Iraq: The Policy Dilemma
Iraq: The Policy Dilemma
By George Friedman
U.S. President George W. Bush now has made it clear what his policy on Iraq
will be for the immediate future, certainly until Election Day: He does not
intend to change U.S. policy in any fundamental way. U.S. troops will
continue to be deployed in Iraq, they will continue to carry out
counterinsurgency operations, and they will continue to train Iraqi troops
to eventually take over the operations. It is difficult to imagine that Bush
believes there will be any military solution to the situation in Iraq;
therefore, we must try to understand his reasoning in maintaining this
position. Certainly, it is not simply a political decision. Opinion in the
United States has turned against the war, and drawing down U.S. forces and
abandoning combat operations would appear to be the politically expedient
move. Thus, if it is not politics driving him -- and assuming that the more
lurid theories on the Internet concerning Bush's motivations are as silly as
they appear -- then we have to figure out what he is doing.
Let's consider the military situation first. Bush has said that there is no
civil war in Iraq. This is in large measure a semantic debate. In our view,
it would be inaccurate to call what is going on a "civil war" simply because
that term implies a degree of coherence that simply does not exist. Calling
it a free-for-all would be more accurate. It is not simply a conflict of
Shi'i versus Sunni. The Sunnis and Shia are fighting each other, and all of
them are fighting American forces. It is not altogether clear what the
Americans are supposed to be doing.
Counterinsurgency is unlike other warfare. In other warfare, the goal is to
defeat an enemy army, and civilian casualties as a result of military
operations are expected and acceptable. With counterinsurgency operations in
populated areas, however, the goal is to distinguish the insurgents from
civilians and destroy them, with minimal civilian casualties.
Counterinsurgency in populated areas is more akin to police operations than
to military operations; U.S. troops are simultaneously engaging an enemy
force while trying to protect the population from both that force and U.S.
operations. Add to this the fact that the population is frequently friendly
to the insurgents and hostile to the Americans, and the difficulty of the
undertaking becomes clear.
Consider the following numbers. The New York Police Department (excluding
transit and park police) counts one policeman for every 216 residents. In
Iraq, there is one U.S. soldier (not counting other coalition troops) per
about 185 people. Thus, numerically speaking, U.S. forces are in a mildly
better position than New York City cops -- but then, except for occasional
Saturday nights, New York cops are not facing anything like the U.S.
military is facing in Iraq. Given that the United States is facing not one
enemy but a series of enemy organizations -- many fighting each other as
well as the Americans -- and that the American goal is to defeat these while
defending the populace, it is obvious even from these very simplistic
numbers that the U.S. force simply isn't there to impose a settlement.
Expectations and a Deal Unwound
A military solution to the U.S. dilemma has not been in the cards for
several years. The purpose of military operations was to set the stage for
political negotiations. But the Americans had entered Iraq with certain
expectations. For one thing, they had believed they would simply be embraced
by Iraq's Shiite population. They also had expected the Sunnis to submit to
what appeared to be overwhelming political force. What happened was very
different. First, the Shia welcomed the fall of Saddam Hussein, but they
hardly embraced the Americans -- they sought instead to translate the U.S.
victory over Hussein into a Shiite government. Second, the Sunnis, in view
of the U.S.-Shiite coalition and the dismemberment of the Sunni-dominated
Iraqi Army, saw that they were about to be squeezed out of the political
system and potentially crushed by the Shia. They saw an insurgency -- which
had been planned by Hussein -- as their only hope of forcing a redefinition
of Iraqi politics. The Americans realized that their expectations had not
been realistic.
Thus, the Americans went through a series of political cycles. First, they
sided with the Shia as they sought to find their balance militarily facing
the Sunnis. When they felt they had traction against the Sunnis, following
the capture of Hussein -- and fearing Shiite hegemony -- they shifted toward
a position between Sunnis and Shia. As military operations were waged in the
background, complex repositioning occurred on all sides, with the Americans
trying to hold the swing position between Sunnis and Shia.
The process of creating a government for Iraq was encapsulated in this
multi-sided maneuvering. By spring 2006, the Sunnis appeared to have
committed themselves to the political process. And in June, with the death
of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and the announcement that the United States would
reduce its force in Iraq by two brigades, the stage seemed to be set for a
political resolution that would create a Shiite-dominated coalition that
included Sunnis and Kurds. It appeared to be a done deal -- and then the
deal completely collapsed.
