While Americans try to sort out the question of who will be their next president, the real question people should be asking themselves is, “Will Israel have the courage to save itself–and the rest of the world–when it comes time to deal with Iran?”
It really doesn’t matter whether the American electorate takes the unlikely view that it wants a more bellicose geriatric version of George Bush, i.e. John McCain, or the likelier scenario that it wants a vibrant black JFK who promises change, i.e. Barack Obama. Either way, the responsibility for saving the world will fall on Israel’s shoulders.
Pick your leader America. I’m afraid it won’t matter!
If McCain becomes president, the United States will obviously stay in Iraq longer than otherwise. The American government will continue to try to suppress the reactionary tendencies within Iraq’s Islamic culture, only to find that any policy designed to direct Iraq’s development necessarily involves other requirements beyond America’s current political will.
To try to mitigate Iraq’s external handicaps, McCain proposes to apply ”international pressure” on the regimes that seek to undermine Iraq’s Westernization, i.e. Iran and Syria. This deliberately vague proposal means one of two things: 1) either McCain does not want to confront them directly, and he’s being up front about it, or 2) he wants to, but realizes that it would be political suicide to say so. Either way, he will never do so with the effectiveness required to dissuade these terrorist regimes and motivate America’s political allies in Iraq.
Only with America’s full support against Iran could Iraq’s secular leaders possibly be motivated to tough out what will certainly be decades of religious strife to come. It is well known that Iran aids insurgents militarily, but this is just the tip of the iceberg. Iran is the central hub of contemporary Islamism and thus it impacts the entire region ideologically. The reactionary theocratic philosophy that fueled its 1979 revolution has been gaining in appeal among Muslims, and Iraq’s leaders need to know that they will always get help resisting this force.
Similarly, Iraq’s nascent democracy needs to know that its ally will not tolerate the undermining presence of oppressive theocracies and terrorist states along its other borders. Consequently, regime change in Saudi Arabia and Syria would also have to figure in any American plans for a stable Iraq. These things will never happen. In the Republican mindset, Saudi Arabia is a stable ally, and Syria is just a containable nuisance.
What will happen if America sticks with the Republicans is that McCain will attempt to “stay the course.” He will try to isolate the Iraq situation, and try to evade the fact that it can’t be isolated. And if Americans aren’t calling for the troops to come home quite loudly enough for McCain to hear it yet, he won’t be able to not hear it as president.
Tragically, the longer American troops stay in Iraq while Iran remains untouched, the stronger the eventual backlash against America’s presence will be. Iraq will most likely disintegrate into civil war. The world will be scrambling to come to grips with Iraqi disintegration, and praying that we aren’t swallowed up by some world-wide conflict. While everything is busy pointing the finger at America for creating this mess, and falling over each other not to get involved, Iran will capitalize on America’s diplomatic isolation and try to do what every Muslim regime in the Middle East wishes it could do: destroy Israel.
But what if Obama becomes president? Can we avoid such an outcome?
With Obama in charge, America will adopt a position of respect for the “self-determination” of the Middle East. Obama will remove America’s troops from Iraq as quickly as possible.
In the hopes of stabilizing the situation in the region, he will then attempt to befriend Ahmedinejad as JFK attempted to befriend Nasser. Like JFK, however, he will get stung, only it’ll be much worse than Nasser sending troops to revolutionary Yemen. It’ll be a lot more like Chamberlain getting stung by Hitler.
The historical parallel between modern Iran and pre-WWII Germany has naturally occurred to many. Like Germany in the 1920s, Iran does not accept its subordinacy to powers that have never conquered it. It does not accept that other countries may determine its national fate. Like inter-war Germany, it is surrounded by weaker countries that share an ethnic (in this case religious, not racial) identity with it, and which it hopes to dominate based on an integrating ideology, in this case Pan-Islamism.
