No one to call in Iran Posted by Max Bergmann

It seems pretty clear that the Bush administration is trying to publicize the hell out of the incident in the Strait of Hormuz - posting it on the internet and holding press conferences - to make the case while Bush is in the Middle East that Iran is still a real and present danger. But let's not kid ourselves, these sorts of incidents are very serious. And they are even more dangerous when you have no way of talking to the other side. Fred Kaplan has an excellent run down on the incident in the Strait of Hormuz in Slate.

Many wars over the centuries have been triggered by misperceptions and by escalations from small-scale clashes. As historian Walter Russell Mead notes in an op-ed piece in today's Wall Street Journal, "From the 18^th century to the present day, threats to American ships and maritime commerce have been the way most U.S. wars start."

And yet, as Adm. Gary Roughead, the chief of naval operations, told the Boston Glob's Bryan Bender and Farah Stockman on Monday, the U.S. commanders have no systematic way to halt a conflict if it begins to spiral. "I do not have a direct link with my counterpart in the Iranian Navy," he said. "I do not have a way to communicate directly with the Iranian Navy or [Revolutionary] Guard."

Through the darkest days of the Cold War, Washington and Moscow maintained a hot line. During most of those times, there were parallel forums for communication between the two sides' senior officers. Iran doesn't pose anything remotely resembling the threat that the United States and the Soviet Union posed to each other in those years. Here is yet another reason to establish diplomatic relations with Iran. You don't have to be friends to talk.

Comments

[Mike M.]

Okay, I know our Navy lost a wargmame to an admiral using speedboat tactics awhile back but aren't we overplaying the Iranian threat a little here?

[Dan Kervick]

It's really very difficult to believe that on the very eve of a trip by Bush to the Middle East, part of the agenda of which was to stiffen the resolve of Arab States to participate in an anti-Iran bloc, a proposal in which those Arab states have shown themselves increasingly uninterested as they move toward a more diplomatic approach to Iran, the Iranians would choose to gin up a provocation giving Bush precisely the rhetorical ammunition he needs.

It looks now like the US spliced some video and audio of fairly routine encounters in the Straits of Hormuz, along with non-official radio chatter, and then released the concoction to coincide with Bush's trip. But the whole thing has been so inept, and the military story has unraveled to quickly, that one wonders if even the hawks in the Bush administration are now just going through the motions.