War Plans: United States and Iran

A possible U.S. attack against Iran has been a hot topic in the news for many months now. In some quarters it has become an article of faith that the Bush administration intends to order such an attack before it leaves office. It remains a mystery whether the administration plans an actual attack or whether it is using the threat of attack to try to intimidate Iran -- and thus shape its behavior in Iraq and elsewhere. Unraveling the mystery lies, at least in part, in examining what a U.S. attack would look like, given U.S. goals and resources, as well as in considering the potential Iranian response. Before turning to intentions, it is important to discuss the desired outcomes and capabilities. Unfortunately, those discussions have taken a backseat to speculations about the sheer probability of war.Let's begin with goals. What would the United States hope to achieve by attacking Iran? On the broadest strategic level, the answer is actually quite simple. After 9/11, the United States launched counterstrikes in the Islamic world. The goal was to disrupt the al Qaeda core in order to prevent further attacks against the United States. The counterstrikes also were aimed at preventing the emergence of a follow-on threat from the Islamic world that would replace the threat that had been posed by al Qaeda. The disruption of all Islamic centers of power that have the ability and intent to launch terrorist attacks against the United States is a general goal of U.S. strategy. With the decline of Sunni radicalism, Iran has emerged as an alternative Shiite threat. Hence, under this logic, Iran must be dealt with.Obviously, the greater the disruption of radically anti-American elements in the Islamic world, the better it is for the United States. But there are three problems here. First, the United States has a far more complex relationship with Iran than it does with al Qaeda. Iran supported the U.S. attack against the Taliban in Afghanistan as well as the U.S. invasion of Iraq -- for its own reasons, of course. Second, the grand strategy of the United States might include annihilating Islamic radicalism, but at the end of the day, maintaining the balance of power between Sunnis and Shia and between Arab and non-Arab Muslims is a far more practical approach. Finally, the question of what to do about Iran depends on the military capabilities of the United States in the immediate future. The intentions are shaped by the capabilities. What, therefore, would the U.S. goals be in an attack against Iran? They divide into three (not mutually exclusive) strategies: 1. Eliminating Iran's nuclear program.2. Crippling Iran by hitting its internal infrastructure -- political, industrial and military -- ideally forcing regime change that would favor U.S. interests.3. Using an attack -- or threatening an attack -- to change Iranian behavior in Iraq, Lebanon or other areas of the world.It is important to note the option that is not on the table: invasion by U.S. ground forces, beyond the possible use of small numbers of Special Operations forces. Regardless of the state of Iranian conventional forces after a sustained air attack, the United States simply does not have the numbers of ground troops needed to invade and occupy Iran -- particularly given the geography and topography of the country. Therefore, any U.S. attack would rely on the forces available, namely air and naval forces. The destruction of Iran's nuclear capabilities would be the easiest to achieve, assuming that U.S. intelligence has a clear picture of the infrastructure of that program and that the infrastructure has not been hardened to the point of being invulnerable to conventional attack. Iran, however, learned a great deal from Iraq's Osirak experience and has spread out and hardened its nuclear facilities. Also, given Iran's location and the proximity of U.S. forces and allies, we can assume the United States would not be interested in a massive nuclear attack with the resulting fallout. Moreover, we would argue that, in a world of proliferation, it would not be in the interest of the United States to set a precedent by being the first use to use nuclear weapons since World War II.Therefore, the U.S. option is to carry out precision strikes against Iran's nuclear program using air- and sea-launched munitions. As a threat, this is in an interesting option. As an actual operation, it is less interesting. First, the available evidence is that Iran is years away from achieving a deliverable nuclear weapon. Second, Iran might be more interested in trading its nuclear program for other political benefits -- specifically in Iraq. An attack against the country's nuclear facilities would make Tehran less motivated than before to change its behavior. Furthermore, even if its facilities were destroyed, Iran would retain its capabilities in Iraq, Lebanon and elsewhere in the world. Therefore, unless the United States believed there was an imminent threat of the creation of a deliverable nuclear system, the destruction of a long-term program would eliminate the long-term threat, but leave