The first sign of the collapse was a sudden outbreak of fighting among Shia
in the Basra region. We assumed that this was political positioning among
Shiite factions as they prepared for a political settlement. Then Abdel Aziz
al-Hakim, the head of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq
(SCIRI), traveled to Tehran, and Muqtada al-Sadr's Mehdi Army commenced an
offensive. Shiite death squads struck out at Sunni populations, and Sunni
insurgents struck back. From nearly having a political accommodation, the
situation in Iraq fell completely apart.
The key was Iran. The Iranians had always wanted an Iraqi satellite state,
as protection against another Iraq-Iran war. That was a basic national
security concept for them. In order to have this, the Iranians needed an
overwhelmingly Shiite-dominated government in Baghdad, and to have
overwhelming control of the Shia. It seemed to us that there could be a
Shiite-dominated government but not an overwhelmingly Shiite government. In
other words, Iraq could be neutral toward, but not a satellite of, Iran. In
our view, Iraq's leading Shia -- fearing a civil war and also being wary of
domination by Iran -- would accept this settlement.
We may have been correct on the sentiment of leading Shia, but we were wrong
about Iran's intentions. Tehran did not see a neutral Iraq as being either
in Iran's interests or necessary. Clearly, the Iranians did not trust a
neutral Iraq still under American occupation to remain neutral. Second --
and this is the most important -- they saw the Americans as militarily weak
and incapable of either containing a civil war in Iraq or of taking
significant military action against Iran. In other words, the Iranians
didn't like the deal they had been offered, they felt that they could do
better, and they felt that the time had come to strike.
A Two-Pronged Offensive
When we look back through Iranian eyes, we can now see what they saw: a
golden opportunity to deal the United States a blow, redefine the
geopolitics of the Persian Gulf and reposition the Shia in the Muslim world.
Iran had, for example, been revivifying Hezbollah in Lebanon for several
months. We had seen this as a routine response to the withdrawal of Syrian
troops from Lebanon. It is now apparent, however, that it was part of a
two-pronged offensive.
First, in Iraq, the Iranians encouraged a variety of factions to both resist
the newly formed government and to strike out against the Sunnis. This
created an uncontainable cycle of violence that rendered the Iraqi
government impotent and the Americans irrelevant. The tempo of operations
was now in the hands of those Shiite groups among which the Iranians had
extensive influence -- and this included some of the leading Shiite parties,
such as SCIRI.
Second, in Lebanon, Iran encouraged Hezbollah to launch an offensive. There
is debate over whether the Israelis or Hezbollah ignited the conflict in
Lebanon. Part of this is ideological gibberish, but part of it concerns
intention. It is clear that Hezbollah was fully deployed for combat. Its
positions were manned in the south, and its rockets were ready. The capture
of two Israeli soldiers was intended to trigger Israeli airstrikes, which
were as predictable as sunrise, and Hezbollah was ready to fire on Haifa.
Once Haifa was hit, Israel floundered in trying to deploy troops (the Golani
and Givati brigades were in the south, near Gaza). This would not have been
the case if the Israelis had planned for war with Hezbollah. Now, this
discussion has nothing to do with who to blame for what. It has everything
to do with the fact that Hezbollah was ready to fight, triggered the fight,
and came out ahead because it wasn't defeated.
The end result is that, suddenly, the Iranians held the whip hand in Iraq,
had dealt Israel a psychological blow, had repositioned themselves in the
Muslim world and had generally redefined the dynamics of the region.
Moreover, they had moved to the threshold of redefining the geopolitics to
the Persian Gulf.
This was by far their most important achievement.
A New Look at the Region
At this point, except for the United States, Iran has by far the most
powerful military force in the Persian Gulf. This has nothing to do with its
nuclear capability, which is still years away from realization. Its ground
forces are simply more numerous and more capable than all the forces of the
Arabian Peninsula combined. There is another aspect to this: The countries
of the Arabian Peninsula are governed by Sunnis, but many are home to
substantial Shiite populations as well. Between the Iranian military and the
possibility of unrest among Shia in the region, the situation in Saudi
Arabia and the rest of the Peninsula is uneasy, to say the least. The rise
of Hezbollah well might psychologically empower the generally quiescent Shia
to become more assertive. This is one of the reasons that the Saudis were so
angry at Hezbollah, and why they now are so anxious over events in Iraq.
