LA Times editorial: Avoiding WWIII: Threatening Iran is poor strategy.

[ProSense]

Avoiding WWIII

Threatening Iran is poor strategy.

October 20, 2007

The war of words against Iran grew scorching this week when President Bush declared that "avoiding World War III" requires preventing that country from developing nuclear weapons.

The Bush administration continues to insist that it seeks a diplomatic solution to the Iran crisis -- and the White House says the president didn't mean to lay out a case for war. Yet senior U.S. officials increasingly trumpet their frustration with a regime that, nearly 30 years after the Islamic revolution, has grown richer, more willing to challenge the United States and interested in filling the power vacuum created by the U.S. overthrow of its longtime nemesis, Saddam Hussein. To the mounting evidence that Iran is accelerating its nuclear weapons research under cover of a civilian energy program has been added credible U.S. allegations that Iran is arming and aiding Shiite insurgents who are attacking U.S. military forces in Iraq, as well as arming terrorists in Lebanon and Afghanistan. The resulting angry brew is being heated and stirred by a coordinated public campaign by U.S. neoconservatives favoring military action against Tehran.

Despite the very real causes for U.S. complaint, the escalation of American threats against Iran is unwise. It is grossly premature. It is dangerous, as it greatly increases the likelihood of accidental escalation into a preventable war. It is alarmingly ill-timed, as an isolated United States wages simultaneous ground wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and both conflicts are going badly. And it is diplomatically counterproductive. Congress and U.S. opinion leaders should slam on the brakes -- if they can.

Under ordinary circumstances, the U.S. commander in chief shouldn't have to publicly rule out the option of using military force if necessary. Ordinarily, presidents should be able to bluff or threaten in order to win concessions from a foreign adversary. But these are not ordinary times, and the Bush administration's judgment about what is "necessary" to protect U.S. national security has been shown to be extraordinarily poor.

Military threats are a last resort and should only be made by nations prepared to make good on them. But the United States is militarily unready and politically unwilling to open a third front against Iran -- nor should it, because Iran poses no imminent threat. In February, Bush's own director of National Intelligence, Adm. Mike McConnell, and director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, Lt. Gen. Michael D. Maples, told Congress that the earliest Iran could develop a nuclear weapon or intercontinental ballistic missile with which to deliver it would be 2015.

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