Iran's short-term capabilities intact. Barring imminent deployment, a stand-alone attack against Iran's nuclear capabilities makes little sense. That leaves the second option -- a much broader air and sea campaign against Iran. This would have four potential components:1. Attacks against its economic infrastructure, particularly its refineries.2. Attacks against its military infrastructure.3. Attacks against its political infrastructure, particularly its leadership.4. A blockade and sanctions.Let's begin in reverse order. The United States has the ability to blockade Iran's ports, limiting the importation of oil and refined products, as well as food. It does not have the ability to impose a general land blockade against Iran, which has long land borders, including with Iraq. Because the United States lacks the military capability to seal those borders, goods from around Iran's periphery would continue to flow, including, we emphasize, from Iraq, where U.S. control of transportation systems, particularly in the Shiite south, is limited. In addition, it is unclear whether the United States would be willing to intercept, board and seize ships from third-party countries (Russia, China and a large number of small countries) that are not prepared to participate in sanctions or might not choose to respect an embargo. The United States is stretched thin, and everyone knows it. A blockade could invite deliberate challenges, while enforcement would justify other actions against U.S. interests elsewhere. Any blockade strategy assumes that Iran is internationally isolated, which it is not, that the United States can impose a military blockade on land, which it cannot, and that it can withstand the consequences elsewhere should a third party use U.S. actions to justify counteraction, which is questionable. A blockade could hurt Iran's energy economy, but Iran has been preparing for this for years and can mitigate the effect by extensive smuggling operations. Ultimately, Iran is not likely to crumble unless the United States can maintain and strengthen the blockade process over a matter of many months at the very least. Another option is a decapitation strike against Iran's leadership -- though it is important to recall how this strategy failed in Iraq at the beginning of the 2003 invasion. Decapitation assumes superb intelligence on the location of the leadership at a given time -- and that level of intelligence is hard to come by. Iraq had a much smaller political elite than Iran has, and the United States couldn't nail down its whereabouts. It also is important to remember that Iran has a much deeper and more diverse leadership structure than Iraq had. Iraq's highly centralized system included few significant leaders. Iran is more decentralized and thus has a much larger and deeper leadership cadre. We doubt the United States has the real-time intelligence capability to carry out such a broad decapitation strike. The second option is an assault against the Iranian military. Obviously, the United States has the ability to carry out a very effective assault against the military's technical infrastructure -- air defense, command and control, aircraft, armor and so on. But the Iranian military is primarily an infantry force, designed for internal control and operations in mountainous terrain -- the bulk of Iran's borders. Once combat operations began, the force would disperse and tend to become indistinguishable from the general population. A counterpersonnel operation would rapidly become a counterpopulation operation. Under any circumstances, an attack against a dispersed personnel pool numbering in the high hundreds of thousands would be sortie intensive, to say the least. An air campaign designed to impose high attrition on an infantry force, leaving aside civilian casualties, would require an extremely large number of sorties, in which the use of precision-guided munitions would be of minimal value and the use of area weapons would be at a premium. Given the fog of war and intelligence issues, the ability to evaluate the status of this campaign would be questionable. In our view, the Iranians are prepared to lose their technical infrastructure and devolve command and control to regional and local levels. The collapse of the armed forces -- most of whose senior officers and noncoms fought in the Iran-Iraq war with very flexible command and control -- is unlikely. The force would continue to be able to control the frontiers as well as maintain internal security functions. The United States would rapidly establish command of the air, and destroy noninfantry forces. But even here there is a cautionary note. In Yugoslavia, the United States learned that relatively simple camouflage and deception techniques were quite effective in protecting tactical assets. The Iranians have studied both the Kosovo war and U.S. operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, and have extensive tactical combat experience themselves. A forced collapse from the air of the Iranian infantry capability -- the backbone of Iran's military -- is unlikely.This leaves a direct assault