Former Officers Discuss Iran

Published in the Daily Beacon on April 21, 2008

Iran might be a bigger threat than Iraq, and the U.S. military might not be able to handle the potential conflict, according to two retired military officials.

Lt. Gen. Robert Gard and Col. William Hauser of the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation visited UT to address “U.S. Iran: A Troubled History Does Not Have to Equal a Disastrous Future” on Thursday.

Gard said, the only way to avoid a “disastrous outcome” with Iran is to change U.S. foreign policy.

“Stop threatening regime change and overthrow,” Gard said. “Cease imposing unilateral sanctions, stop funding the promotion of democracy externally on the country, engage them in negotiations and don’t bomb them.”

Gard served in the U.S. Army for 31 years before retiring in 1981. His military service included combat in Korea and Vietnam and working as executive assistant to two secretaries of defense.

Gard currently works as a senior military fellow at the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation.

According to Gard, in the past the U.S. policy with Iran was to not negotiate with the country unless it gave up uranium enrichment programs.

“Well now, that’s a strange way to propose negotiating with a country with which you have disagreements,” Gard said. He added that because Iran and the U.S. have “common interests,” a nuclear-armed Iran wouldn’t be a direct danger.

“(Iran) does work on a cost-benefit basis,” he said. “They’re not a bunch of crazies that will just do totally irrational things and commit national suicide.”

Although he thinks Iran is “deterrable,” Gard said it is in America’s interest to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons.

“What I think we should be doing is negotiating with Iran without preconditions,” he said. “I think Iran and (America) have common interests. Iran supports the Shia government (in Iraq) and so do we. Iran doesn’t want a spill-over of the war and neither do we. We’ve got mutual interests.”

Hauser said the United States is “bogged down” in Iraq and doesn’t have the resources to focus on other conflicts.

“We don’t have any forces to do anything right now,” he said. “We couldn’t send a battalion to Darfur if we wanted to, we couldn’t defend the demilitarized zone in Korea if the North Koreans came across right now.”

Hauser served in the military before retiring in 1979 after 25 years. While in the military, he was a commander in combat in Vietnam and brigade command in Germany.

He continues to remain involved in the military by occasionally acting as a consultant to the Department of Defense and the armed forces committees of the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives.

Hauser compared the current conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq to the Vietnam War: “We gradually over time in Vietnam learned the lessons of how to counter an insurgency and one of the lessons is that you can’t,” he said. “If you’re in somebody else’s country and they want to mount an insurgency, you can’t win.”

Hauser said that although an insurgency can be “held down” long enough to establish a stable government, victory doesn’t exist. He said the possibility of a successful mission, although not a battlefield win, exists in Afghanistan but not in Iraq.

“Iraq, I’m sorry to say, is probably a different story,” he said.

Gard said a destabilized Iraq and Afghanistan has led to a stronger Iran.

“We have destroyed the balancing forces that offset Iran’s power when we eliminated the Taliban and ran al-Qaida out of Afghanistan. Then we overthrew Saddam Hussein,” he said.

According to Gard, Iran’s relative position in the region is more powerful now because Iraq is no longer a threat.

“People are fond of saying the only real winner in our war in Iraq is Iran,” he said.

The lecture was sponsored by the Baker Center and the Tennessee World Affairs Council.