U.S. strategy on Iran may have backfired
TEHRAN — It seemed like a good idea at the time: Increase the military, diplomatic and economic pressure on Iran to get the country to bow to the international community on its nuclear enrichment program and curtail its alleged troublemaking in Iraq.
But now, with 15 British sailors and marines held captive and Tehran threatening to withhold its cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency, that strategy has apparently backfired.
Months of hard-nosed U.S. political and military pressure on Iran may have further radicalized and emboldened the regime, undermining Washington's stated aim of neutralizing the Iranian threat without resorting to war, analysts say.
Elements of Iran's government, painted as a rogue state for its refusal to halt its uranium enrichment program, responded forcefully to the U.S.-led challenge, those analysts say. Not only have they sparked an international crisis by capturing the 15 Britons in disputed Persian Gulf waters, and airing alleged confessions on television, they've ramped up security operations in the gulf with war games and missile launches.
The regime has blamed a fear of U.S. airstrikes for its decision to stop disclosing non-required information about its nuclear program, according to a series of memos described by the Associated Press.
"Iranians are on the offensive because they're in a defensive posture," said Patrick Cronin, a former State Department and Pentagon official who is now director of research at the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies.
Cronin, a U.S. Navy intelligence officer in the Persian Gulf during the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war, called the capture of the Britons a "horizontal escalation" meant both to shift the domestic discussion and to gain leverage against the West.
"They have to go on the offensive to change the narrative," he said. "There's a domestic audience and a fight over who is the rightful voice of Iran. If they don't have outside threats, they're going to lose power. If we slap on sanctions, they can blame the West."
Overstretched militarily in Iraq and Afghanistan and facing no easy options on confronting Iran's rising regional ambitions, the Bush administration appeared to settle months ago on a hard-line strategy, U.S. officials and analysts say.
