Persian Gulf Prognostication

It’s been the subject of speculation ever since September 11, but now official word is starting to come out that Iraq will soon be a U.S. target.

This isn’t at all surprising or particularly interesting. For the last ten years, the United States has been fighting an extremely low-grade war against Iraq, and Saddam Hussein has been regularly sending up balloons of invective against us. What’s interesting is what a stronger and more active anti-Iraq American posture implies now about the political situations in Iran and Saudi Arabia.

Bush père was not a moron; neither were Colin Powell and the other people who ran the war against Iraq in 1991. Yet it would seem that the United States pulled out of Iraq in direct opposition to the Weinberger Doctrine (later and now called the “Powell Doctrine”). The Weinberger Doctrine, born of the mistakes of Viet Nam, calls for the U.S. to, among other things, commit massive resources, clearly define its objectives, and sustain the commitment to meet those objectives, before engaging in military action.

It therefore seems evident that a U.S. movement against the current Iraqi régime indicates imminent political upheaval in either Iran or Saudi Arabia or possibly both. Either Iraq must be dealt with and the U.S. will therefore mount covert action to mitigate the latent threats in its powerful neighbors to the north and south, or the situations in Teheran and Riyadh have shifted sufficiently that Saddam Hussein has outlived his usefulness to the United States.

Watch for U.S. action against Iraq and revolution in Iran to happen in the same week. There’s not enough information around — news from Iran has completely dried up in the last few days — for me to predict which will happen first.