against the Iranian economic infrastructure. Although this is the most promising path, it must be remembered that counterinfrastructure and counterpopulation strategic air operations have been tried extensively. The assumption has been that the economic cost of resistance would drive a wedge between the population and the regime, but there is no precedent in the history of air campaigns for this assumption. Such operations have succeeded in only two instances: Japan and Kosovo. In Japan, counterpopulation operations of massive proportions involving conventional weapons were followed by two atomic strikes. Even in that case, there was no split between regime and population, but a decision by the regime to capitulate. The occupation in Kosovo was not so much because of military success as diplomatic isolation. That isolation is not likely to happen in Iran. In all other cases -- Britain, Germany, Vietnam, Iraq -- air campaigns by themselves did not split the population from the regime or force the regime to change course. In Britain and Vietnam, the campaigns failed completely. In Germany and Iraq (and Kuwait), they succeeded because of follow-on attacks by overwhelming ground forces. The United States could indeed inflict heavy economic hardship, but history suggests that this is more likely to tighten the people's identification with the government -- not the other way around. In most circumstances, air campaigns have solidified the regime's control over the population, allowing it to justify extreme security measures and generating a condition of intense psychological resistance. In no case has a campaign led to an uprising against the regime. Moreover, a meaningful campaign against economic infrastructure would take some 4 million barrels per day off of the global oil market at a time when oil prices already are closing in on $100 a barrel. Such a campaign is more likely to drive a wedge between the American people and the American government than between the Iranians and their government. For an air campaign to work, the attacking power must be prepared to bring in an army on the ground to defeat the army that has been weakened by the air campaign -- a tactic Israel failed to apply last summer in Lebanon. Combined arms operations do work, repeatedly. But the condition of the U.S. Army and Marines does not permit the opening of a new theater of operations in Iran. Most important, even if conditions did permit the use of U.S. ground forces to engage and defeat the Iranian army -- a massive operation simply by the size of the country -- the United States does not have the ability to occupy Iran against a hostile population. The Japanese and German nations were crushed completely over many years before an overwhelming force occupied them. What was present there, but not in Iraq, was overwhelming force. That is not an option for Iran. Finally, consider the Iranian response. Iran does not expect to defeat the U.S. Air Force or Navy, although the use of mine warfare and anti-ship cruise missiles against tankers in the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz should not be dismissed. The Iranian solution would be classically asymmetrical. First, they would respond in Iraq, using their assets in the country to further complicate the occupation, as well as to impose as many casualties as possible on the United States. And they would use their forces to increase the difficulty of moving supplies from Kuwait to U.S. forces in central Iraq. They also would try to respond globally using their own forces (the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence and Security and Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps), as well as Hezbollah and other trained Shiite militant assets, to carry out counterpopulation attacks against U.S. assets around the world, including in the United States.If the goal is to eliminate Iran's nuclear program, we expect the United States would be able to carry out the mission. If, however, the goal is to compel a change in the Iranian regime or Iranian policy, we do not think the United States can succeed with air forces alone. It would need to be prepared for a follow-on invasion by U.S. forces, coming out of both Afghanistan and Iraq. Those forces are not available at this point and would require several years to develop. That the United States could defeat and occupy Iran is certain. Whether the United States has a national interest in devoting the time and the resources to Iran's occupation is unclear. The United States could have defeated North Vietnam with a greater mobilization of forces. However, Washington determined that the defeat of North Vietnam and the defense of Indochina were not worth the level of effort required. Instead, it tried to achieve its ends with the resources it was prepared to devote to the mission. As a result, resources were squandered and the North Vietnamese flag flies over what was Saigon.The danger of war is that politicians and generals, desiring a particular end, fantasize that they can achieve that end with insufficient resources. This lesson is applicable to Iran.