If Iraq were to break into three regions, the southern region would be
Shiite -- and the Iranians clearly believe that they could dominate southern
Iraq. This not only would give them control of the Basra oil fields, but
also would theoretically open the road to Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. From a
strictly military point of view, and not including the Shiite insurgencies
at all, Iran could move far down the western littoral of the Persian Gulf if
American forces were absent. Put another way, there would be a possibility
that the Iranians could seize control of the bulk of the region's oil
reserves. They could do the same thing if Iraq were to be united as an
Iranian satellite, but that would be far more difficult to achieve and would
require active U.S. cooperation in withdrawing.
We can now see why Bush cannot begin withdrawing forces. If he did that, the
entire region would destabilize. The countries of the Arabian Peninsula,
seeing the withdrawal, would realize that the Iranians were now the dominant
power. Shia in the Gulf region might act, or they might simply wait until
the Americans had withdrawn and the Iranians arrived. Israel, shaken to the
core by its fight with Hezbollah, would have neither the force nor the
inclination to act. Therefore, the United States has little choice, from
Bush's perspective, but to remain in Iraq.
The Iranians undoubtedly anticipated this response. They have planned
carefully. They are therefore shifting their rhetoric somewhat to be more
accommodating. They understand that to get the United States out of Iraq --
and out of Kuwait --they will have to engage in a complex set of
negotiations. They will promise anything -- but in the end, they will be the
largest military force in the region, and nothing else matters. Ultimately,
they are counting on the Americans to be sufficiently exhausted by their
experience of Iraq to rationalize their withdrawal -- leaving, as in
Vietnam, a graceful interval for what follows.
Options
Iran will do everything it can, of course, to assure that the Americans are
as exhausted as possible. The Iranians have no incentive to allow the chaos
to wind down, until at least a political settlement with the United States
is achieved. The United States cannot permit Iranian hegemony over the
Persian Gulf, nor can it sustain its forces in Iraq indefinitely under these
circumstances.
The United States has four choices, apart from the status quo:
1. Reach a political accommodation that cedes the status of regional hegemon
to Iran, and withdraw from Iraq.
2. Withdraw forces from Iraq and maintain a presence in Kuwait and Saudi
Arabia -- something the Saudis would hate but would have little choice about
-- while remembering that an American military presence is highly offensive
to many Muslims and was a significant factor in the rise of al Qaeda.
3. Halt counterinsurgency operations in Iraq and redeploy its forces in the
south (west of Kuwait), to block any Iranian moves in the region.
4. Assume that Iran relies solely on its psychological pre-eminence to force
a regional realignment and, thus, use Sunni proxies such as Saudi Arabia and
Kuwait in attempts to outmaneuver Tehran.
None of these are attractive choices. Each cedes much of Iraq to Shiite and
Iranian power and represents some degree of a psychological defeat for the
United States, or else rests on a risky assumption. While No. 3 might be the
most attractive, it would leave U.S. forces in highly exposed, dangerous and
difficult-to-sustain postures.
Iran has set a clever trap, and the United States has walked into it. Rather
than a functioning government in Iraq, it has chaos and a triumphant Shiite
community. The Americans cannot contain the chaos, and they cannot simply
withdraw. Therefore, we can understand why Bush insists on holding his
position indefinitely. He has been maneuvered in such a manner that he -- or
a successor -- has no real alternatives.
There is one counter to this: a massive American buildup, including a major
buildup of ground forces that requires a large expansion of the Army, geared
for the invasion of Iran and destruction of its military force. The idea
that this could readily be done through air power has evaporated, we would
think, with the Israeli air force's failure in Lebanon. An invasion of Iran
would be enormously expensive, take a very long time and create a problem of
occupation that would dwarf the problem faced in Iraq. But it is the other
option. It would stabilize the geopolitics of the Arabian Peninsula and
drain American military power for a generation.
Sometimes there are no good choices. For the United States, the options are
to negotiate a settlement that is acceptable to Iran and live with the
consequences, raise a massive army and invade Iran, or live in the current
twilight world between Iranian hegemony and war with Iran. Bush appears to
be choosing an indecisive twilight. Given the options, it is understandable
why.