Iran’s neighbors only vaguely apprehend its ambitions and have only a loose connection to the power that should be the one to stop Iran, the United States. However, just as in the 1930s, Americans want disengagement, and Obama is ready to deliver.
What’s worse is that like Chamberlain before WWII, he is willing to exchange hand shakes and promises with someone he believes isn’t really an enemy, just a frustrated patriot.
Thus what McCain would abhor doing, but can’t avoid, Obama will willingly do: empower Iran to strike at Israel.
The situation has deteriorated to the point where we will arrive at this juncture regardless of which of the current candidates leads America into it.
With America paralyzed, the way will be cleared for Iran to make its move.
As everyone is well aware, Ahmedinejad is pushing forward with Iran’s nuclear energy program. And as everybody knows, this is a natural stepping stone to the creation of nuclear weapons. The idea that Iran needs nuclear energy to help its own people, when it starves them of oil which it has in abundance, is ludicrous. For a committed Islamist regime nuclear power can have only have one purpose: nuclear weapons, and nuclear weapons can have only one first-strike target: Israel.
Ahmedinejad’s message is clear, but it’s so frightening no one wants to listen.
So the real question is: what will Israel do when the time comes?
Will Israel strike first? It will take incredible courage. I don’t envy the Israelis to have to be in this position because America has defaulted and will continue to default on its role as world leader. If they choose to destroy Iran by the preemptive use of nuclear weapons, they will have to endure decades of international hatred for refusing to be sacrificed for “peace in our time.”
But this is their only option. No matter how good Mossad’s operations are in Iran, and no matter how good their air force pilots are, limited strikes can hardly guarantee a secure result, and they will only serve to align the world against Israel and embolden Iran to take the final step.
Unlike pre-WWII Czechoslovakia, Israel is powerful enough to stop its aggresive neighbor militarily. Its policy of “nuclear ambiguity” is obviously a cover for its own nuclear program, which has probably been in place since the 1960s. Its leaders certainly understand as well that Israel is too small to trade blows on a nuclear battlefield, and cannot risk being the first to be struck.
This all adds up to one of only two results. Iran gone. Or Israel gone.
The only thing the upcoming election is going to settle is the number and variety of intervening events along this terrifying timeline.
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Wow, Scott. Those are some very powerful ideas backed by highly relevant historical facts, and some dire predictions. As disturbing as it is, I don’t see any fault in your arguments.
I do wonder how long the process will be toward a conflict with Iran (a few years? decades?), and I also wonder if the U.S. might be persuaded to join Israel. Though I agree that our track record doesn’t support much optimism on that front.
The timing of your post is fortuitous for me. I was in the early stages of planning a post on my blog about what a rational strategy in Iraq would be.
The context would be the fanciful case of dropping all the bad ideas we have now in our foreign policy and starting fresh tomorrow. The situation is that “we’re in Iraq already (even though they shouldn’t have been our main target), Iran is a bigger threat, so what do we do now in Iraq and the wider Middle East in the context of a rationally self-interested foreign policy?
Your arguments above move past that ‘what if?’ question and really get to the heart of the matter.
However I am still curious about the “number and variety of intervening events along this terrifying timeline” you mentioned, and specifically what a rational U.S. policy would be towards Iraq, since that seems to be the tipping point right now.
Hi:
Thanks for the question, and BTW, welcome to the blogosphere! The title of your blog reminds me of the Iraq situation. Choosing between Obama and McCain is like rearranging deck chairs on a sinking ocean liner.
A rational policy towards Iraq is exactly what Leonard Peikoff has advocated: an ultimatum delivered to the Iranian people. Overthrow your government now and render yourself transparent to the United States, or else we will end you. If there is indeed an Iranians-Iran dichotomy (which I’ll be addressing in a future post) then this policy would lead to regime change.
Those who would pull it off have to know that we would give them full support. Which means we would have to be willing to occupy Iraq AND Iran simultaneously. And that’s just for starters.
