ME Myths Metastasize, Iran War Hysteria Rages Onward
Much written and said about the Middle East has always been fantasy. But nowadays the proportion of fantasy to reality is higher than ever. And number one on that list is the war hysteria with Iran.
Israel may have to attack Iran some day. But not this week, month, or even year. That’s true for very good reasons.
Iran doesn’t have deliverable nuclear weapons. It is not about to have deliverable nuclear weapons. Israel is not about to attack Iran. The United States is certainly not about to attack Iran. The whole idea that the leaders of Iran are crazed suicide-oriented people who expect the twelfth imam to arrive next Thursday is simply not true.
Yes, the Iranian regime is radical and yes it throws threats in all directions and yes, too, it is the world’s biggest sponsor of terrorism. Yet after 32 years in power the Islamist regime in Tehran has yet to do something really adventurous abroad. This regime wants to stay in power and it has shown restraint. And when it committed terrorist attacks against Americans in Lebanon, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia it did so with the correct calculation that it could get away without paying any price.
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad doesn’t run Iran and many of his statements are intended for domestic consumption to boost his claim to leadership. I don’t want to say that Iran’s leaders are calm pragmatists but they are power-hungry people intent on the survival of themselves and their regime. Iran’s government is bad enough but the caricatures we are seeing go far beyond the reality.
Does this mean that we know that Iran will never ever use nuclear weapons? Of course not. But this merely tells us that there is not a 100 percent or anywhere near it certainty that they will do so. To start a war with Iran by attacking its nuclear facilities means that a full and open war exists that will be far more likely to escalate to a nuclear level in the future. In other words, an attack makes a future Iranian use of nuclear weapons far more likely than it is already.
Iran’s main goal, like that of Pakistan, is to make itself immune to any reprisals for terrorism and subversion by having nuclear weapon. In part, the rationale for the nuclear program is outdated, though that certainly won’t stop Tehran from pursuing it. The project was launched to make Iran into the leader of the Middle East and even of the whole Muslim world.
Yet the rise of Sunni Arab Islamists, notably the Muslim Brotherhood, has sharply reduced Iran’s potential sphere of influence. Tehran’s broader ambitions have been shrunk to include only Lebanon, Syria (where its ally is facing major problems), southwest Afghanistan, and Iraq (where its clients are proportionately small in size). Throw in some ambitions toward Bahrain and the ability to scare the Persian Gulf Arabs and that’s about it. Turkey has its own ambitions; the newly empowered Sunni Arab Islamists hate Iran and don’t think they need Tehran at all.
That doesn’t mean Iran might not some day attack Israel if and when it has nuclear weapons. Obviously a mixture of containment, defensive measures, and the ability plus willingness to stage a preemptive attack if necessary is vital for Israel which isn’t going to depend on Iran’s good will or assume that Tehran will never attack.
At the same time, though, the chances of avoiding a nuclear war are quite positive. What is Iran going to do, put two to six missiles on launching pads to shoot at Israel without being detected beforehand and having no second wave that can be used once devastating Israeli attacks start? Is Iran going to attack Israel purely out of spite, from blind fanaticism, knowing not only that Iran will be devastated but that Israel has a high likelihood of preempting and destroying them on the launching pad or shooting them down?
To start a war with Iran now doesn’t make any sense. It will not stop that country from getting nuclear weapons and it would make a nuclear war in the coming years more rather than less likely. Israel has no international support. Russia is practically threatening a war against Israel if it does launch such an operation.
The logistics of an attack are difficult, though not impossible. A lot can go wrong. You don’t want to try such an operation unless you really have to do so. The bottom line is that an Israeli attack on Iran at present is simply not necessary. A lot of the Israeli rhetoric is clearly intended to press the West toward greater activism and tougher sanctions.
