Iran’s real center of gravity
Iran’s real center of gravity | Conservative News, Views & Books.
Iran is winning the shadow war to acquire nuclear weapons in part because the U.S. and its allies ignore the true center of gravity.
Center of gravity is a military term for the source of power that provides moral or physical strength, freedom of action, or will to act. Iran’s center of gravity is the supreme leader, Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei, his core advisers, and their Islamist ideology.
Rather than target the regime for replacement the Obama administration made the Iranian people and Iran’s nuclear program the center of gravity. That decision plays into the chief mullah’s hands and makes a shooting war more likely.
The ayatollah confirmed as much at a recent meeting with Islamic leaders. “They [the Americans] clearly say that Iranian officials should be compelled to reconsider their calculations through the intensification of the pressure and the sanctions,” the ayatollah told the Tehran Times. But the supreme leader said he won’t cave to Western pressure because I am “more confident about the correctness of the path we have followed and the path that the revolution has put before us.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu understands the ayatollah’s revolutionary path. Netanyahu said Iran is governed by a “fanatical regime” that sees itself on a sacred mission of global Islamic domination which requires nuclear weapons and destroying Israel is just one step on that path.
Consider how Obama’s five-front shadow war focused on the Iranian people and its nuclear program plays into the ayatollah’s hands.
First, America is leading a psychological war to influence Iranian public opinions, emotions, attitudes and behaviors hoping to force the regime to abandon its nuclear program. It isn’t working.
Over the past two years U.S. and Israel on several occasions dialed-up Iranian anxiety by suggesting a military strike was imminent. Last week, for example, Israeli defense minister Ehud Barak said the U.S. and Israel are now on the same page about the Iranian nuclear program. Earlier that day reports surfaced that a new U.S. National Intelligence Estimate indicates Iran has made significant progress toward creating nuclear weapons.
Meanwhile, Prime Minister Netanyahu dismissed the idea that a nuclear-armed Iran could be contained. He said if Iran gets a nuclear bomb, it may actually use it. And a week ago U.S. secretary of defense Leon Panetta restated America’s intention to attack if Iran develops a nuclear weapon.
Each time these threats surface Iran denies it seeks nuclear weapons and reminds its public the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty grants Iran the right to harness nuclear energy for peaceful purposes. Then in the same breath Iranian officials remind their public the U.S. has a long history of threatening the Islamic Republic.
America supported Iraq’s Saddam Hussein with weapons to fight the Iranians in the 1980s. During the eight year Iran-Iraq war America imposed withering economic sanctions on Iran yet the nation survived and by inference it will weather this storm as well.
Second, press reports indicate America and her allies wage a covert war to assassinate Iranian nuclear officials. The most recent incident took place this January assassinating an Iranian nuclear scientist with a “terrorist bomb blast” in northern Tehran when an unidentified motorcyclist attached a magnetic explosive device to the scientist’s car.
The regime demonizes the West and Israel for waging a covert war on Iranian soil. Last week Iranian state television broadcast purported confessions by suspects connected with the killings of the Iranian nuclear officials. The broadcast showed those suspects re-enacting the assassinations and pictures of them at a training camp allegedly outside Tel Aviv, Israel. Iran blames Israel’s Mossad and the CIA for the assassinations.
Third, the New York Times reports Obama ordered attacks using the Stuxnet cyberweapon on Iran’s computer systems at Natanz, Iran’s largest uranium enrichment facility. That facility produces low enriched material for generating electricity.
Iran was also targeted by a cyberweapon called Flame that swept up information from computers of high-ranking Iranian officials. Recently a new virus, Gauss, stole financial information from customers of Lebanese banks. Iran and its terror proxy Hezbollah use Lebanese banks.
Iran responded to these attacks by announcing the creation of a military cyberunit to defend its networks. Iranian Brig. Gen. Gholamreza Jalali, the head of Iran’s Passive Defense Organization, said Iran was prepared “to fight our enemies” in “cyberspace and Internet warfare.” Once again, Iranian officials present themselves as defending their sovereign rights from foreign aggressors.
Fourth, the U.S., United Nations and allies launched an economic war that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad called “the most severe and strictest sanctions ever imposed on a country.”
The sanctions’ impact is discernable. Iran is exporting far less oil every day than a year ago and its currency plunged more than 40 percent against the dollar since 2011. Banking sanctions are making it difficult to import goods and control inflation.
Tehran responded to the latest sanctions by threatening to disrupt traffic in the Strait of Hormuz and tested missiles capable of targeting the entire region. Subsequently U.S. officials warned that stopping strait traffic was a “red line” that would earn a military response. The U.S. also increased cooperation with Persian Gulf allies to build a missile defense system.
Iran’s foreign minister, Ali Akbar Salehi, defended his nation’s defensive response and dismissed the sanctions impact. “We have been subject to sanctions for 33 years and these sanctions are … not a problem,” Salehi said and Ayatollah Khamenei called for a “resistance economy,” something reminiscent of the 1980s when Iran struggled against Iraq and suffered under American sanctions.
