So, according to the progress report and all those fancy charts - delivered by US general Petreus, the surge is working. Impressive percentages are being trotted out about the fall in number of casualties, terrorist incidents and so forth. By that yardstick, I guess the surge is working well, sort of.

By its very nature, a surge is a temporary measure. It flows and ebbs and, proportionately, attacks by the enemy' ebb and flow with it. All the political pundits have been mouthing off on the television channels about how the troop build-up cannot be sustained and how the US military is already over-stretched and you can be sure the enemy is listening; and waiting.

The enemy can afford to wait. It is in there for the long haul. It is the only side that has been making consistent gains throughout the four-year Iraq conflict and, best of all; it is achieving all this without expending its own troops. Its proxies are doing all the fighting and killing. The real enemy, of course, is Iran.

Before George Bush embarked on his great adventure', there were four major players apart from Israel in the Middle East; Iran, Iraq, Syria and Saudi Arabia. The Saudi rulers were quite content raking in their oil wealth and maintaining their absolute power. They had no interest in what was happening outside their borders. Syria kept meddling in Lebanon, but knew it did not have the money, or military capability, to create mischief elsewhere.

That left Iran and Iraq. Iran had ambitions to become the dominant power in the region, but after the Islamic Revolution of 1979 its economy was a mess; and its military had been decimated by the eight-year war with Iraq. Iran had, in all probability, resigned itself to the realization that it would never amount to anything more than a regional player thanks to Saddam Hussein. Saddam Hussein, incidentally, had foregone any global ambitions after his misadventure in Kuwait in 1991. He ruled his country with an iron fist, but he was no threat to the region and certainly not to the United States. Why would he attack the US? There was no percentage in it for him.

When the US invaded Iraq in 2003, Iran could hardly believe its good fortune. In one stroke, its old nemesis, Saddam, had been overthrown; and it was now free to influence its fellow Shi'ites who constituted 80 percent of Iraq's population across the border. Suddenly, Iran's big-power ambitions seemed achievable, after all. As an added bonus, it was now in a position

• 1
• 2
• 3
• next page >>

---

Add your voice

Know something about Calculating Iran's threat to the U.S?
We want to hear your view. Write now!