Indeed, all of the reasons why Israel is not about to attack Iran are just plain ignored in the media. Defense Minister Ehud Barak explains that no decision is made and that Israeli policy is only to attack if Iran is about to get deliverable nuclear weapons. He suggests that this won’t happen in the next year. The biggest Israeli critic of launching an attack states that Israel decided not to do so and his worst complaint against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is that he wants to keep discussing the possibility, not that he has decided on an attack.
President Barack Obama—a man who would never attack Iran or support an Israeli action—has publicly state that Israel isn’t about to do so. The president of the United States, whatever his other faults, would not say such a thing unless he has been clearly promised by Netanyahu that it isn’t going to happen. If Israel were to break that promise the entire bilateral relationship would blow up in a way that would make recent tiffs seem like a picnic.
In short, the whole idea is nonsense. Numerous reasons can be given to explain why it is not on the agenda for this year. But the media and various analysts—many of them self-proclaimed experts—simply ignore all the evidence. Some want to get Israel into a war with Iran to please their own ideological agenda; others want to claim Israel is going to attack in order to prove their thesis that Israel is the evil cause of all regional—or even world–problems.
This hysteria really should stop. Israel isn’t going to get into a long, bloody, and avoidable war because bloggers and op-ed writers are screaming for it.
Briefly here are some other myths that deserve to be abandoned as soon as possible.
–There is an Israel-Palestinian peace process. That’s probably dead for decades because the Palestinian side doesn’t want a compromise deal. Obama’s mistakes, the Palestinian Authority-Hamas coalition, the Islamist “spring,” and the UN unilateral independence bid all makes it even more obviously deceased.
–The Muslim Brotherhood is moderate. Wake up and smell the jihad.
–The Syrian regime is about to fall. The opposition knows that without international intervention—which isn’t going to happen—they can’t win.
–Turkey is the very model of a moderate Islamic democracy. Actually, it’s a repressive Islamist dictatorship in training. Look at the massive arrests, the trumped-up treason charges, the trampling on free speech, and the assault on the country’ armed forces.
Unless there is some real understanding of what’s going on in the Middle East any hope for useful analysis, much less predicting the most likely future scenarios or charting a successful Western policy, is out of reach.
Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center. His book, Israel: An Introduction, has just been published by Yale University Press. He is also editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal, and Middle East editor and featured columnist at PJMedia http://pajamasmedia.com/barryrubin/. His latest books are The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan). GLORIA Center site is http://www.gloria-center.org.His articles published originally outside of PajamasMedia are at
Implicit in Rubin’s assertion that Russia has all but threatened to attack Israel if Israel attacks Iran is that Putin is under tremendous pressure from ultra-nationalist Russian sectors to NUKE ISRAEL if Israel goes ahead and attacks Iran.
All of those arguments would have been applied to Iraq’s and Syria’s nuclear programmes. Clearly, they were false.
As is the rather puzzling meme about how it doesn’t matter because the Iranians haven’t been proven to have achieved a successful mating of nuclear warhead to missile, when all you actually need for a ‘delivery system’ is something as simple as a ship or van. The users of which wouldn’t even have to be aware.
Although I agree with some of the conclusions this statement appears to me to be absurd “Yet after 32 years in power the Islamist regime in Tehran has yet to do something really adventurous abroad.” It is astounding as I see no other nation that has expanded its terrorist and colonial actions, engaged in acts of war, as much as Iran: Hamas, Hezbullah, Syria, South and Central America, bombings(marines, Jewish center, etc.) What does Rubin need to see differently?
Rubin has made a fatal error in his analysis. And that is that the Iranian leadership is rational. That same error was made in the thirties with regard to Hitler and his plans. No one took Mein Kampf seriously.No one believed that Hitler meant to carry out what he wrote. Of course the mullahs use Jew hatred to bolster their regime but let’s not assume that they won’t follow the same course as Hitler in attempting to wipe out the Jewish State.
