All the President's men — pt II
International (Socialist Outlook site)1980sPaul LawsonScanned print read by OCR, and not yet proofread: expect run-together words, dropped letters and, where a piece began partway down a page, a few lines of its neighbour. The printed page is the authority.
M
The news that the United
States has sold weapons to
'terrorist' Iran has caused a scandal of near-Watergate proporations, which threatens to destabilize the
Reagan presidency. What lies behind the decision to sell arms to Iran. PAUL
LAWSON investigates.
PRESIDENT REAGAN'S administration is now embroiled in a scandal which threatens to become as serious as the Watergate scandal did for Nixon. The root cause is the same — secret operations carried out illegally at the behest of the President and his advisors. And the response of the administration has also been the same — an attempt to sacrifice lower-ranking officials to guard the President and his immediate circle of advisors. The whole affair casts a cruel spotlight on the way that the administration works and its real foreign policy objectives. In particular it exposes the hypocrisy of the 'antiterrorist' offensive launched by Reagan.
The basic facts of the Iran operation are not now in doubt. The US government has been selling arms to Iran for over a year. It has probably encouraged the Israelis to sell arms to the Iranians for the past five years. An attempt has been made, via the bizarre visit to Tehran by ex-National Security Advisor Robert MacFarlane to develop more friendly relations with sections of the Iranian government. A huge slush fund from the arms profits has been used to finance the contras and CIA-backed right wing insurgents in Angola and Afghanistan.
Why should the US want to sell arms to Iran? After all, when the Gulf war began, many people suspected the US of covert support for the Iraqis. The answer to this is twofold. First, it is now obvious that only Iran can win the Gulf war - it certainly cannot lose it. Huge reserves of Iranian manpower have been bloodily sacrificed in the war to overcome the Iraqi advantage in weapons. This has pushed the Iraqis onto the defensive and wrecked their economy. There is little doubt that Iran will emerge as the strongest power in the Gulf region. It will be better for the US to do business with the Iranians than see them develop better links with the Russians who share their northern border.
Thus the explanation given by Reagan that he was seeking to develop better relations with Iranian 'moderates' is probably genuine. But it is more complicated than that. Israel has 23
Reflex
US arms, Iranian soldiers, Iraqi dead
backed Iran from the beginning of the
Gulf war because Iraq is an Arab state, geographically much closer to Israel, and thus more likely than Iran to pose a threat to the Zionist state. The US has doubtless been influenced by this assessment of their Israeli allies, who they regard as their major 'strategic asset' in the region. Israel has not only sold arms to Iran, but bombed the
Iraqi nuclear reactor to prevent the emergence of an Iraqi nuclear weapons capacity. The best solution for
Israel is that neither side should win the war. But if there is to be a victor, then Israel prefers Iran.
All of this shows just how absurd the
US campaign against 'terrorist' tions is. Iran has been the main sponsor, indeed the organiser, of the Islamic fundamentalist 'Hizbollah' movement in Lebanon which has, among other things, been engaged in kidnapping US citizens. A 'terrorist' outfit if ever there was one! Gaddaffi gets bombed by the Americans for far less. Why? Because it suits US foreign policy to whip up hysteria against Libya, helping to drag European political leaders in behind Reagan's cold war offensive and dominance in the Western alliance, while simultaneously cuddling up to Iran. A holy war against terrorism has to do with it. It must be increasingly clear to the Europeans that they've been conned by Reagan - only Thatcher continues to parrot her absolute faith in what Reagan has
If Reagan's main credibility problem today is that the American public just cannot understand why arms were sold to 'terrorists', the Us Congress has been incensed that during its embargo on arms to the Nicaraguan contras, the White House and the CIA circumvented the ban by utilising the Iran arms slush fund. This operation was run from the National Security Council (NSC) offices in the White knowledge of the State Department which allegedly runs US foreign policy. How was this possible?
For several years there has been a running fight between the State Department on the one hand, and the NSC and the Pentagon on the other over control of foreign policy. While the NSC and military cowboys have favoured an aggressive and adventurous policy, Secretary of State George Shultz has favoured a more stable and cautious approach. Both wings in this fight are equally reactionary - it has been a question of emphasis and departmental infighting. Now Shultz has utilised the crisis, and especially his appearance at the Senate Committee investigating the affair to attempt to wrest control of foreign policy operations. International No 8 January/February 1987
No shelter from the storm for Reagan
The crisis has also highlighted the role of White House Chief of Staff Donald Regan, an immensely powerful character who in effect ran the country during the President's stay in hospital. It is inconceivable that a project as important as the Iranian arms deal took place from the basement of the White House without his say-so. Indeed Regan is the President's major link with the outside world, and is being targetted together with CIA director William Casey as the next sacrificial lamb after Poindexter and Ollie North — if the crisis refuses to lie
The immediate problem president is that the Democrats are scenting blood and now see the scandal as the best way to ensure a Democratic victory in the 1988 presidential elec-
Vice President George Bush, the Republican front runner, is deeply implicated in the operations of the Nicaraguan contras, and it will be difficult to find a senior Republican to be the presidential candidate who has not been in receipt of the President's patronage — and returned it with lavish Democrats, who now control both the House and Senate have every interest in keeping the whole thing running, while Republicans are caught in the dilemma of not wanting to see Reagan go under, while at the same time not wanting to appear to support a whitewash and cover-up of illegal activity.
There is a dynamic in this political crisis which threatens to trip up any world-wide necessarily involve activities which are secret and on the borders of legality. Indeed a strict adherence to the guidelines laid down by law and the Congress would make it difficult for the CIA to do its job properly. Paradoxically, the Congress has much greater powers of supervision and control of the executive than the
British parliament, and there is no us equivalent of the all-embracing British Official Secrets Act — in many ways US government is very open to public semi-permanent need for the administration and the CIA to evade public inspection via dirty tricks and secret
What consequences for US and in. ternational policies will the Irangate scandal have? The 'worst case' scenario for the administration would be the of the president. This catastrophe which disrupt US foreign policy all round - from Star Wars to Nicaragua. Even if the scandal is prevented from going 'to the top', Reagan's remaining term in office is bound to be more politically difficult. The linking of the Iran arms deal with Nicaragua is particularly unfortunate, making it more difficult to finance and support the contras. Of course, there is always the possibility that Reagan could try to do a 'Falklands' — a massive military adventure to create a national consensus around his leadership. That is a real danger for Nicaragua. But such an operation would be a wild gamble; unless the military outcome were a very rapid victory the consequences could be disastrous. Much more likely is a period of prolonged stalemate in US foreign policy, with the administration frozen into immobility by the trauma of the scandal. Such an outcome can only be welcomed by all those who oppose the institutionalised gangsterism of US foreign policy i 25