Iran (4)

David Shorr at thebulletin reviews Trita Parsi's 'A Single Roll of the Dice: Obama's Diplomacy with Iran'. The book is welcome in drawing attention to the myriad actors involved in pulling Obama in different directions and proving central to his consideration in dealing with Iran.

Meanwhile, Joseph Wouk runs a Debka story that is interesting in an of itself. The content is absolutely unverified but does state that after the RQ170 crashed in Iran, Obama has cancelled all drone flights over the country, relying solely on satellite relays. That led the israelis to try and fit a drone with the necessary imaging but the drone crashed and the Israelis haven't proceeded, with the accompanying loss of data being received on sensitive installations.

Yahoo! runs the story that the Israelis and US agree that Iran does not currently have a bomb, but that's good news for the Israelis, who can hence argue that they can go in without a nuclear reprisal.

Without continuous drone footage of the installations, there's going to be much less of a granular understanding of the sites, couple with the loss of the RQ170 there are going to be so many unknowns involved in a strike, which might also play into the hands of the republican nominee (israelis running wild on Obama's watch). So Obama will press stridently for diplomacy.

Iran (3)

The role of narratives in establishing norms have become a central consideration in policy formulation, accelerated by the past decade of a war against terror, and what exactly that might mean, and how exactly language has shaped policy.

Two articles have now considered the effect of the media debate on policy formulation with regards to Iran. Stephen Walt in FP and Benn in the generally left-of-centre Haaretz (thanks to Nina for the latter link).

With the discourse shaped towards "not if but when", the next development will be post-conflict planning discourse, without the conflict having yet occurred. In that way, societies will start to live with the idea of the conflict. Then when it happens, it's simply a part of the normative framework of the foreign policy.

So the next discussions will be on how Iran will respond - will it use Hezbollah and can it. Will it act in Hormuz? Will it start an energy war? How will this affect the internal dynamics of the country? It's a little early for history to repeat itself, but expect some analysts to suggest that the nation will rise up once Israel and American take action against the nuclear installations which are the property of a tyrannical regime.

Also, Ahmadinejad is getting sidelined after his support base was weakened in parliamentary elections for the majilis earlier in the month. Hardliners are now in place.

Iran and Media-disseminated Evidence

Satellite images of key installations may be all too familiar. Colin Powell's 'worst day' at the United Nations (a former aide, Col. Wilkerson called it the 'lowest point' in my life), pointing to images to show evidence of ongoing Iraqi WMD programmes are still fresh in the memory.

But among several media outlets that run a recent satellite "bust" on Iran was USA Today, under the headline, Satellite images indicate Iranian nuke cleanup. "Possibly" the cleanup was to erase traces of the testing of a nuclear trigger. All the diplomats cited were accredited to the IAEA.

The BBC reported on British Prime Minister's visit to Washington. One pundit asserted that the Israelis wouldn't act against Iran without US support, and that Obama wouldn't act without Cameron, which shows a wonderful Anglocentric worldview. The NYT reports Cameron will join Obama in calling for diplomacy not war.

Obama does want to proceed through multilateral intiatives when venturing into foreign policy and many pundits argue that Israel doesn't have the ability to take out Iran's nuclear installations unilaterally. According to some sources Netanyahu made a request for weaponry from the US during his visit including bunker-busters, allowing Israel to increase the window of time it had before commencing a strike, which would give diplomacy more time. The article does not say whether the request was granted.

Meanwhile the Jerusalem Post is working on the when not if premise, in running a story that Netanyahu won't attack Iran before his wife gets to see Madonna.

We are living, after all, in a material world.

Top Gunning

Article from David Sirota at the Seattle Times on the military-entertainment complex.

The image of the military has been recalibrated during the war on terror. Cameraphones linked to the internet have led to various perspectives on the conflict being disseminated globally, instantaneously. And the insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan have seen a uniformed professional coalition fighting an unseen, highly motivated enemy using assymetric tactics.

The tactical aspect of the war on terror may be best remembered by history for the rise of the IED as a space-denial weapon. This week saw six British deaths from a blast in Afghanistan. At least five of the six had only deployed on 14 February 2012.

It's a re-evaluation of soldiering, in that they never got to face an enemy, that suggests the Western militaries will face a hard time reinvigorating the warrior branding. For how Pentagon see that may be helped, read Sirota's article.

James der Derian has also written over the years on the rise of the military-media machine.