By George Friedman

Iran's Hezbollah Card

As noted by Stratfor CEO George Friedman, news outlets have been rife with speculation about a U.S. attack against Iran, although the frequency and tenor of the leaks have made us question whether the Bush administration intends to order an actual attack or whether the leaks are merely an effort to intimidate Tehran. There is no doubt in our minds, however, that military action is being given at least some consideration, and that U.S. military planners are gathering intelligence and firming up plans to hit a variety of Iranian target sets. For almost as long as we have been hearing about a pending attack against Iran, we have been receiving source reports regarding Iran's plans for retaliation. Such plans would be directed not only against the U.S. forces delivering the attacks or troops on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan but also against broader U.S. interests in the region and globally. Indeed, Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei warned in February that any aggression against his country would be met with reciprocal strikes by Iranian forces inside and outside of Iran. One of the most recent of these reports noted that Hezbollah terrorism mastermind Imad Fayez Mugniyah has been training Shiite militants from Arab Persian Gulf states in Lebanon's Bekaa Valley for possible retaliatory attacks.Such reports are intentional reminders that Iran controls a powerful terrorism card -- and intends to play it should the need arise. Unlike al Qaeda, which has been badly damaged as an organization since 9/11, Hezbollah has never been stronger -- and does pose a strategic threat to the United States. In addition to Hezbollah -- which might be better positioned to conduct attacks in many parts of the world than the Iranian government itself -- Iran's retaliatory plans would include other external surrogates, as well as indigenous Iranian forces such as the Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS) and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), which includes its Quds Force and Special Unit of Martyr Seekers. If the United States does attack Iran and the Iranians call upon Hezbollah to take action, the organization can be expected to comply -- though it is known for obscuring its ties to attacks and probably will do the same in the future. There are, however, some operational factors that can be seized upon to spot and help mitigate the threat posed by this dangerous organization. HezbollahThe revolutionaries who overthrew the shah of Iran and established an Islamic republic in the early 1980s sought to export the ideals of their revolution to other Shiite groups in the region. Hezbollah grew out of these efforts. Although it is a Lebanese organization, it has always been closely aligned with Iran and the Iranian IRGC and MOIS, which helped train and organize its members. This relationship is quite visible in the Hezbollah flag, which incorporates the IRGC symbol of the raised fist holding a rifle. Since the early 1980s, the best and brightest Hezbollah fighters have been taken to Iran, where they have received advanced military and intelligence training -- not to mention ideological indoctrination. Iranian weapons and training have allowed Hezbollah to develop into a powerful military force that can not only compete with its rival militias in Lebanon but also stand up to the might of the Israeli armed forces. Iran also has been intimately involved in promoting its loyalists into positions of power within the Hezbollah organization, while Hezbollah has received hundreds of millions of dollars over the years from its Iranian patrons (not to mention the income it receives from Syria and its widespread illegal activities). For all these reasons, Hezbollah remains loyal to Iran and the ideals of the Iranian revolution.In addition to its formidable conventional military threat, Hezbollah has continued to refine its already considerable core competency in militant specialties such as kidnapping, assassination and the construction and employment of improvised explosive devices (IEDs). It was a Hezbollah operation that resulted in the kidnapping of two Israeli soldiers, an act that precipitated the 2006 conflict, in which Hezbollah employed IEDs very effectively against the Israel Defense Forces. Hezbollah has evolved considerably since the 1980s, when it conducted most of its attacks against U.S. targets. Today, it is a political party that holds seats in the Lebanese parliament and a social services organization that runs hospitals, schools and orphanages. This multiplicity of functions has caused some governments and even the European Union to resist labeling the organization a terrorist group. Hezbollah also is now far larger and more geographically widespread than ever before, while its global array of members and supporters is intertwined with sophisticated finance/logistics and intelligence networks. Also, thanks to Iran, Hezbollah has far more -- and better trained -- operational cadre than al Qaeda ever had. The Hezbollah cadre also is experienced in skullduggery, having conducted scores of transnational terrorist operations before al Qaeda was even formed. In fact, al Qaeda has borrowed many pages from the Hezbollah operational playbook, and there are persistent rumors that Hezbollah leaders such as Mugniyah even helped teach al Qaeda cadre how to construct large vehicle bombs at al Qaeda's training facilities in Sudan. Also, and this is not trivial, Hezbollah operatives can receive assistance in the form of intelligence, or even materials, from MOIS' worldwide network -- as past attacks