New Moves on the Tripolar Chessboard

Michael T Klare, Asia Times:

For months, the US press and policymaking elite have portrayed the crisis with Iran as a two-sided struggle between Washington and Tehran, with the European powers as well as Russia and China playing supporting roles.

It is certainly true that US President George W Bush and Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad are the leading protagonists in this drama, with each making inflammatory statements about the other to whip up public support at home.

But an informed reading of recent international diplomacy surrounding the Iranian crisis suggests that another equally fierce - and undoubtedly more important - struggle is also taking place: a tripolar contest among the United States, Russia and China for domination of the greater Persian Gulf/Caspian Sea region and its mammoth energy reserves.

When it comes to grand strategy, top Bush administration officials have long attempted to maintain US dominance over the "global chessboard" (as they see it) by diminishing the influence of the only other significant players, Russia and China. READ MORE

This classic geopolitical contest began with a flourish in early 2001, when the White House signaled the provocative course it planned to follow by unilaterally repudiating the US-Russian Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and announcing new high-tech arms sales to Taiwan, which China still considers a breakaway province.

After the events of September 11, 2001, these initial signals of antagonism were toned down to secure Russian and Chinese assistance in fighting the "war on terror", but in recent months the classic chessboard version of great-power politics has again come to dominate strategic thinking in Washington.

Advancing the strategic pawns

This was perhaps first signaled on May 4, when Vice President Dick Cheney went to Lithuania, a former Soviet republic, to lambaste the Russian government at a pro-democracy confab. He accused Kremlin officials of "unfairly and improperly" restricting the rights of Russian citizens and of using the country's abundant oil and gas supplies as "tools of intimidation [and] blackmail" against its neighbors. He also condemned Moscow for attempting to "monopolize the transportation" of oil and gas supplies in Eurasia - a direct challenge to US interests in the Caspian region.

The next day, Cheney flew to another former Soviet republic, Kazakhstan, in oil-and-natural-gas-rich Central Asia, where he urged that country's leaders to ship their plentiful oil through a US-sponsored pipeline to Turkey and the Mediterranean rather than through Russian-controlled pipelines to Europe.

Then, on June 3, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld weighed in on China, telling an audience of Asian security officials that Beijing's "lack of transparency" with respect to its military spending "understandably causes concerns for some of its neighbors". These comments were accompanied by publicly announced plans for increased US spending on sophisticated weapons systems such as the F-22A fighter and Virginia-class nuclear attack submarines that could only be useful in a big-power war for which there were just two realistic adversaries - Russia and China.

Like Russia, China has also aroused Washington's ire over its aggressive energy policies - but in China's case over its increasing attempts to nail down oil and gas supplies for its burgeoning, energy-poor economy. In "Military Power of the People's Republic of China", its most recent report on Chinese military capabilities, issued on May 23, the Pentagon decried China's use of arms transfers and other military aid as inducements to such countries as Iran and Sudan to gain access to energy reserves in the Middle East and Africa, and for acquiring warships "that could serve as the basis for a force capable of power projection" into the oil-producing regions of the planet.

There's nothing new about the Bush administration's desire to roll back Russia and "contain" China. Such thinking was famously articulated in the "Defense Planning Guidance for 1994-99", written by Paul Wolfowitz, then under secretary of defense, and leaked to the press in early 1992. "Our first objective is to prevent the re-emergence of a new rival, either on the territory of the former Soviet Union or elsewhere, that poses a threat on the order of that posed formerly by the Soviet Union," the document declared. This remains the principal aim of US strategy today, but it has now been joined by another key objective: to ensure that the United States - and no one else - controls the energy supplies of the Persian Gulf and adjacent areas of Asia.

When first articulated in the "Carter Doctrine" of 1980, named after former president Jimmy Carter, this precept was directed exclusively at the Gulf; now, under President Bush, it has been extended to the Caspian Sea basin as well - a consequence of rising oil prices, fears of diminishing supplies and the vast oil and natural-gas deposits believed to be housed there. To assert US influence in this region, once part of the Soviet Union, the White House has been setting up military bases, supplying arms and conducting a sub rosa war of influence with both Moscow and Beijing.