Nobody is capable of doing this today. So Iran’s theocratic leadership will get away with its weapons development project, and then use the weapons at the time of their choosing.
Scott.
Thanks, Scott.
Do you happen to have a link to Peikoff’s talk and/or article outlining that strategy? Is it on the ARI site? I definitely want to look that one up.
And yes, your characterization of the name of my blog, “Choosing between Obama and McCain is like rearranging deck chairs on a sinking ocean liner.” is EXACTLY what I was intending.
Regarding the possible Iranian-Iran dichotomy, I remember when the moderate president Mohammed Khatami was in power, and it looked for a time like there might be some popular uprising against the ruling clerics… I allowed myself to be somewhat optimistic that things were changing. But now we have a nationalist president and a radical Islamist clergy, and it just looks like the coming storm clouds are getting darker and darker.
Actually, my last statement raises a question in my mind. Would you consider Ahmadinnerjacket a nationalist? I know the dominant internal power structure is led by the Islamist clergy, but the president seems like a classic self-gratifying nationalistic dictator. And from what I’ve heard, the two sides to Iran’s ruling class are clashing a bit. I have no idea how much that matters, though. Perhaps it’s all engineered by the clergy, trying to foment nationalist fervor in the same way they have harnessed Islamist fervor.
I’ve heard Peikoff talk about an ultimatum to terrorist nations in various presentations. Here’s one:
http://www.peikoff.com/essays/what_terrorism.htm
This one doesn’t mention the idea of giving the Iranian people a chance to topple their government, but I’m sure I recall him talking about that possible approach–perhaps on his radio show or in a Q&A.
Re: Ahmy, sure he’s part nationalist, part Islamist. But Islamism is the dominant strain in his thinking, and besides, nationalism was essentially discredited with Nasser’s failures, whereas modern Islamism has yet to suffer an historically significant defeat. Also, Iran’s system of government enshrines Islamism.
Check out this link for more info:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/shared/spl/hi/middle_east/03/iran_power/html/default.stm
-Scott.
This is a fascinating essay and I see much truth in it. However, I am confused when you write “I don’t envy the Israelis to have to be in this position because America has defaulted and will continue to default on its role as world leader.” It is in both Israel and America’s self-interest to directly tackle the Iranian problem. Both have been attacked by elements of the Iranian terror apparatus for almost 30 years now and certainly Israel is directly threatened with nuclear annihilation. But why portray this as a failure of world leadership? Ought it not be considered a failure of pursuing one’s interests? What exactly do you mean by the designation “world leader”? Should there be world leaders and should the United States be one? It seems to me that we’ve had too much “world leadership” over the last few decades. What we need more of is a pursuit of our national self-interest as defined by the individual rights of our citizens.
Gideon:
I appreciate the comment.
I certainly don’t mean to suggest that America has a duty to be a “world leader” in any sense other than to act in its own self-interest as a military and economic superpower. That’s what real leadership would look like!
Scott.
Thanks for the quick reply. You can see how that the title of “world leader” might be misapplied to mean we have all sorts of unchosen duties to the save the rest of the world. Your latest response suggests that you simply mean leader in the sense of leading by example (of pursuing one’s interest) and perhaps leading in the sense of being ahead in military and economic power (and thus able to do more for one’s interests). If so, I agree wholeheartedly.
Excellent analysis, but I am curious about the third chair sliding around on the deck. I am still not counting out Hillary. She cannot win, but Obama can lose. The toxic anti-Americanism at his church, in his wife, and in him? could be his undoing, although it could be too late for Hillary. Would she be significantly different from your Obama prediction with respect to Iran?
I think Hillary is just Bill all over again. That means she represents unmitigated pragmatism. The end result is that Iran gets the same amount of breathing room as under Obama, and we end up in the same place.
Nice bit of analysis, Scott. Whenever Israel does strike, I’ve got firecrackers and champagne to pop open. Should be quite a night in my pacifist neighborhood!