What next, Uncle Sam? - I

Many scoffed when Pres. Bush lumped Iraq, Iran, and North Korea as "axis of evil". As later events unfolded, Dubya Bush is an accurate pulse taker. Iraq's Saddam Hussein got Dubya's top priority due to CIA intel-fed blunder on weapons of mass destruction nowhere found later.

It's more than three years now since March 2003 when it took just 21 days for the Coalition forces - mostly US and British - to overrun Iraq. But it's the occupation and "democratization" of the "conquered" Iraq that bedevil the Americans particularly, whose bodybags now exceed 2,500, and inexorably tolling daily in the fast-emerging Iraq civil war.

Save for Texas corporate giant Halliburton et al. that have cornered multi-billions in restoration and rehab projects, including Iraq's various oil wells and their pipelines, most Americans are stridently clamoring for troop withdrawal.

Despite the November mid-term elections forecast by pundits as favoring Democrats' takeover of both houses of Congress due to the Iraq factor, Bush is still bullish to stay put.

Otherwise viewed, with Iraq as the base of the evil triangle that has accursed Dubya's neck like the mythical albatross, Iran and North Korea are its warlike legs. Both are world menace with their nuclear ambitions, thanks to A.Q. Khan, the renegade Pakistani nuclear scientist.

Since Pres. Mohammed Khatami's time, Iran has researched on "uranium enrichment" purportedly for peaceful source of energy. Bush has correctly read that Iran's ultimate intent is to develop nuclear bomb; thus, the "axis of evil" tag.

The more internecine position came with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's election as Iranian president. A political parvenu thrust to power, and like any upstart with newfound clout, Ahmadinejad has defied USA. He sent a polemic letter to Bush condemning US policy, and hypocritically lecturing on, and twitting, Bush as false "prophet... of peace and tranquility". Actually, he wanted to meet Bush on equal footing over Iran's nuclear enrichment.

Instead of following Churchill's "To jaw-jaw is always better than to war-war", Bush preferred to have the UN Security Council warn Iran of sanctions if it refused to abandon its nuclear program. Ahmadinejad reacted in fury with a direct challenge of war should its exercise of sovereignty for self-defense, be interfered with.

Iran still stands choleric and hawkish, even with the European Union's dovish good offices with offers of economic, diplomatic, and technology incentives in exchange for suspending resumption of its "uranium enrichment". Neither has Iran shown respect for UN Security Council sanctions, which Russia and China assured not to veto if such sanctions are economic or non-military, nor any fear of whatever sanctions even if they included armed threats.

Short of outright military option by USA, which the latter cannot afford to exercise now - what with Afghanistan and Iraq overtaxing American military resources - what's left for Uncle Sam to pursue? Tension seemed to ease somehow with Bush's surprise offer to talk one-on-one with Ahmadinejad who is still hawkish, as evidenced by his challenge to Israel to escalate its war with Lebanon's Hezbollah to include Syria.

Perhaps the last peaceful card is the isolation of Iran from the community of nations by economic sanctions, as in global trading, banking, and other financial restraints. Under Security Council resolution, Iran could be thus isolated like a pariah by a boycott or embargo of its exports, including its main lifeline - crude oil - and an escrew of its foreign assets and deposits.

However, with many countries dependent on Iran's "black gold" now reaching $80 per barrel, who might blink first?

* * *

Email: [email protected]