Knight's moves in the Gulf

It is in this context that the current struggle over Iran must be viewed. Iran occupies a pivotal position on the tripolar chessboard. Geographically, it is the only nation that abuts both the Persian Gulf and the Caspian Sea, positioning Tehran to play a significant role in the two areas of greatest energy concern to the United States, Russia and China. Iran also abuts the strategic Strait of Hormuz - the narrow waterway from the Gulf to the Indian Ocean through which about one-quarter of the world's oil moves every day. As a result, if Washington ever lifted its trade embargo on Iran, its territory could be used as the most obvious transit route for the delivery of oil and natural gas from the Caspian countries to global markets, especially in Europe and Japan.

As the most populous and industrialized nation in the Persian Gulf basin, Iran has always played a significant role in that region's affairs - a situation that has often troubled neighbors such as Saddam Hussein's Iraq (which invaded Iran in 1980, beginning a bloody eight-year war that ended in an exhausted stalemate). In recent years, Iran has also gained regional clout as the center of the Shi'ite branch of Islam. Long despised and abused by Sunnis, the Shi'ites are now in the ascendancy in neighboring Iraq and are gaining greater visibility in Bahrain, Kuwait, Lebanon and the Shi'ite-populated areas of Saudi Arabia nearest to Kuwait (where crucial Saudi oilfields lie) in what is starting to be thought of as the "Shi'a Crescent".

At present, Iran's military capabilities are not impressive - a result, in part, of the US embargo on sales of spare parts to the Iranian air force (largely equipped with American aircraft during the reign of the shah). But Iran has acquired submarines and other modern weapons from Russia and has developed a ballistic-missile capability - probably with help from North Korea and China. Were it ever to succeed in acquiring nuclear weapons, it would indeed become a formidable regional power, possibly calling into question America's projected military domination of the Gulf. It is for this reason more than any other that Washington is so determined to block Iran's acquisition of nuclear arms.

While both Russia and China claim to be opposed to such a development, they certainly wouldn't view it with the same degree of dread and fury as does the Bush administration - a consideration that has no doubt given added impetus to its drive to block Iran's nuclear efforts.

Above all, of course, Iran possesses the world's second-largest reserves of petroleum - an estimated 132 billion barrels (11.1% of the world's known reservoirs); and also the second-largest reserves of natural gas - 971 trillion cubic feet (27.5 trillion cubic meters, or 15.3% of known reservoirs). The Iranians may possess less oil than the Saudis and less gas than the Russians, but no other country controls so much of both of these vital resources. Many states, including China, India, Japan and the European Union countries, already depend on Iran for significant shares of their petroleum supplies; and China and the others have been busy negotiating deals to develop, and then draw on, its mammoth natural-gas reserves. Iran will not only remain a major energy supplier, but also one of the few that has the capacity - with the right kind of investment - to boost its output substantially in the years ahead when many other sources of oil and gas will have gone into decline.

In 1953, after the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) helped oust prime minister Mohammed Mossadegh, who had nationalized the Iranian oil industry, US energy firms came to play a commanding role in Iran's oil industry with the blessing of the shah. This remained true until he fell in the revolution led by ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in 1979. They would no doubt love to return to Iran, if given the opportunity, but Washington's hostility to the Islamic regime in Tehran now precludes their re-entry.

Under Executive Order 12959, signed by president Bill Clinton in 1995 and renewed by President Bush, all US companies are barred from operating in Iran. But should "regime change" ever occur there - the implied objective of US policy - this Executive Order would be lifted, and US firms would be able to do what Chinese, Japanese, Indian and other firms are now doing, exploiting Iranian energy supplies. Just how much energy figures into the US administration's desire for political change in Iran cannot be fully judged from the outside, but given the close ties Bush, Cheney and other key administration officials have with the US energy industry, it is hard to believe that it doesn't play a highly significant one.

