is already in the nuclear club, and is going to be a, shall we say, "active" member.

So where does that leave us? Well, if the above analysis is correct, any military action is begated by Iranian nuclear blackmail. Is bringing down the mullahs worth the annihilation of Israel? Or European capitals going up one by one? Or a warhead hidden in a cigarette vending machine and smuggled into the Super Bowl (Yes, I'm a Sum of All Fears mark, even if the only casting choice for the Jack Ryan character less appropriate than Ben Affleck would have been Leonardo DiCaprio). Presumably the answer is no. That leaves passive measures, ineffectual measures like....economic sanctions.

Let's assume, though, just for the sake of argument, that these financial restrictions really will bite hard enough to put the mullahs in a genuine squeeze. Remember why any twenty-first century tinpot dictator wants nukes: to avoid Saddam Hussein's fate. To stay in power and be able to wage war against the United States and its allies with impunity. But if the Great Satan in effect lays siege to your regime instead, and targets its direct underpinnings (i.e. the Revolutionary Guard), those nukes won't be of much use in staving off revolution unless you're willing to lay waste to your own country, which is more than a little self-defeating.

I would call almost ingenious, except for the fact that this strategy has been followed before, with consequences quite unintended.

The United States was in a not dissimilar position in the late 1930s vis-a-vie Imperial Japan. Like Iran today, the Japanese were a willful, head-strong, ambitious regional power, convinced of their own manifest destiny to dominate Asia and the inevitability of victory over the "soft, decadent" Americans should they try to stand in the way. Like the Bush Administration today, President Franklin Roosevelt felt constrainted from taking more direct action to stop the Japanese, and resorted to sanctions, and finally an outright embargo, on a commodity that constituted Tokyo's shorthairs: oil. Japan imported all their oil, and without oil, their air force would be grounded, their navy couldn't set sail, and their army would be halted.

Putting an embargo on Japan's oil imports put the Japanese goverment itself on a set and narrow time-table if their regional ambitions were going to be realized. Far from coercing them to give up those ambitions, FDR's economic squeeze forced Tokyo's hand and propelled them toward the day that still "lives in infamy."

I'm not convinced that the Bushkins' financial embargo is as dire to the mullahs, but if it has anywhere near the adverse effect on Tehran that the Cap'n suggests it will, it may force their hand as well, and sooner rather than later.

That's the context in which to look at the Iranians' seizure of fifteen British sailors in Iraqi territorial waters last week, which Pajamas Media suggests may have been in retaliation for the success of the "Surge" strategy in Iraq in thwarting what had been an embarrassingly unopposed Iranian subversion operation:

American forces in Iraq now hold some three hundred prisoners tied to Iran’s intelligence agencies, Pajamas Media learned from both diplomatic and military sources.

This is believed, by both sources, to be a record number of prisoners tied to Iran. Virtually all were captured in the past two months.

[Last] week’s seizure of fifteen British sailors by Iran in the contested waters of the Shattab al-Arab, the ship channel that divides Iraq and Iran, may have been payback for the capture of record number of Iranian operatives inside Iraq. “It may be a bargaining chip,” one diplomatic source said.

The intelligence community is still debating whether the unlawful detainment of British sailors was ordered by Iran’s government or was presented to it as a fait accompli by relatively low-level Iranian Revolutionary Guards officers.

The roughly three hundred prisoners held in Iraq—the number grows frequently—are either Iranian nationals or Shiites recruited from neighboring countries that are employed one of its almost two dozen intelligence or paramilitary services.

The record haul of Iran-linked prisoners may not be a sign of [an Iranian counter-"Surge"]. The Islamic Republic’s participation in the Iraq war, which includes funding, arming and training both Shiite and Sunni militias, has been known to be significant for some time.

More likely, the large number of Iran-linked prisoners reflects a change in tactics following the arrival of Multinational Force Iraq commander Army General David H. Petraeus. Previously, Iranians and other foreigners could not be picked up without a provable connection to terrorism. Now, American and allied forces are encouraged to seize militants based on a reasonable suspicion of involvement in insurgent attacks. This is consistent with Iraqi law.

You can see the pattern - we checkmate Iranian subversion in Iraq, they escalate by capturing Coalition military personnel, perchance to use as bargaining chips, perchance to liquidate as an example of what the mullahs have in store for us if we don't quit Iraq and withdraw from the region altogether. Apply the pattern in the bigger strategic picture of the mullahgarchy's own hold on power being undermined by America's economic siege and, well, you get the picture. The only question lingering is whether that is the point of the Bushies' strategy - or another unintended consequence. Not a small uncertainty, given what a twenty-firest century Pearl Harbor could look like, of which 9/11 would be but a foretaste.

Kinda makes the inevitable left-wing conspiracy-mongering all the more ironic, doesn't it?