Send questions or comments on this article to analysis@stratfor.com.
By George Friedman
U.S. President George W. Bush now has made it clear what his policy on Iraq
will be for the immediate future, certainly until Election Day: He does not
intend to change U.S. policy in any fundamental way. U.S. troops will
continue to be deployed in Iraq, they will continue to carry out
counterinsurgency operations, and they will continue to train Iraqi troops
to eventually take over the operations. It is difficult to imagine that Bush
believes there will be any military solution to the situation in Iraq;
therefore, we must try to understand his reasoning in maintaining this
position. Certainly, it is not simply a political decision. Opinion in the
United States has turned against the war, and drawing down U.S. forces and
abandoning combat operations would appear to be the politically expedient
move. Thus, if it is not politics driving him -- and assuming that the more
lurid theories on the Internet concerning Bush's motivations are as silly as
they appear -- then we have to figure out what he is doing.
Let's consider the military situation first. Bush has said that there is no
civil war in Iraq. This is in large measure a semantic debate. In our view,
it would be inaccurate to call what is going on a "civil war" simply because
that term implies a degree of coherence that simply does not exist. Calling
it a free-for-all would be more accurate. It is not simply a conflict of
Shi'i versus Sunni. The Sunnis and Shia are fighting each other, and all of
them are fighting American forces. It is not altogether clear what the
Americans are supposed to be doing.
Counterinsurgency is unlike other warfare. In other warfare, the goal is to
defeat an enemy army, and civilian casualties as a result of military
operations are expected and acceptable. With counterinsurgency operations in
populated areas, however, the goal is to distinguish the insurgents from
civilians and destroy them, with minimal civilian casualties.
Counterinsurgency in populated areas is more akin to police operations than
to military operations; U.S. troops are simultaneously engaging an enemy
force while trying to protect the population from both that force and U.S.
operations. Add to this the fact that the population is frequently friendly
to the insurgents and hostile to the Americans, and the difficulty of the
undertaking becomes clear.
Consider the following numbers. The New York Police Department (excluding
transit and park police) counts one policeman for every 216 residents. In
Iraq, there is one U.S. soldier (not counting other coalition troops) per
about 185 people. Thus, numerically speaking, U.S. forces are in a mildly
better position than New York City cops -- but then, except for occasional
Saturday nights, New York cops are not facing anything like the U.S.
military is facing in Iraq. Given that the United States is facing not one
enemy but a series of enemy organizations -- many fighting each other as
well as the Americans -- and that the American goal is to defeat these while
defending the populace, it is obvious even from these very simplistic
numbers that the U.S. force simply isn't there to impose a settlement.
Expectations and a Deal Unwound
A military solution to the U.S. dilemma has not been in the cards for
several years. The purpose of military operations was to set the stage for
political negotiations. But the Americans had entered Iraq with certain
expectations. For one thing, they had believed they would simply be embraced
by Iraq's Shiite population. They also had expected the Sunnis to submit to
what appeared to be overwhelming political force. What happened was very
different. First, the Shia welcomed the fall of Saddam Hussein, but they
hardly embraced the Americans -- they sought instead to translate the U.S.
victory over Hussein into a Shiite government. Second, the Sunnis, in view
of the U.S.-Shiite coalition and the dismemberment of the Sunni-dominated
Iraqi Army, saw that they were about to be squeezed out of the political
system and potentially crushed by the Shia. They saw an insurgency -- which
had been planned by Hussein -- as their only hope of forcing a redefinition
of Iraqi politics. The Americans realized that their expectations had not
been realistic.
Thus, the Americans went through a series of political cycles. First, they
sided with the Shia as they sought to find their balance militarily facing
the Sunnis. When they felt they had traction against the Sunnis, following
the capture of Hussein -- and fearing Shiite hegemony -- they shifted toward
a position between Sunnis and Shia. As military operations were waged in the
background, complex repositioning occurred on all sides, with the Americans
trying to hold the swing position between Sunnis and Shia.
The process of creating a government for Iraq was encapsulated in this
multi-sided maneuvering. By spring 2006, the Sunnis appeared to have
committed themselves to the political process. And in June, with the death
of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and the announcement that the United States would
reduce its force in Iraq by two brigades, the stage seemed to be set for a
political resolution that would create a Shiite-dominated coalition that
included Sunnis and Kurds. It appeared to be a done deal -- and then the
deal completely collapsed.
