In seven years, the Bush administration has lost half a dozen commanders involved, one way or another, in the US war in Iraq and its so called fight against terror (see Case Study). The resination of  Admiral Fallon however was more about Iran. It has been no secret this past month, that the Bush administration’s efforts to forge limited understandings with Iran over security in Iraq had run into the sand.
 
For example last week, US Army Lt. Gen. Raymond Odierno and Fallon himself accused Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad after his visit to Baghdad of destabilizing Iraq . However Fallon’s simplistic portrayal as the lone military opponent of a US military attack on Iran does not do justice to his innovative thinking on contemporary warfare.
 
But while an Esquire magazine article which embodied this portrayal, may have generated the context and provided the trigger for Fallon’s resignation, there were additional compelling and complex reasons for the rift widening between him and administration heads, President George W. Bush and defense secretary Robert Gates.
 
In fact there are some in   Washington, who are now suggesting, that  the Esquire article may have been planted by quarters seeking to set the scene for the Central Command chief’s exit. For example Gates in response to the resignation, said quite calmly: “Part of the problem here is… that we have tried between us to put this misperception behind us, over a period of months.” He added he was not sure why those efforts were unsuccessful.
 
Fallon also challenged the assessments made by the US commanders in Iraq , Lt. Gen. David Petraeus and Gen. Raymond Odierno, of the effectiveness of the “surge” strategy introduced in Iraq a year ago. Echoed by the White House, those commanders claimed major successes, whereas Fallon was convinced that the undeniable gains would melt away in the course of 2008 and early 2009. The US army would then find itself in worse straits than before.
 
He therefore took issue with the decision by the White House and the Pentagon, prodded by the Iraq commanders, to halt American pullbacks from Iraq after the surge troops are sent home in July. In Fallon’s view, troop reductions should be speeded up.

Indeed, in closed military forums, the departing CENTCOM commander voiced his conviction that, after seven years of fighting terrorists in Afghanistan and five years of warfare in Iraq , America must embark on major troop withdrawals from both these arenas.
 
This view tied in with his other major bones of contention with the White House.The way warfare is conducted today, Fallon maintained, perpetuates outworn strategies and sets up a vicious cycle in which the US army goes round and round endlessly in a cage full of unsolvable conflicts.Fallon thus maintained that to preserve its No. 1 power status in the world, America must at all costs avoid having large-scale military forces pinned down in several simultaneous conflicts in different parts of the world.
 
Field combat should be left to local armies with US support called in as needed -- as in the case of the Lebanese army battling with Palestinian al Qaeda extremists near Tripoli; or, alternatively, to local forces which cooperate with the US army – such as elements of the Pakistan Army and Iraq’s Kurds. Mobile US commando forces no bigger than 50-300 strong would intervene in such local conflicts only on limited missions, whether for tipping the scale of a battle or striking a defined strategic target. They would be equipped with armored vehicles for rapid and flexible movement and a sufficiency of firepower, augmented by air units and armed drones.
 
However, the changes inherent in this, Fallon doctrine --would have demanded a complete overhaul of America ’s armed forces which the Bush White House was/is in no position to undertake.
 
In the meantime,   Iran  continues to shy away from diplomacy with the Bush administration on every key issue - its nuclear activities, Iraq , Lebanon and the Palestinians. Its rulers have concluded that they are all too complicated to wind up before the end of the Bush presidency and so not worth broaching.

The Iran Case

In the intermediate range, Iran is focusing its efforts on preserving the status quo in the region. This hardened posture has a silver lining for the White House, because it is compatible with the efforts of Bush aides to avoid regional upsets before the presidential election in November.
 
It also leaves Iranian policy-makers free to look into the future and prepare the ground for contacts with US presidential front-runners.
 
This was practiced first by the Islamic Republic’s founder Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomenei. In the early 1980s, shortly after Iran’s Islamic revolution, he drummed up a crisis with Washington, seizing the US embassy and its staff hostage and severing contacts with President Jim my Carter, who was then in mid-campaign for a second term.On the quiet, meanwhile, Iranian officials were closeted secretly with Ronald Reagan’s incoming team and hammering out terms ahead of his entry to the White House.
 
Then there is Iran's own general election on  Friday, March 14. Here the Iranian voter has 15 lists to choose from. None are regular parties, but rather blocs or fronts, with the same names sometimes cropping up on more than one.
 
The radical camp has posted five or six lists with names like “The Broad Fundamentalist Coalition” (Eitlaf-e Fragir-e Ossoolgerayan), the “United Fundamentalist Front” (Jebneh-ye Mottahed-e Ossoolgerayan) or “Fundamentalist Women” (Zanan-e Ossoolgera).
 