Understandably some Iranians disagree. Abdollah Nuri, a former interior minister of Iran, called on the ayatollah to hold a referendum on the fate of the country’s nuclear program. He warned the “ill-effects, disadvantages, and pressure” due to their nuclear activities earned sanctions that created conditions that have passed the acceptable limit.It is unlikely such dissent will spark widespread unrest.
Finally, the diplomatic war failed to persuade Iran to abandon its nuclear weapons program. Dennis Ross, Obama’s former adviser on Iran, concluded the latest negotiations with Iran which ended in June had become a trap, allowing Iran to continue enriching nuclear fuel without slowing the Iranian program.
This didn’t surprise the Israeli leader. “Neither sanctions nor diplomacy has yet had any impact on Iran’s nuclear weapons program. This is a regime that has broken every rule in the book,” Netanyahu said.
Iran used the latest negotiations to accelerate its nuclear program. It now has enough enriched uranium for at least six bombs. Its underground, well-defended Fordow enrichment facility accelerated production of 20% uranium and recently the regime announced its intention to enrich uranium to 60 percent for a future nuclear-powered ship.That is dangerously close to bomb grade material.
Iran is winning the five-front shadow war with the West; the regime is stronger as a result and much closer to being a nuclear-armed state.
The only way to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear-armed regime is to replace the center of gravity – the ayatollah and his cadre. And short of invasion or assassination the only alternative to remove the regime is to encourage an Arab Spring-like uprising similar to what took place in Egypt which may include arming Iranian rebels.
WarSclerotic 
August 14, 2012 at 2:08 PM
There is no time for an ” arab spring ” in Iran, nor there are any means right now to accomplice that. When the ”green movement” sparked in Iran, yes, it was an opportunity to do just that. But we all know who is responsible for that failure. His name I even won’t write here because of his abject personality.
Anyhow, there is an israeli say that ”one will not cry for the milk that was lost” and the same israelis will solve this now. After all, the state security is on the line.
August 14, 2012 at 2:09 PM
Save lives, save the world, plow two dozen tomahawk cruise missiles into Iranian leadership. Decapitate the beast!
August 14, 2012 at 7:34 PM
The decision makers in Israel and the US need to decide if a strike is intended to destroy or delay the nuclear weapons program or if regime change is the goal. These are two different analytical questions with two differing military and diplomatic responses. Decapitation will not work as the inner workings of the high ranking clergy is highly redundant and the IRGC is multi faceted and resilient. What the regime and the IRGC cannot stop is a determined Green Revolution in the Streets. If the US forces and Israelis go in with the option of destroying or delaying nuclear weapons then it does not matter, the Ayatollahs will still prevail and continue in power. If the Israeli’s have to go it alone I doubt they will be able to launch the number of strikes necessary to decimate the nuclear program in just one or two waves of strike aircraft. (some commentators mention a four or five day sustained campaign). This would also prompt Iran to attempt to close the straits which would draw in the US. The problem with this is that the Obama administration will only take minimal measure to help Israel, unless the Iranians are dumb and launch some sort of attack against a US ship or US shipping. That would be the only way this timid administration will take action.
The twin goals of getting rid of the nuclear program and regime change can be accomplished by Israel but it would need tacit American approval–which will not be forth coming. A coordinated Israeli air, sea, cyber and land attack may have a better chance with cruise missile launches from the Gulf, an air-base in Azerbaijan or even part of Iraq for several days. The objective would not only be the nuclear facilities but regular military and dual use facilities that are of great importance to the regime–such as the IRBM research facility in Tehran. In short those national symbols of the state and the states power and legitimacy need to be attacked and the proverbial man on the street needs to realize that the Iranian state cannot protect him or his family and they are impotent in the face of an Israeli or American attack. Take out couple of gasoline refineries, bridges in the Zagros, irrigation works, port facilities, various water treatment and power plants. Israeli and American F-16I’s, F-15’s and F-18’s flying with impunity over Tehran and the major cities would go a long way in bringing the regime down as it will have lost any legitimacy it has left.
Research on authoritarian regimes engaging in conflict shows that regimes will survive if they hold their own. Iran did this in the Iran-Iraq gulf war when the regime was popular and they were fighting for Iranian soil, not weapons their leaders promise to use against Israel and the US. While the Iranian people are not in love with Israel, they do like the US and emulate our culture every chance they get. A strike that is either an Israeli enterprise or a joint operation has to be of sufficient magnitude to demonstrate that the regime is impotent and full of hot air which will cause mass demonstrations and defections from the regular Army; which will be a turning point especially if they take aim at the IRGC and Basij. With American support, Iranian and American-Iranian hackers will keep the net and cell phones going so, not only the world but the Iranians themselves will know what is going on. If the people believe that they are supported and are on the winning side we will see a regime change.
Unfortunately Obama is too interested in his reelection to give a damn about Israel. Look what happened in Egypt an overt call for a regime change that has culminated in the MB in charge and silence in Syria where atrocities take place every day. Look how we left Iraq–a client state of Iran. This is shameful and besmirches the memory of all those who died on Iraqi soil.