demonstrate. (The inviolability of the diplomatic pouch is a wonderful thing when you are planning a terrorist strike.) Iranian state sponsorship provides Hezbollah with a support network that al Qaeda can only dream of. In Hezbollah, size, professionalism, experience and state-sponsorship are combined to create a dangerous organization. In fact, because of these factors, Hezbollah poses a larger potential threat to the United States than does al Qaeda -- especially an al Qaeda crippled by U.S. actions since 9/11. Hezbollah OperationsAlthough Hezbollah operatives are highly skilled in the tradecraft of terrorism, those planning attacks are not invulnerable to detection -- most significantly during the preoperational surveillance stage. Like the military commands of many countries, Hezbollah uses a contingency, or "off-the-shelf," model of operational planning, meaning that several hypothetical targets are selected and attack plans for each are developed in advance. This gives the Hezbollah leadership several plans to choose from when considering and authorizing an attack -- and it allows the group to hit hard and fast once a decision has been made to strike. Although law enforcement and security officials most likely are aware of some of the preselected targets -- due to countersurveillance operations -- an off-the-shelf operation makes it difficult for authorities to determine which target will actually be hit. Moreover, the potential time lapse between the initial surveillance and any attack could allow any alerts or increased security caused by the surveillance to subside by the time an attack takes place. Even though Hezbollah tends to use off-the-shelf plans, the need for countersurveillance remains strong. When an order to execute a mission is given, pre-existing plans must be dusted off, meaning the preoperational surveillance must be updated before an actual strike can take place to ensure that no important changes have occurred at the target. Although this second round of surveillance often is less comprehensive than the initial surveillance, these secondary efforts still require cell members to expose themselves -- and thus become vulnerable to detection. Although it has been many years since Hezbollah conducted an overseas attack, operatives linked to Hezbollah (or the Iranian MOIS/IRGC) have been observed many times conducting surveillance of potential targets inside and outside the United States -- and several operatives have been arrested as a result. In some of these cases, the operatives could have been pinging the system, or even having some fun by messing with the Americans, but Hezbollah's use of off-the-shelf planning is one reason so many detected surveillance efforts have not been followed by an attack. Judging from Hezbollah's past response to specific events, it seems to take the group four to five weeks to launch an off-the-shelf attack, as was shown in such attacks as the 1992 bombing in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and the 1994 Buenos Aires and London bombings. This time allows planners to touch up the plan, surveil targets again, obtain explosives, construct their devices and bring in an attack team.Because of this, should the United States strike Iran and Hezbollah be asked to conduct retaliatory strikes overseas, there would be a lag of some four to five weeks before any such attacks would occur. Therefore, countersurveillance efforts should be increased on potential targets during this lag time, especially on targets where Hezbollah or Iranian officers are known to have conducted earlier surveillance.Although the Iranian MOIS and IRGC components seem to prefer assassinations and small-arms attacks, Hezbollah operatives tend to conduct more spectacular attacks, such as vehicle bombings and hijackings. Hezbollah also has a history of claiming such attacks using pseudonyms, such as Islamic Jihad Organization or Organization for the Oppressed of the Earth, in order to sow confusion and hide the group's hand. Hezbollah has an expansive worldwide presence, though it has had much greater operational success staging attacks in the developing world -- where weapons and materiel are readily available -- than in more industrialized and secure regions such as Europe. The size difference between the vehicle-borne bombs employed in 1994 in Buenos Aires (where Hezbollah was able to purchase explosives commercially) and the smaller device used in London (where explosives were difficult to obtain) was quite dramatic -- as were the results. Hezbollah would have strong motives (pleasing its Iranian masters, for one) to conduct an attack inside the United States rather than in the developing world -- even though such an attack might be more limited. In practical terms, however, it might consider how the American response to 9/11 affected al Qaeda and choose not to go down that road. Instead, it could attack Americans abroad, as it has done many times in the past without arousing much U.S. retribution. Hezbollah, however, has much clearer vulnerabilities than al Qaeda. For example, its training camps and political and social components constitute recognizable infrastructure in Lebanon. While some of that infrastructure is deliberately placed in Lebanese civilian concentrations, a good deal of it, particularly the facilities in the Bekaa Valley, can be attacked without major concern for civilian life. Another consideration for Hezbollah is that the group also maintains close ties to the Syrian regime, and its Syrian handlers do not want to end up in the U.S. crosshairs. Should Hezbollah strike, therefore, it would do so with its characteristically hidden hand.

