Washington — “They (the United States and Israel) have decided to attack at least two countries in the region in the next three months.”
— Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, July 26
President Ahmadinejad has a penchant for the somewhat loony, as when last weekend he denounced Paul the Octopus, omniscient predictor of eight consecutive World Cup matches, as a symbol of decadence and purveyor of “Western propaganda and superstition.”
But for all his clownishness, Ahmadinejad is nonetheless calculating and dangerous. What “two countries” was he talking about? They seem logically to be Lebanon and Syria. Hezbollah in Lebanon has armed itself with 50,000 rockets and made clear that it is in a position to start a war at any time. Fighting on this scale would immediately bring in Syria, which would in turn invite Iranian intervention in defense of its major Arab clients — and of the first Persian beachhead on the Mediterranean in 1,400 years.
The idea that Israel, let alone the U.S., has the slightest interest in starting a war on Israel’s north is crazy. But claims about imminent attacks are serious business in that region. In May 1967, the Soviet Union falsely told its client, Egypt, that Israel was preparing to attack Syria. These rumors set off a train of events — the mobilization of Arab armies, the southern blockade of Israel, the hasty signing of an inter-Arab military pact — that led to the Six-Day War.
Ahmadinejad’s claim is not supported by a shred of evidence. So what is he up to?
It is a sign that he is under serious pressure. Passage of weak U.N. sanctions was followed by unilateral sanctions by the United States, Canada, Australia and the European Union. Already, reports Reuters, Iran is experiencing a sharp drop in gasoline imports as Lloyd’s of London refuses to insure the ships delivering them.
Second, the Arab states are no longer just whispering their desire for the U.S. to militarily take out Iranian nuclear facilities. The United Arab Emirates’ ambassador to Washington said so openly at a conference three weeks ago.
Shortly before the 1991 Gulf War, Pat Buchanan charged that “the only two groups” that wanted the U.S. to forcibly liberate Kuwait were “the Israeli Defense Ministry and its amen corner in the United States.” That was a stupid charge, contradicted by the fact that George H.W. Bush went to war leading more than 30 nations, including the largest U.S.-led coalition of Arab states ever assembled.
Twenty years later, the libel returns in the form of the scurrilous suggestion that the only ones who want the U.S. to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities are Israel and its American supporters. The UAE ambassador is, as far as ascertainable, neither Israeli, American nor Jewish. His publicly expressed desire for an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities speaks for the intense Arab fear approaching panic, of Iran’s nuclear program and the urgent hope that the U.S. will take it out.
Third, and perhaps even more troubling from Tehran’s point of view, are developments in the U.S. Former NSA and CIA Director Michael Hayden suggested last Sunday that over time, in his view, a military strike is looking increasingly favorable compared to the alternatives. Hayden is no Obama insider, but Time reports (“An Attack on Iran: Back on the Table,” July 15) that high administration officials are once again considering the military option. This may reflect a new sense of urgency or merely be a bluff to make Tehran more pliable. But in either case, it suggests that after 18 months of failed engagement, the administration is hardening its line.
The hardening is already having its effect. The Iranian regime is beginning to realize that even President Obama’s patience is limited — and that Iran may actually face a reckoning for its nuclear defiance.
All this pressure would be enough to rattle a regime already unsteady and shorn of domestic legitimacy. Hence Ahmadinejad’s otherwise inscrutable warning about an Israeli attack on two countries. (Said Defense Minister Ehud Barak to Fox News: “Who is the second one”?) It is a pointed reminder to the world of Iran’s capacity to trigger, through Hezbollah and Syria, a regional conflagration.
This is the kind of brinksmanship you get when leaders of a rogue regime are under growing pressure. The only hope to get them to reverse course is to relentlessly increase their feeling that, if they don’t, the Arab states, Israel, the Europeans and America will, one way or another, ensure that ruin is visited upon them.
— Charles Krauthammer is a columnist for Washington Post Writers Group. letters@charleskrauthammer.com
Comments
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just_another_bozo_on_this_bus (anonymous) says…
Nothing like a little bloodlust in the morning, eh, chuck?
cato_the_elder (anonymous) says…
Bozo, it looks like you have nothing to do today other than compose another vapid comment that's a non sequitur to the subject of Krauthammer's column.
just_another_bozo_on_this_bus (anonymous) replies…
Clearly Krauthammer is salivating at the prospect of nuking Iran's nukes, and anything else that happens to be "collaterally" obliterated.
cato_the_elder (anonymous) replies…
I'm not salivating and neither is Krauthammer, but Iran's nuclear program should have been taken out long ago.
just_another_bozo_on_this_bus (anonymous) replies…
So should everybody else's. But a bombing campaign is the most counterproductive way to go about it that I can think of, but that's exactly what Krauthammer has been lobbying for for some time.
cato_the_elder (anonymous) says…
Bozo, the fact that you would want us simply to give up our nuclear capability shows how really loony you are.
just_another_bozo_on_this_bus (anonymous) replies…
What I want is for everyone to give up their nuclear capability.
How do we get there? That's a tough question with no easy answers.
But as long as we cling to our "right" to such weapons, while vilifying others for wanting the same, coupled with a bloated military that's bigger than the whole rest of the world combined (most of whom represent no threat to us whatsoever,) that state of extreme hypocrisy means that terrorism, and the war on terror, are permanent and likely worsening conditions.
cato_the_elder (anonymous) replies…
Bozo, our nuclear capability has prevented World War III for over 65 years. Without it, I shudder to think what would have happened during that time. Moreover, if the "Nuclear Freeze" morons had had their way in the early 1980's (fortunately, Reagan was president), we never would have been able to cow the Soviet Union into submission as we did. You and your ilk live in a dream world in which you blame your own country for all of its problems and fail to comprehend that the more successful we are, the more jealous others become of us and wish to do us correspondent harm. We must have a significant nuclear arsenal to act as a deterrent to just such harm, which we will always face as long as we are successful. Perhaps that's why Obama, who is not an American at heart but is instead a "citizen of the world," is so hell bent for leather to steer America toward mediocrity.
vertigo (Jesse Crittenden) says…
Rumor mill on the .mil sites says Israeli fighter/bomber jets have been eyeballed at a Saudi Arabian air base. It's also rumored that a corridor of Saudi airspace has been opened up to Israel and blocked off from civilian airliners.
The Saudis working with Israel proves that the other Arab nations doesn't want Iran to have nukes and will not defend Iran against an Israeli attack on those targets.
just_another_bozo_on_this_bus (anonymous) replies…
The royal dictatorships of the Gulf Arab states are all Sunnis/Wahhabis, but they have substantial Shiite populations. With a population of 70 million, mostly Shiite and Persian, and nearly as much oil as the Gulf Arabs control, the biggest security concern for the royals is that the Shias, with the help of the Iranians, will overthrow them.
So while they may rightly fear an Iran with nukes, an Israeli attack on Iran could very easily trigger a bloodbath that stretches from Lebanon to Afghanistan.
puddleglum (anonymous) says…
WOW. a charles article that doesn't slam Obama.
and for the first time, I could read it and agree.
amazing how much more seriously you are taken when you stop your typical childish character assassinations....
you paying attention, right thinker?