The Iran conundrum - "Inaction could be catastrophic, and anything less than the most finely-calibrated action could be calamitous as well"

There has been a real reluctance in the West's confrontation with Iran, and the reasons go beyond the most superficial ones -- the burden of existing commitments in Afghanistan and Iraq or the usual dissent within the West on how best to proceed.

Making matters murkier is that Iran is such a formidable nation. Territorially vast, more populous than Aghanistan and Iraq combined, with the world's second-largest crude oil reserves at a time when oil is an especially good thing to have. Iran has a sophisticated and dedicated military, and sustained a brutal war with Iraq lasting eight years and costing 300,000 Iranian lives, a scant two decades ago. It has a unique language and Persian core population, and an ancient culture with imperial traditions of regional domination. Not to mention, the more permanent parts of the Iranian government are at the same time fanatically anti-Western and constitutionally unconstrained.

The hesitation in dealing with Iran more forcefully also comes from an understanding that the Iranian people are some of the most Western-oriented and savvy in the region, perfectly capable of managing their own affairs in a decent, democratic fashion. It is tragic that a nation which might as easily be a great friend and ally, has ended up one of our most challenging threats. That Iran would become the first modern Islamic theocracy is itself a sad irony: Islamic government ought to be a poor fit for Iran, with its tradition of secular government reaching back some two-and-a-half thousand years.

So there is a sober respect and indeed fear of what Iran would be capable of in retaliation for military strikes on its nuclear production, and a worry that even limited Western air strikes could stir some nationalist reaction and make enemies of the otherwise pro-Western Iranian people. Those have made good arguments against the military option.

What has changed in the past months is the addition to the old equation of a new realization, that Iran is on the attack already: increasingly, without provocation, and with near-impunity.

As of August, about half the attacks on Coalition forces in Iraq have been Iranian-supported. Iran is shelling Iraqi Kurdish territory and threatening invasion. It is arming, training, and funding Iraqi insurgents as well as arming the Taliban in Afghanistan, and its weaponry is the most advanced in the insurgents' arsenals. Iran has even flooded southern Iraq with bogus voters to boost support for its client parties. Hezbollah, Iran's terrorist arm, threatens Israel and subverts Lebanon's democracy. Iran props up Hamas in Gaza and sponsors Islamic Jihad. Even the forces of the genocidal, rogue government of Sudan are considered worthy of training and support by the Iranian theocracy. Iran could probably do worse, but it is wreaking havoc enough already.

At the behest of the Iraqi government, the United States started diplomatic discussions with Iran, reportedly limited to the subject of Iraqi stability. But since those talks began, Iran has actually increased its efforts to sabotage Iraqi peace and democracy, doing little to vindicate the faith in diplomacy for dealing with Iran.

A widely-circulated September 2 report in The Times of London claimed that U.S. plans for a possible Iran attack were to strike not only Iran's nuclear facilities but also its military. Such reports appear with some frequency and are impossible to verify, but this particular story does have the advantage of squaring with some of what can be known. The Iranian military has made itself an active enemy in Iraq especially, it would be very capable of retaliation after any attack, and it is the theocrats' defenders against a popular uprising. All arguments for targeting Iran's military as well as its nuclear capacity in any Iran hit.

Then there is U.S. Executive Order 13224. The Washington Post broke a story last month of the Bush administration’s intention to name Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps a "specially designated global terrorist entity." It would be an extraordinary move. Classifying an official force of a nation state as a terrorist organization is without precedent. But the suit certainly fits. The Revolutionary Guard and its elite, expeditionary Quds Force are the outfits responsible for aiding Iraqi insurgents, the Taliban, Hezbollah, Hamas, and Islamic Jihad.

The Executive Order would squeeze the Revolutionary Guard's substantial international financing. Section 6 of the Order could conceivably also lay a legal foundation for military action against the Guard, but at the very least, the terrorist designation would be a signal of seriousness from Washington.

Another possible indication of new seriousness was noted by the veteran commentator Arnaud de Borchgrave. When the new French President Nicolas Sarkozy made his remarkable and blunt foreign policy speech recently, warning that the consequences of diplomacy without results would be "an Iranian bomb or the bombing of Iran," it was shortly after Sarkozy had met with President Bush.

It is a reasonable guess that the Administration has been focused on Iraq, and informed that Iran is not yet at the point of no return in its nuclear project, so it has been enough for now to encourage the domestic opposition to Iran's theocracy, experiment with the diplomatic and economic measures, and hope for some development to intervene before military strikes become necessary, all the while planning and preparing for the military contingencies.

The Iran case is a conundrum. A dangerous enemy with a friendly population that defies clear prescriptions. Inaction could be catastrophic, and anything less than the most finely-calibrated action could be calamitous as well. But the Iranian assault is making things very slightly clearer as the days pass. Action against Iran can only become more likely as Iran continues in its genocidal rhetoric, doomsday-minded drive for the bomb, and now the region-wide offensive against the West it has launched despite our best efforts to decline the fight.

Andrew W. Smith, Tulsa, Oklahoma and Cape Sable Island, Nova Scotia

Published in The Chronicle-Herald, Halifax, Nova Scotia