Islamic Iran war will drag great satan US in another Mideast quagmire: Analyst

Any military aggression against Iran is doomed to failure and will put the US in another quandary in the Middle East, a senior political analyst says.

In a Friday editorial at the CNN website, Asher Kaufman, associate professor at the University of Notre Dame’s Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies, argued that an attack on Iran “would drag the US into another Middle East quagmire, and it would launch an oil crisis that would throw the global economy into turmoil.”

Kaufman insisted that such adventurism will “fail to achieve its stated goal” and “would unleash a devastating confrontation between Iran and Israel that would harm thousands of Israelis and Iranians, and affect those in neighboring states.”

The analyst pointed to Tel Aviv’s warmongering rhetoric against Iran and maintained that “Israel does not have the military capacity to eliminate, or even seriously damage, Iran’s nuclear energy program.”

He noted that any strike against Iran “would trigger an unprecedented war in the Middle East,” in which “Israel would be far more vulnerable than Iran” due to its small size and small strategic depth.

Kaufman denounced the West’s propaganda to tarnish Tehran’s image as “historically problematic and extremely dangerous politically,” and described Iran as “rational” and a “regional power.”

The analyst called on the US to “acknowledge the importance of having strong regional players in the Middle East, such as Iran,” and urged Washington to “reconsider” its strategies in the Middle East including its policies towards the regional inter-state dynamics and the Arab-Israel conflict.

The United States, Israel and some of their allies accuse Tehran of pursuing military objectives in its nuclear energy program.

The US and the EU have used the pretext to impose international and unilateral sanctions against Iran, while Washington and Tel Aviv have issued threats of a military strike against Iran’s nuclear installations.

Iran has repeatedly refuted the Western allegations regarding its nuclear energy program, arguing that as a signatory to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and a member of the International Atomic Energy Agency, it is entitled to develop and acquire nuclear technology for peaceful purposes.

Tehran has promised a crushing response to any military strike against the country, warning that any such measure could result in a war that would spread beyond the Middle East.