For China's energy plans, Iran's "pariah" status has certainly been a boon. Because US firms are barred from investing and European companies face US economic penalties if they do so (under the congressionally mandated Iran-Libya Sanctions Act of 1996), Chinese companies have had a relatively open playing field as they shop for promising energy deals like the US$50 billion one signed in 2004 to develop the massive Yadavaran gas field and to buy 10 million tons of Iranian liquefied natural gas annually for 25 years.

Russia, unlike energy-desperate China, has abundant supplies of oil and natural gas, but has an abiding interest in not seeing energy-rich Iran fall under the sway of the US and, as a major supplier of nuclear equipment and technology, also has a special interest in lending a profitable hand to Iran's energy establishment. The Russians are completing the construction of a civilian nuclear reactor at Bushehr in southwestern Iran, a $1 billion project, and are eager to sell more reactors and other nuclear-energy systems to the Iranians.

This, of course, is a source of considerable frustration to Washington, which seeks to isolate Tehran and prevent it from receiving any nuclear technology. (Although an entirely civilian project, Bushehr would no doubt be on the target list for any US air attack intended to cripple Iran's nuclear capacity.) Nevertheless, the head of the Russian nuclear-energy agency, Sergei Kiriyenko, announced in February, "We don't see any political obstacles to completing Bushehr" and bringing it online "in the swiftest possible period".

Given what is at stake, it is easy to see why the United States, Russia and China all have such an abiding interest in the outcome of the Iranian crisis. For Washington, the replacement of the clerical government in Tehran with a US-friendly regime would represent a colossal, threefold accomplishment: it would eliminate a major threat to America's continued dominance of the Persian Gulf, open up the world's No 2 oil-and-gas supplier to US energy firms, and greatly diminish Chinese and Russian influence in the greater Gulf region.

From a geopolitical perspective, there could be no greater win on the global chessboard today. Even if Washington failed to achieve regime change but, using its military might, crippled Iran's nuclear establishment without sustaining major damage itself in Iraq or elsewhere, this would still be a significant geopolitical win, exposing the inability of either Russia or China to counter US moves of this sort. (This would only work, of course, if the Bush administration were able to contain the inevitable fallout from such action, whether increased ethnic strife in Iraq or a sharp spike in oil prices.)

Not surprisingly, Moscow and Beijing are doing everything in their power to prevent any US geopolitical triumph in Iran or Central Asia from occurring, though without provoking an outright breach in relations with Washington - and so endangering complex economic ties with the United States.

As this grand geopolitical "Great Game" unfolds, with the potential economic well-being of the planet at stake, all sides are trying to line up allies wherever possible, using whatever diplomatic levers are available. Since the invasion of Iraq in 2003, the US position in both the Persian Gulf region and Central Asia has noticeably deteriorated. At present, the Bush administration's greatest weakness remains the schism in US-European relations created by the unilateral US invasion itself.

Because the Europeans felt betrayed by that action, they have largely refrained from helping out either in the counter-insurgency effort in Iraq or in funding the reconstruction of the country. This has imposed a ghastly and mounting cost on the United States. Fearing a repetition of this fiasco in Iran, the White House has clearly decided to let the diplomatic process play out on the Iranian crisis in a way it refused to do when it came to Saddam's Iraq. So, within limits, it is letting the Europeans set the diplomatic game plan for "resolving" the nuclear dispute.

This, in turn, has given Moscow and Beijing their one obvious option for averting what could be a geopolitical disaster for them in Iran: the potential use of a Security Council veto to block the imposition of US-threatened sanctions on Iran under Chapter VII of the UN Charter, which could legitimize not only such sanctions but also the use of force against any state deemed to pose a threat to international peace. The Europeans want to prevent such a vote from occurring - knowing that any "failure" at the United Nations might only strengthen the arguments of the hawks in Washington who want to move unilaterally and by force against Iran. As a result, they are listening to the Russians and Chinese, who insist on relying on diplomacy - and nothing else - to resolve the crisis, however long that takes.