By Fred Burton and Scott Stewart

Iraq: Positive Signs

The latest reports concerning the war in Iraq suggest the situation is looking up for the United States. First, U.S. military and Iraqi civilian casualties continue to fall. Second, there are confirmed reports that Sunni insurgents controlled by local leaders have turned on al Qaeda militants, particularly those from outside the country. Third, the head of U.S. Central Command, in an interview with the Financial Times, implied that an attack against Iran is a distant possibility.It is tempting to say the United States has turned the corner on the war. The temptation might not be misplaced, but after many disappointments since 2003, it is prudent to be cautious in declaring turning points -- and it is equally prudent not to confuse a turning point with a victory. That said, given expectations that the United States would be unable to limit violence in Iraq, and that Sunni insurgents would remain implacable -- not to mention the broad expectation of a U.S. attack against Iran -- these three points indicate a reversal -- and must be taken seriously. The most startling point is the decline in casualties, and particularly the apparent decline in sectarian violence. Explaining this is difficult. It could simply be the result of the more efficient use of U.S. troops in suppressing the insurgency and controlling the Shiite militias. If that were the only explanation, however, it would be troubling. Standard guerrilla warfare doctrine holds that during periods of intense enemy counterinsurgency operations, guerrillas should cease fighting, hide weapons and equipment and blend into the civilian population. Only after the enemy shifts its area of operations or reduces operational tempo should the guerrillas resume combat operations. Under no circumstances should insurgents attempt to fight a surge. Therefore, if we were considering U.S. military operations alone, few conclusions could be drawn until after the operations shifted or slowed. In addition, in a country of 25 million, the expectation that some 167,000 troops -- many of them not directly involved in combat -- could break the back of an entrenched insurgency is optimistic. The numbers simply don't work, particularly when Shiite militias are added to the equation. Therefore, if viewed simply in terms of military operations, the decline in casualties would not validate a shift in the war until much later, and our expectation is that the insurgency would resume prior levels of activity over time.What makes the situation more hopeful for the United States is the clear decline in civilian casualties. Most of those were caused not by U.S. combat operations but by sectarian conflict, particularly between Sunnis and Shia. Part of the decline can be explained by U.S. operations, but when we look at the scope and intensity of sectarian fighting, it is difficult to give U.S. operations full credit. A more likely explanation is political, a decision on the part of the various sectarian organizations to stop operations not only against the Americans but also against each other.There were two wars going on in Iraq. One was against the United States. The more important war, from the Iraqi point of view, was the Sunni-Shiite struggle to determine who would control Iraq's future. Part of this struggle, particularly on the Shiite side, was intrasectarian violence. All of it was political and, in a real sense, it was life and death. It involved the control of neighborhoods, of ministries, of the police force and so on. It was a struggle over the shape of everyday life. If either side simply abandoned the struggle, it would leave a vacuum for the other. U.S. operations or not, that civil war could not be suspended. To a significant extent, however, it has been suspended. That means that some political decisions were made, at least on the local level and likely at higher levels as well, as several U.S. authorities have implied recently. Civilian casualties from the civil war would not have dropped as much as they have without some sort of political decisions to restrain forces, and those decisions could not be made unilaterally or simply in response to U.S. military pressure. It required a set of at least temporary political arrangements. And that, in many ways, is more promising than simply a decline because of U.S. combat operations. The political arrangements open the door to the possibility that the decline in casualties is likely to be longer lasting. This brings us to the second point, the attacks by the Sunnis against the jihadists. Immediately after the invasion in 2003, the United States essentially attempted to strip the Sunnis -- the foundation of Saddam Hussein's strength -- of their power. The U.S. de-Baathification laws