US Threats Against Iran: A Strategy Elaborated Months Ago

The strategy that the United States intends to employ against Iran is spelled almost word-for-word out in a document entitled "The Strategy of National Security of the United States", officially presented last March by George W. Bush. The eye-catcher in the text couldn’t be clearer: "America is at War". More particularly, the United States has received what amounts to a divine mission to defend liberty everywhere in the world. This messianic vision so dear to the neo-conservatives who haunt the White House and Pentagon, has as its corollary the right to take all conceivable initiatives, even to prevent what might (not) happen. Thus, evoking the risks of proliferation of arms of mass destruction, this strategy document argues that the only way to "contain" these arms is to take measures "against proliferation", to militarize Space via the "anti-missile belt", and to protect the great-power monopoly in nuclear technology.

The new US doctrine states that at least 30 nations have, or intend to have, "arms of mass destruction." In order to "respond to this new planetary menace, much more serious than that of the Cold War", the Bush administration is proposing a fundamental recasting of US military doctrine. The military must henceforth "dissuade" a potential adversary from attacking the United States by "preventatively" destroying those capacities it deems "aggressive". To this end, the so-called "tactical" nuclear weapon will be perfected. In fact, nuclear weapons are now being integrated into the hierarchy of uses of conventional weapons. In a single step, the threshold for its use is lowered, permitting the nuclear weapon to be used "in response" to any "imminent crisis". Among the four cases of preventative strikes described in the document, we find that of strikes against facilities so deeply buried that they are sheltered from a conventional attack. This is certainly what George W. Bush now has in mind.