Iran

Former NATO Commander (and Presidential Candidate) Wesley Clark is angry, or so claims Arianna Huffington:

Clark was really angry about what he'd read in this column by UPI Editor at Large Arnaud de Borchgrave. In the piece, which Clark quickly forwarded to my BlackBerry from his Trio, de Borchgrave details Bibi Netanyahu leading the charge to lobby the Bush administration to take out Iran's nuclear facilities, and paints U.S. air strikes against Iran in 2007/08 as all-but-a-done deal.


"How can you talk about bombing a country when you won't even talk to them?" said Clark. "It's outrageous. We're the United States of America; we don't do that.

Clark may be angry (me too), but de Borchgrave is a tirerless cheerleader for Israel and war.[refuted, see comments] The groundwork is already in place, he claims:

Netanyahu then said Israel "must immediately launch an intense, international, public relations front first and foremost on the U.S. The goal being to encourage President Bush to live up to specific pledges he would not allow Iran to arm itself with nuclear weapons. We must make clear to the government, the Congress and the American public that a nuclear Iran is a threat to the U.S. and the entire world, not only Israel."

There are signs this is already happening in Washington. Before the invasion of Iraq, the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld troika decided the ousting of Saddam Hussein had to become an integral part of the "war on terror." Eventually 60 percent of Americans thought Saddam was behind 9/11, even though there was no link between the two. Today, the Bush-Cheney team faces the same spin scenario: how to weave the global war on terror and the Shiite powers that be in Iran. This one is relatively simple: Iran trains and funds Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas and Islamic Jihad in the Palestinian territories.

Anticipating the new line, Sen. Joe Lieberman (Independent, Connecticut) referred to "Iran and al-Qaida" on Wolf Blitzer's Sunday program on CNN. That Iran is Shiite and al-Qaida Sunni becomes irrelevant in the new game plan that will most probably lead to U.S. air strikes against Iran's nuclear facilities in 2007/08. Can a Democratic Congress be bypassed under a blanket authorization already secured to hunt down transnational terrorists wherever they may be hiding?

The usual suspects are on the case. De Borchgrave next proclaims:

The "neocons" who work closely with Netanyahu on what could be the next phase of a nascent regional war in the Middle East, say Bush has the authority to take out Iran's nuclear threat. Because it has only one purpose -- to take out Israel. One Hiroshima-type nuclear weapon and Israel ceases to exit[sic].

Of the three sentences quoted, the final two are nonsense. Iran has perfectly good geopolitical reasons for needing a nuke - it is surrounded by nuclear armed enemies. See for example this excellent Jerusalem Post article, which while making the case for taking out Iran's nuclear capability, notes that:

It will be very difficult for Iran to abandon its nuclear ambitions," Asculi wrote in the center's Tel Aviv Notes in August. "The first [reason] is the need to deter several perceived threats: US armed forces in Afghanistan, Iraq and the Gulf pose a danger from almost every direction; Iraq, though currently incapable of threatening any of its neighbors, could eventually reemerge as a regional force; and Israel is seen as a hostile nuclear-weapons state."

Not to mention Russia and Pakistan. One bomb would be a horrible blow to Israel, and fifteen might be fatal, but not one. The first of the three sentences is more interesting in that it explicitly states what is usually met with indignant denials and spluttering about anti-semitism: that the neo-cons who brought us the Iraq war and cheer for an Iran war are working with the Israeli Likud Party, rather than for the US.

I am deeply unenthusiastic about Iran getting nuclear weapons, either now or (more realistically) in 2010, but another US war is not the answer, at least not now. Diplomacy needs to be given a chance. Any deal would need something like the following elements: Iran agrees not to make nuclear weapons or enrich uranium and to let full inspection resume. The US, in return, would agree to not attack Iran and to guarantee its security against other nuclear powers. It should also agree not to continue to arm Hizbullah, but Israel should have to reciprocate by ending its campaign of sabotage and assassination against Iranian officials (see, e.g., the first page of the JP article cited above.)