The first sign of the collapse was a sudden outbreak of fighting among Shia
in the Basra region. We assumed that this was political positioning among
Shiite factions as they prepared for a political settlement. Then Abdel Aziz
al-Hakim, the head of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq
(SCIRI), traveled to Tehran, and Muqtada al-Sadr's Mehdi Army commenced an
offensive. Shiite death squads struck out at Sunni populations, and Sunni
insurgents struck back. From nearly having a political accommodation, the
situation in Iraq fell completely apart.
The key was Iran. The Iranians had always wanted an Iraqi satellite state,
as protection against another Iraq-Iran war. That was a basic national
security concept for them. In order to have this, the Iranians needed an
overwhelmingly Shiite-dominated government in Baghdad, and to have
overwhelming control of the Shia. It seemed to us that there could be a
Shiite-dominated government but not an overwhelmingly Shiite government. In
other words, Iraq could be neutral toward, but not a satellite of, Iran. In
our view, Iraq's leading Shia -- fearing a civil war and also being wary of
domination by Iran -- would accept this settlement.
We may have been correct on the sentiment of leading Shia, but we were wrong
about Iran's intentions. Tehran did not see a neutral Iraq as being either
in Iran's interests or necessary. Clearly, the Iranians did not trust a
neutral Iraq still under American occupation to remain neutral. Second --
and this is the most important -- they saw the Americans as militarily weak
and incapable of either containing a civil war in Iraq or of taking
significant military action against Iran. In other words, the Iranians
didn't like the deal they had been offered, they felt that they could do
better, and they felt that the time had come to strike.
A Two-Pronged Offensive
When we look back through Iranian eyes, we can now see what they saw: a
golden opportunity to deal the United States a blow, redefine the
geopolitics of the Persian Gulf and reposition the Shia in the Muslim world.
Iran had, for example, been revivifying Hezbollah in Lebanon for several
months. We had seen this as a routine response to the withdrawal of Syrian
troops from Lebanon. It is now apparent, however, that it was part of a
two-pronged offensive.
First, in Iraq, the Iranians encouraged a variety of factions to both resist
the newly formed government and to strike out against the Sunnis. This
created an uncontainable cycle of violence that rendered the Iraqi
government impotent and the Americans irrelevant. The tempo of operations
was now in the hands of those Shiite groups among which the Iranians had
extensive influence -- and this included some of the leading Shiite parties,
such as SCIRI.
Second, in Lebanon, Iran encouraged Hezbollah to launch an offensive. There
is debate over whether the Israelis or Hezbollah ignited the conflict in
Lebanon. Part of this is ideological gibberish, but part of it concerns
intention. It is clear that Hezbollah was fully deployed for combat. Its
positions were manned in the south, and its rockets were ready. The capture
of two Israeli soldiers was intended to trigger Israeli airstrikes, which
were as predictable as sunrise, and Hezbollah was ready to fire on Haifa.
Once Haifa was hit, Israel floundered in trying to deploy troops (the Golani
and Givati brigades were in the south, near Gaza). This would not have been
the case if the Israelis had planned for war with Hezbollah. Now, this
discussion has nothing to do with who to blame for what. It has everything
to do with the fact that Hezbollah was ready to fight, triggered the fight,
and came out ahead because it wasn't defeated.
The end result is that, suddenly, the Iranians held the whip hand in Iraq,
had dealt Israel a psychological blow, had repositioned themselves in the
Muslim world and had generally redefined the dynamics of the region.
Moreover, they had moved to the threshold of redefining the geopolitics to
the Persian Gulf.
This was by far their most important achievement.
A New Look at the Region
At this point, except for the United States, Iran has by far the most
powerful military force in the Persian Gulf. This has nothing to do with its
nuclear capability, which is still years away from realization. Its ground
forces are simply more numerous and more capable than all the forces of the
Arabian Peninsula combined. There is another aspect to this: The countries
of the Arabian Peninsula are governed by Sunnis, but many are home to
substantial Shiite populations as well. Between the Iranian military and the
possibility of unrest among Shia in the region, the situation in Saudi
Arabia and the rest of the Peninsula is uneasy, to say the least. The rise
of Hezbollah well might psychologically empower the generally quiescent Shia
to become more assertive. This is one of the reasons that the Saudis were so
angry at Hezbollah, and why they now are so anxious over events in Iraq.