The “reformists” -- or rather “seekers of change” -- are running two lists, the Party of Moderation and Development (Hezb-e Eetedal va Tovseeh) and the Party of NationalTrust (Hezb-e Eetemad-e Melli).
 
The two moderate parties that were strongest at the time of Ahmadinejad’s predecessor, Mohammed Khatami, have dropped off Iran ’s political stage.The incumbent was able to grind into the dust the “Party of Islamic Iranian Partnership” (Hezb-e Mosharekat-e Iran-e Eslami) and the “Iranian Islamic Holy Warriors Organization” (Sazman-e Mohahedin-e Iran-e Eslami).
 
The Council for the Preservation of the Constitution disqualified hundreds of candidates run by the two opposition parties, leaving many constituencies without any candidates at all and muzzling the diminished opposition in advance.Consequently, popular discontent with Ahmadinejad’s failure to rein in galloping inflation, rising unemployment, fuel shortages and the growing social gap--all of which he pledged to repair -- is robbed of a voice in the next majlis.

Iran in Africa

On Saturday, March 8, Iran and Sudan signed a string of military cooperation pacts in Tehran that stretch Iran ’s military and intelligence presence in Sudan up to the borders of Chad . The signers were Iran’s defense minister Gen. Mostafa Mohammad Majjar and his Sudanese counterpart, Gen. Abdul Rahim Mohammad Hussein, a fighter pilot appointed defense minister only three weeks ago.
 
The Darfur tragedy and Khartoum ’s backing for Chad rebels finally led Sudan ’s traditional arms suppliers, Russia , China and Libya , to back away from arming Sudan ’s 120,000-strong forces. Beijing came last, sensitized to its international image by the approaching Olympic Games in August. Whereby Libya has a major beef with Khartoum for backing the rebels fighting to overthrow Chad president Idriss Debby.
 
At a loss for arms suppliers, President Omar al-Bashir turned to Tehran , with a request for a package that included arms and training for the Sudanese army.
Iran jumped in with gusto. For years Tehran has been gradually building up its military ties with Khartoum with an eye on its geopolitical assets: a long coast on the Red Sea, a main sea lane to the Persian Gulf, a Muslim nation located opposite Saudi Arabia and next door to Egypt; Sudan’s command of oil resources and the White Nile, a major water source for an entire African region.
 
This strategic jewel was on the point of dropping drop into Iran ’s fundamentalist lap. It is therefore no wonder that the Iranians managed to whip up a complete set of military documents during the Sudanese defense minister’s four-day stay in Tehran and get them signed there and then.
 
Iranian sources report that both parties were in such a hurry that they signed the accords in outline and agreed to fill in the details of the various areas of military cooperation in the coming months.
 
Here then is the substance of the documents they signed:

1. The Sudanese Army will gradually move from Russian and Chinese weaponry to Iranian-made items.

2. Khartoum will enjoy a 50 percent discount on arms purchased from Iran.

3. Iran undertakes to build Sudan a military industry for the manufacture of Iranian weapons.

4. The two governments will establish a joint military committee to define forms of mutual defense collaboration based on the Iranian-Syrian pact. Each undertakes to come to the other’s aid in the event of foreign aggression.
The practical details remain to be agreed for fleshing out these outline accords.

5. The two air forces, navies and armored corps will exchange delegations.

6. Iran will help Sudan plan and construct defensive systems to secure its strategic locations, such as oil fields, ports and the Nile River dams.
 
An Iranian military mission spent February in Sudan , was flown over to its sensitive military sites and shown the problems entailed in defending them. The Iranian defense experts toured Darfur, the Sudanese-Chad border and the White Nile dams.
 
And the $1.8 billion Merowe Dam hydropower project, which includes a 174-kilometer long reservoir, is funded by China and Arab countries. Chinese, Sudanese, German and French companies participate in this project and in the Kajbar Dam downstream of the Merowe Dam.
 
In fact this goes back to  2006, when Sudan secretly permitted Iran to deploy intelligence agents along its border with Chad . These agents were entrusted with  subjugating the Chad tribes controlling or constituting the work force at the uranium deposits of eastern Chad ahead of their seizure. And while trying to  establish links with Chadian elements willing to challenge Libyan influence-- Tehran ’s agents were told to strike west via Chad and hook up with the terrorist organizations battling Western influence - primarily American and Israeli – on the African continent.
 
In fact this week, by no coincidence, an American plot was suddenly “uncovered” in Khartoum - at the very moment when the Sudanese defense minister was away in Tehran, signing military pacts. Sudan’s security agencies were said to have carried out a snap search of a private plane belonging to an unnamed American company operating in Sudan as it arrived with oil field equipment.
 
Khartoum’s tie-in between a US oil company operating in Sudan warned Washington that Omar al-Bashir was in the process of lining up behind Tehran ’s anti-American campaign.