Will the US attack Iran?

19/03/2006 Ara SARGSYAN

We can assume for sure that international troops will not be allocated in Karabakh not depending on which country they represent: the USA, Great Britain, Turkey, Russia, Ukraine or other countries.
The issue of allocating international military forces in the region is stipulated by the implementation of the “Great Middle East” program by the US. The fact that the US and British troops attacked Iraq in 2003 was stipulated by this too. If you recall the main reason for attacking Iraq was to find weapons of mass destruction there. In fact there were not such weapons in Iraq; the US and Britain knew this very well. The reason that British specialist Doctor Clark was killed was not to let anyone publish the report containing the truth. There are a lot of facts that can prove this, but we can mention only one of them: after not finding any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq the US announced that their purpose was to “develop democracy” in Iraq and this was the reason why the coalition forces were located there, whom the Armenians joined in 2005 (with the mission of trying to develop democracy in Iraq on the part of Armenians). Suddenly I remembered us being involved in the military troops of the Soviet Union which were sent to Afghanistan and the army officers told us that our mission was to protect the challenges of the April revolution. Times change, but violators don’t.

Ever since the coalition troops entered Iraq with the purpose of developing democracy, there they have killed 170-180000 citizens. The number of victims of the coalition troops is over 3000. The United States government has spent 780 billion dollars alone in Iraq for the purpose of “developing democracy” there. For this “democratization” of Iraqi people the American tax payers pay 250 million dollars every day.
The economy of Iraq has collapsed and since the beginning of these actions about eight million citizens have migrated. Before that there were over 20000 Armenians in Iraq, but now there are less than 5000. In order to not make the article boring I will only note that during these parliamentary elections the team of Sadam was in second place. So what changed? And now the US is seeking new ways to organize presidential elections like a lot of powers, financial oligarchs, governmental and oppositional parties do in Armenia.

As you can see, the politics is the same both in Armenia and Iraq. We can make only one assumption on the basis of the abovementioned: Americans have problems with “democracy” in Iraq and they will still stay there during the coming one and half years. This is good for us because this means that the US will not attack Iran in this period and the issue of allocating international troops in Karabakh is not included in the agenda of the US White House. So we can assume that such suggestions will not be real during the meeting in France on February 10. But this doesn’t mean yet that this issue will not be discussed. In order to isolate Iran the US and British forces also have to close the way to Iran from North along the territory between the Caspian Sea and Meghri.

Iran is not Iraq and their military potential is not less than that of one of the strongest country of the region, Turkey (alas, not Armenia). Iran has modern military technical facilities and weapons, their army is strong. Iran produces its own rockets. It is worth mentioning that “Shahab” rocket that is produced in Iran can cross 3850 kilometers. Iran has good submarines which can suddenly appear in the territories near Israel and the US. Some sources assure that Iran has obtained small nuclear rackets from Pakistan. We don’t think that these rockets will be used against Armenia because it is hardly possible that Armenia will join the US and British troops like they did in the case of Iraq. The gas pipeline from Iran is one of those guarantees. This pipeline will be very important for our economy because the recent explosion of the pipeline coming from Russia shows that this is the beginning of the foreign games in our region. In fact as a result of these games, our country will be targeted either by Iran or by Turkey and in this case neither of these oligarchs can help us, the only thing they can do in this case is to help themselves and escape from Armenia.

I think that this conflict between Iran and the US will not result in a war in the nearest future. After the failure in Iraq the US will have to change its approach to the countries in the region, which will also have an influence on the new doctrine of security adopted by the US government this year. I think the US will not attack Iran in the nearest future and the US and Iran may come to terms on the basis of which Iran will become the most important partner of the US in the Middle East. This is probably the reason why the US Ambassador to Armenia, John Evans didn’t do anything against the gas pipeline construction supplying gas from Iran to Armenia.