had the effect of eliminating the Sunni community's participation in the future of Iraq. Viewing the Shia -- the victims of Hussein's rule -- as likely interested not only in dominating Iraq but also in retribution against the Sunnis, the Sunni leadership, particularly at the local level, supported and instigated an insurgency against U.S. forces. The political purpose of the insurgency was to force the United States to shift its pro-Shiite policy and include the Sunnis, from religious to Baathist, in the regime. Given the insurgency's political purpose, the power of U.S. forces and the well-organized Shiite militias, the Iraqi Sunnis were prepared to form alliances wherever they could find them. A leading source of support for the Iraqi Sunnis came from outside Iraq, among the Sunni jihadist fighters who organized themselves under the banner of al Qaeda and, weapons in hand, infiltrated the country from outside, particular through Syria. Nevertheless, there was underlying tension between the local Sunnis and the jihadists. The Iraqi Sunnis were part of the local power structure, many having been involved in the essentially secular Baath Party, and others, more religious, having remained outside the regime but ruled by traditional tribal systems. The foreign jihadists were revolutionaries not only in the sense that they were prepared to fight the Americans but also in that they wanted to revolutionize -- radically Islamize -- the local Sunni community. By extension, they wanted to supplant the local leadership with their own by supporting and elevating new local leaders dependent for their survival on al Qaeda power. For an extended period of time, the United States saw the Sunni insurgency as consisting of a single fabric. The local insurgents and the jihadists were viewed as the same, and the adopted name of the jihadists, al Qaeda, caused the Americans to see them as the primary enemy. Over time, and particularly since the death of al Qaeda in Iraq leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the United States has adopted a more nuanced view of the Sunni insurgency, drawing a distinction between the largely native Iraqi insurgents and the largely foreign jihadists. Once this occurred and the United States began to make overtures to the native Iraqi insurgents, the underlying tensions between the foreign jihadists and the Iraqi insurgents emerged. The Sunnis, over time, came to see the jihadists as a greater danger to them than the Americans, and by the time U.S. President George W. Bush last visited Iraq, several Sunni leaders were prepared to be seen publicly with him. The growing animosities eventually turned into active warfare between the two factions, with al Qaeda being outnumbered and outgunned and the natives enjoying all of the perks of having the home-court advantage.From the U.S. point of view, splitting the Sunni insurgency politically and militarily was important not only for the obvious reasons but also for influencing the Shia. From a Shiite point of view -- and now let's introduce Iran, the primary external backer of Iraq's Shiites -- the worst-case scenario would be the re-establishment of a predominantly Sunni government in Baghdad backed by the U.S. military. The political accommodation between the United States and the Iraqi Sunnis represented a direct threat to the Shia.It is important to recall that Hussein and his Baathist predecessors -- all Sunnis leading a predominantly Sunni government -- were able to dominate the more numerous Shia for decades. The reason was that the Shia were highly fragmented politically, more so than the Sunnis. This historic factionalization made the Shia much weaker than their numbers would have indicated. It was no accident that the Sunnis dominated the Shia. And the Shia remained fragmented. While the Sunnis were fighting an external force, the Shia were fighting both the Sunnis and one another. Given those circumstances, it was not inconceivable that the United States would try, and perhaps succeed, to re-establish the status quo ante of a united Iraq under a Sunni government -- backed by U.S. power until Iraq could regenerate its own force. Of course, that represented a reversal of the original U.S. goal of establishing a Shiite regime.For Iran, this was an intolerable outcome because it would again raise the possibility of an Iran-Iraq war -- in which Iran might take another million casualties. The Iranian response was to use its influence among the competing Shiite militias to attack the Sunnis and to inflict casualties on American troops, hoping to force a withdrawal. Paradoxically, while the jihadists are the Iranians' foe, they were useful to Tehran because the more they attacked the Shia -- and the more the Shia retaliated -- the more the