A wartime window of opportunity: the regimes in Iraq and Iran are ripe for change, and defense experts say the strategy known as the Bush Doctrine must take full advantage before it's too late

0 Comments | Insight on the News, Feb 4, 2002 | by J. Michael Waller

Many in the U.S. intelligence community, including Clinton holdovers uncomfortable with the idea that terror networks have strong state sponsorship, continue to cling to the Clinton-era fiction that al-Qaeda's skillful tradecraft and operations were only a product of the efforts of Saudi millionaire bin Laden, Mylroie says. But of course Iraqi intelligence has all those capabilities, and Mylroie argues that, as in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, Iraq had a hand in the attacks of Sept. 11. "The gulf war never ended," Mylroie says. "We don't like to think too much about him [Saddam], but he thinks a lot about us." And Saddam has more powerful tools in his arsenal that he has yet to deploy. "The way he can get us is through biological or nuclear terrorism," she says.

As Isby puts it: "He's always surprised us. We were surprised in 1991 about how far along his nuclear program was. We were surprised when he launched a two-stage missile in 1998." How much time do we have before Saddam could deliver and detonate a weapon of mass destruction against the American population? In Isby's analysis, "I think it's later than we think."

Toppling Saddam would not be as intensive as the Persian Gulf War, proponents of the idea argue. "Train some Iraqis at Fort Bragg in laser designation [to pinpoint targets for U.S. warplanes] and how to talk on the radio and it's over for Saddam," a covert military operative tells INSIGHT.

It also soon might be too late to stop Tehran. "Iran is much more dangerous than Iraq for the near future," says professor Uri Ra'anan, director of the Institute for the Study of Conflict, Ideology and Policy at Boston University. "Both in the nuclear field and on the question of delivery systems they are much more advanced than Saddam Hussein."

The window of opportunity is now, say the authentic experts in this field, who note that the Arab and Islamic world particularly is in awe of the U.S. fire-power and strength displayed in Afghanistan. Ilan Berman of the American Foreign Policy Council says, "There is now a window to align Arab countries with us toward Iran or Iraq." That window results from a combination of the new fear and respect that the United States enjoys in the Middle East and the internal vulnerabilities in Baghdad and Tehran.

"The regimes in Iraq and Iran are ripe for change, and for the first time in years the U.S. appears to have the tools at hand to accomplish this," according to Berman. Saddam enjoys virtually no foreign support and, with his huge military machine and secret police, he rules his people only through fear. The Islamic Republic of Iran, meanwhile, has a viable internal opposition and a restive population that looks toward the West and is demanding rapid change. With the majority of Iranians who have known the Islamic regime since childhood and even older Iranians lamenting the more prosperous days before the 1979 revolution, Iran's population is paradoxically one of the most pro-Western in the region. "The Iranian people are very pro-American," Berman says. "They're dying for a chance to oust the mullahs."