"Russia believes that the sole solution for this problem will be based on the work of the IAEA" (International Atomic Energy Agency), said Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in March. Very similar statements have been issued by Chinese officials, who have expressly ruled out force as an acceptable solution to the crisis. In February, for instance, the Chinese ambassador to the IAEA, Wu Hailongon, called on "all relevant parties to exercise restraint and patience" and "refrain from any action that might further complicate or deteriorate the situation".

Checkmate for whom?

That all key parties see this unfolding crisis as part of a larger geopolitical struggle is beyond doubt. For example, the Russians and Chinese have begun to create something of a counter-bloc to the United States in Central Asia, using the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) as a vehicle.

Originally established by Moscow and Beijing to combat ethnic separatism in Central Asia, the SCO - now including Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan - has become more like a regional security organization, a sort of mini-North Atlantic Treaty Organization (but also an anti-NATO).

Clearly, the Russians and the Chinese hope that it will help them turn back US influence in the energy-rich Islamic territories of the former Soviet Union, and in this it has shown - in Uzbekistan, at least - some signs of realpolitik success. At a recent meeting of the organization, the current members went so far as to invite Iran to join as an observer - to the obvious displeasure of Washington. "It strikes me as passing strange," Rumsfeld opined recently in Singapore, "that one would want to bring into an organization that says it's against terrorism ... the leading terrorist nation in the world: Iran."

At the same time, the United States has sought to line up its own allies - including South Asian wildcard India - for a possible military confrontation with Iran. Even though Bush insists that he's prepared to rely on diplomacy to resolve the crisis, Pentagon officials have sought the assistance of NATO in planning air strikes against Iranian nuclear facilities. In March, for example, the head of NATO's Airborne Early Warning and Control Force, General Axel Tuttelmann, indicated that his force was ready to assist US forces at the very onset of a US attack on Iran. The German press has also reported that former CIA director Peter Goss visited Turkey late last year to request that country's assistance in conducting air strikes against Iran.

Despite continuing calls for diplomacy to prevail, all sides in this wider struggle recognize that the current situation cannot last forever. For one thing, the shaky position of the Bush administration - politically at home, in its wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, in its attempts to secure geopolitical advantage in Central Asia, and economically at a global level - continues to develop fissures and to embolden those countries, Iran included, that might frustrate its desires.

To top Bush officials, still dreaming of global energy hegemony, the situation may seem increasingly perilous, but the window to act may also appear in danger of closing. Their appetite for European, Chinese or Russian stalling tactics, no less Iranian intransigence, may not be great; and, however much Moscow and Beijing try to persuade the Iranians to back down on nuclear matters, thereby averting US military action, their influence in Tehran may not prove strong enough.

If, in the coming few months, Iran rejects US demands for the complete and permanent termination of its nuclear-enrichment activities, the United States will certainly insist on the imposition of sanctions at the UN. If, in turn, the Security Council (with the acquiescence of Russia and China) adopts purely symbolic gestures to no visible effect, Washington will then demand tougher sanctions under Chapter VII; and if either Russia or China vetoes such measures, the Bush administration will almost certainly choose to use military means against Iran, playing out Moscow's and Beijing's worst fears.

Russia and China can thus be expected to stretch out the diplomatic process for as long as possible, hoping thereby to make military action by the United States appear illegitimate to the Europeans and others. By the same token, the hawks in Washington will undoubtedly become increasingly impatient with the delays - viewing them as rear-guard strategic moves by Russia and China - and so will push for military action by the end of this year if nothing has been accomplished by then on the diplomatic front.

As the crisis over Iran unfolds, most of the news commentary will continue to focus on the war of words between Washington and Tehran. Political insiders understand, however, that the most significant struggle is the one that remains just out of sight, pitting Washington against Moscow and Beijing in the battle for global influence and energy domination. From this perspective, Iran is just one battlefield - however significant - in a far larger, more long-lasting, and momentous contest.

Michael T Klare is professor of peace and world security studies at Hampshire College and the author, most recently, of Blood and Oil: The Dangers and Consequences of America's Growing Dependence on Imported Petroleum (Owl Books) as well as Resource Wars, The New Landscape of Global Conflict.