Sunnis and al Qaeda aligned -- which kept the United States and the Sunnis apart. Iran, in other words, wanted a united Sunni-jihadist movement because it would wreck the emerging political arrangements. In addition, when the Iranians realized that the Democrats in the U.S. Congress were not going to force a U.S. withdrawal, their calculations about the future changed.Caught between al Qaeda and the militias, the Sunnis were under intense pressure. The United States responded by conducting operations against the jihadists -- trying to limit engagements with Iraqi Sunni insurgents -- and most important, against Shiite militias. The goal was to hold the Sunnis in the emerging political matrix while damaging the militias that were engaging the Sunnis. The United States was trying increase the cost to the Shia of adhering to the Iranian strategy.At the same time, the United States sought to intimidate the Iranians by raising, and trying to make very real, the possibility that the United States would attack them as well. As we have argued, the U.S. military options are limited, so an attack would make little military sense. The Iranians, however, could not be certain that the United States was being rational about the whole thing, which was pretty much what the United States wanted. The United States wanted the Shia in Iraq to see the various costs of following the Iranian line -- including creating a Sunni-dominated government -- while convincing the Iranians that they were in grave danger of American military action.In this context, we find the third point particularly interesting. Adm. William Fallon's interview with the Financial Times -- in which he went out of its way to downplay the American military threat to Iran -- was not given by accident. Fallon does not agree to interviews without clearance. The United States was using the interview to telegraph to Iran that it should not have undue fear of an American attack. The United States can easily turn up the heat again psychologically, though for the moment it has chosen to lower it. By doing so, we assume Washington is sending two messages to Iran. First, it is acknowledging that creating a predominantly Sunni government is not its first choice. Also, it is rewarding Iran for the decline in violence by the Shiite militias, which undoubtedly required Tehran to shift its orders to its covert operatives in Iraq.The important question is whether we are seeing a turning point in Iraq. The answer is that it appears so, but not primarily because of the effectiveness of U.S. military operations. Rather, it is the result of U.S. military operations coupled with a much more complex and sophisticated approach to Iraq. To be more precise, a series of political initiatives that the United States had undertaken over the past two years in fits and starts has been united into a single orchestrated effort. The result of these efforts was a series of political decisions on the part of various Iraqi parties not only to reduce attacks against U.S. troops but also to bring the civil war under control. A few months ago, we laid out four scenarios for Iraq, including the possibility that that United States would maintain troops there indefinitely. At the time, we argued against this idea on the assumption that what had not worked previously would not work in the future. Instead, we argued that resisting Iranian power required that efforts to create security be stopped and troops moved to blocking positions along the Saudi border. We had not calculated that the United States would now supplement combat operations with a highly sophisticated and nuanced political offensive. Therefore, we were wrong in underestimating the effectiveness of the scenario. That said, a turning point is not the same as victory, and the turning point could turn into a failure. The key weaknesses are the fragmented Shia and the forces and decisions that might emerge there, underwritten by Iran. Everything could be wrecked should Iran choose to take the necessary risks. For the moment, however, the Iranians seem to be exercising caution, and the Shia are responding by reducing violence. If that trend continues, then this really could be a turning point. Of course, any outcome that depends on the Shia and Iranians doing what the United States hopes they will do is fragile. Iran in particular has little interest in giving the United States a graceful solution unless it is well compensated for it. On the other hand, for the moment, Tehran is cooperating. This could simply be another instance of Iran holding off before disappointing the United States, or it could mean it has reason to believe it will be well compensated. Revealing that compensation -- if it is coming -- is the next turn of the wheel.

By George Friedman