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Iran-Krise

Die US Regierung hat inzwischen ein lauwarmes „Dementi” zu den Veröffentlichungen Seymour Hersh im New Yorker und der WP vom Wochenende abgegeben. Hersh wie die WP hatten berichtet, dass die militärischen Planer beschleunigt an der Vorbereitung eines Lufangriffs gegen die Nuklearanlagen des Irans arbeiten.

“The president’s priority is to find a diplomatic solution to a problem the entire world recognizes,” Bush counselor Dan Bartlett told The Associated Press on Sunday. “And those who are drawing broad, definitive conclusions based on normal defense and intelligence planning are ill-informed and are not knowledgeable of the administration’s thinking on Iran.” (AP)

Aber:

A senior administration official played down prospects for military action, … but stopped short of an outright denial. (WP1)

White House Communications Director Dan Bartlett said on CNN Sunday that the story was “riddled with inaccuracies”. (WP2)

Bartlett bestritt aber die Grundaussage des Artikels nicht.

Später am Tag meldete sich Präsident George W. Bush persönlich zu Wort:

“What your reading is wild speculation,” he said. “Happens quite frequently here in the nation’s capital.” (NYT)

Offensichtlich um einen weniger kriegerischen Eindruck bemüht, ließ er die „militärische Option, die auf dem Tisch liegt” unerwähnt.

Asked at a foreign-policy discussion whether the United States would allow Iran to develop nuclear weapons, the president began his reply with a “mmmm,” then chuckled.

“We do not want the Iranians to have a nuclear weapon, the capacity to make a nuclear weapon, or the knowledge about how to make a nuclear weapon,” Mr. Bush told a gathering at the Johns Hopkins Paul H. Nitse School of Advanced International Studies here. “That’s our stated goal. It is also the goal, fortunately, of other friends and allies, starting with Great Britain, Germany and France.”

But this “doctrine of prevention” does not necessarily mean force, Mr. Bush said. “In this case, it means diplomacy,” he said.

Zu den von Bush gescholtenen “Spekulanten” zählt auch der Forward, der bereits am Freitag zu berichten wusste:

Several experts and former officials interviewed by the Forward pointed to Vice President Dick Cheney as one of the key figures who has concluded that the ongoing diplomatic efforts to bring Iran before the United Nations Security Council and eventually slap the Islamic regime with sanctions will come to naught, forcing Washington to resort to force to prevent Tehran from developing nuclear weapons.

Der Forward wusste noch ein interessantes Detail zu berichten.

According to Laurent Murawiec, a senior fellow at the conservative Hudson Institute, the Bush administration’s contingency plans were being upgraded “because the diplomatic solution has lost credibility.”… He added that two European defense ministries were also working on military contingency plans, but declined to identify them.

Wer die beiden europäischen Staaten sein sollen, hat Murawiec nicht verraten.

James Fallows, Organisator der berühmten “war games“, in denen durchexerziert wurde, welche militärischen Optionen gegenüber dem Iran überhaupt existieren (Antwort: keine guten) schreibt in der neusten Ausgabe des Atlantic Monthly, seit dem Planspiel vor anderthalb Jahren habe sich die Situation sogar noch verschlechtert.

Every tool at Iran’s disposal is now more powerful, and every complication for the United States worse, than when our war-gamers determined that a pre-emptive strike could not succeed. Iran has used the passing time to disperse, diversify, conceal, and protect its nuclear centers. Instead of a dozen or so potential sites that would have to be destroyed, it now has at least twice that many. The Shiite dominance of Iraq’s new government and military has consolidated, and the ties between the Shiites of Iran and those of Iraq have grown more intense. Early this year, the Iraqi Shiite warlord Muqtada al-Sadr suggested that he would turn his Mahdi Army against Americans if they attacked Iran.

Economically, Iran also has far greater leverage than before. Through 2004, the price of a barrel of oil averaged less than $40. In 2006, it has been above $60, an increase of more than 50 percent. Rising demand from China, India, and, yes, the United States has left virtually no slack in the world’s oil markets. OPEC’s “spare” production capacity—the amount it could quickly supply beyond current demand—is about 1 million barrels a day. Iran now supplies about 4 million barrels a day. If it chose to, or had to, remove much of its oil from the market, a bidding war could send the price of a barrel of oil above $100. Eventually, everyone would adjust. Eventually, the Great Depression ended.

Fallows fragt sich (oder hofft), ob mit all dem Kriegsgeschrei nicht nur geblufft wird. Aber auch so ein Bluff wäre seiner Ansicht nach schon ein großer Fehler.

Perhaps the American and Israeli hard-liners know all this, and are merely bluffing. If so, they have made an elementary strategic error. The target of their bluff is the Iranian government, and the most effective warnings would be discreet and back-channel. Iranian intelligence should be picking up secret signals that the United States is planning an attack. By giving public warnings, the United States and Israel “create ‘excess demand’ for military action,” as our war-game leader Sam Gardiner recently put it, and constrain their own negotiating choices.

In der Zwischenzeit in Deutschland:

Darf so einer zu unserer WM? (BZ)

Gemeint ist der iranische Präsident Ahmadinejad, über den spekuliert wird, er wolle zur Fußball WM, zu unserer Fußball WM, nach Deutschland kommen.

Die deutsche Nationalmannschaft und Bayern München fahren zwar in den Iran und spielen in Stadien, in denen Frauen als Zuschauer nicht zugelassen werden, aber „so einer” sollte besser nicht kommen.

“Herr Ahmadinedschad soll gefälligst zu Hause bleiben!”, forderte der SPD-Außenexperte Hans-Ulrich Klose in der “Bild”-Zeitung. Auch der CSU-Abgeordnete Eduard Lintner bezog Stellung gegen eine mögliche Einreise des iranischen Präsidenten: “Es wäre mir lieber, er kommt nicht.” (SpOn)

Sollte es in Deutschland Reaktionen auf die Berichte über eine beschleunigte Planung von Luftangriffen gegen den Iran gegeben haben, dann habe ich sie nicht gefunden.