If Iraq were to break into three regions, the southern region would be
Shiite -- and the Iranians clearly believe that they could dominate southern
Iraq. This not only would give them control of the Basra oil fields, but
also would theoretically open the road to Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. From a
strictly military point of view, and not including the Shiite insurgencies
at all, Iran could move far down the western littoral of the Persian Gulf if
American forces were absent. Put another way, there would be a possibility
that the Iranians could seize control of the bulk of the region's oil
reserves. They could do the same thing if Iraq were to be united as an
Iranian satellite, but that would be far more difficult to achieve and would
require active U.S. cooperation in withdrawing.
We can now see why Bush cannot begin withdrawing forces. If he did that, the
entire region would destabilize. The countries of the Arabian Peninsula,
seeing the withdrawal, would realize that the Iranians were now the dominant
power. Shia in the Gulf region might act, or they might simply wait until
the Americans had withdrawn and the Iranians arrived. Israel, shaken to the
core by its fight with Hezbollah, would have neither the force nor the
inclination to act. Therefore, the United States has little choice, from
Bush's perspective, but to remain in Iraq.
The Iranians undoubtedly anticipated this response. They have planned
carefully. They are therefore shifting their rhetoric somewhat to be more
accommodating. They understand that to get the United States out of Iraq --
and out of Kuwait --they will have to engage in a complex set of
negotiations. They will promise anything -- but in the end, they will be the
largest military force in the region, and nothing else matters. Ultimately,
they are counting on the Americans to be sufficiently exhausted by their
experience of Iraq to rationalize their withdrawal -- leaving, as in
Vietnam, a graceful interval for what follows.
Options
Iran will do everything it can, of course, to assure that the Americans are
as exhausted as possible. The Iranians have no incentive to allow the chaos
to wind down, until at least a political settlement with the United States
is achieved. The United States cannot permit Iranian hegemony over the
Persian Gulf, nor can it sustain its forces in Iraq indefinitely under these
circumstances.
The United States has four choices, apart from the status quo:
1. Reach a political accommodation that cedes the status of regional hegemon
to Iran, and withdraw from Iraq.
2. Withdraw forces from Iraq and maintain a presence in Kuwait and Saudi
Arabia -- something the Saudis would hate but would have little choice about
-- while remembering that an American military presence is highly offensive
to many Muslims and was a significant factor in the rise of al Qaeda.
3. Halt counterinsurgency operations in Iraq and redeploy its forces in the
south (west of Kuwait), to block any Iranian moves in the region.
4. Assume that Iran relies solely on its psychological pre-eminence to force
a regional realignment and, thus, use Sunni proxies such as Saudi Arabia and
Kuwait in attempts to outmaneuver Tehran.
None of these are attractive choices. Each cedes much of Iraq to Shiite and
Iranian power and represents some degree of a psychological defeat for the
United States, or else rests on a risky assumption. While No. 3 might be the
most attractive, it would leave U.S. forces in highly exposed, dangerous and
difficult-to-sustain postures.
Iran has set a clever trap, and the United States has walked into it. Rather
than a functioning government in Iraq, it has chaos and a triumphant Shiite
community. The Americans cannot contain the chaos, and they cannot simply
withdraw. Therefore, we can understand why Bush insists on holding his
position indefinitely. He has been maneuvered in such a manner that he -- or
a successor -- has no real alternatives.
There is one counter to this: a massive American buildup, including a major
buildup of ground forces that requires a large expansion of the Army, geared
for the invasion of Iran and destruction of its military force. The idea
that this could readily be done through air power has evaporated, we would
think, with the Israeli air force's failure in Lebanon. An invasion of Iran
would be enormously expensive, take a very long time and create a problem of
occupation that would dwarf the problem faced in Iraq. But it is the other
option. It would stabilize the geopolitics of the Arabian Peninsula and
drain American military power for a generation.
Sometimes there are no good choices. For the United States, the options are
to negotiate a settlement that is acceptable to Iran and live with the
consequences, raise a massive army and invade Iran, or live in the current
twilight world between Iranian hegemony and war with Iran. Bush appears to
be choosing an indecisive twilight. Given the options, it is understandable
why.
Send questions or comments on this article to analysis@stratfor.com.
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