Apparently Barry Rubin thinks he knows Islam better than people whose profession it is to know Islam. Bernard Lewis was Professor Emeritus of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University while Raphael Israeli is Professor of Islamic, Middle Eastern and Chinese history at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem . Both of them would disagree with Barry Rubin . See MAD is Dead http://www.madisdead.blogspot.com
That one stuck out to me too, Bernard. Up until that point, I was trying to decide whether Rubin’s article was a Purim joke or the real thing. As far as Iran’s expanded role as a supplier of terrorists, including massive weapons shipments intercepted by Israel and displayed before the whole world, Iran has repeatedly threatened international shipping in the Straits of Hormuz (backed up by naval exercises), developed a weapons delivery system with intercontinental reach, and has established a naval presence in the Mediterranean. Only the greatest of the colonial powers have done anything more adventurous than that in recent years. Then there are alliances across the globe, such as with Venezuela.
This has to be a Purim joke. I’m amazed that commenters here seem to be taking Rubin so seriously. If so, Israeli dark humor is more subtle than I ever imagined.
When viewed by hindsight Rubin has been wrong almost 100% of the time. Unless he is invoking Parody in the above article his record will still be intact. Last year he was touting Obama as a pro Israel president. His supposed expertise is Syria and not Iran.
IMHO: Jews are smarter and braver than the Arabs. In a short limited war, we would defeat the Muslim enemy. In a longer or total war, Israel stands no chance. There is no alternative to the first use of nuclear weapons.
If the enemy has nuclear weapons then the Law of nuclear war demands “USE THEM OR LOSE THEM”
We don’t need to use nuclear weapons. They can be easily defeated with conventional armaments. We have done it before-we can do it again.
Why must we take a chance. If you assume the worst,and act accordingly, you will never be caught with your pants down.
Just don’t heed the so called mavens.
That is a smokescreen.Russia is not about to attack Israel.
Bush arranged Peace Deal with Iran. According to the US-Iranian peace deal, Iran wound down its support for Iraqi guerrillas, and the US guaranteed it wouldn’t bomb the Iranian nuclear facilities. Iran made good on its promise, and allowed the US Administration the tactical PR victory of reduced casualties in Iraq. The US Administration waited to fulfill its part of the bargain until after the Annapolis peace show. Refusing to attack Iran over its nuclear program earlier would have likely derailed Israeli commitment to the Annapolis peace parley.
I believe it was this deal and not the phony surge which allowed Obama to withdraw American forces from Iraq without having to admit defeat. Immediately after Annapolis, in a highly unusual move, the US Administration allowed for the publication of an unclassified summary of the US intelligence report, which asserted that Iran wound down its nuclear program… in 2003.
The US intelligence on nuclear developments is laughable: it missed crucial developments in the Pakistani, North Korean, Libyan, and Syrian nuclear programs. Iran has ballistic missiles, and all the technology for producing nuclear warheads from Pakistan and North Korea. In keeping with American and Iranian deal made by Bush… Obama has done little or nothing to stop Iran from attaining Nukes. The sanctions were relatively light and ineffectual and only a Congressional end run of Obama has made sanctions more biting but these are too little and much too late to stop the mullahs.
Both Bush and Obama administrations were only concerned with extricating American forces from Iraq and not preventing a Nuclear Iran. America will not attack its nuclear facilities. The US Administration sold Israeli security for Iranian help in Iraq.
Sanctions bite on Iran has been nullified with the increase in the price of oil, which is the result of not increased demand for oil but the increase in the money supply by the Federal Reserve printing Trillions of dollars much of it through backdoor deals. American oil companies want a piece of the Iranian action and a nuclear Iran makes the ME arms market lucrative for American Arms producers.
For America, Iran is the replacement for the bogeyman USSR. If a nuclear armed Iran would attack Israel, America would not be very disturbed and would not change her current policy either.
The book The Case for Israel by Alan Dershowitz is similar. His historical analysis is brilliant and most useful to me and you, but his conclusions as in his preface dreadful. Similar with Rubin. This seems to be quite common and I can only guess as to why. Rubin I think is an academic, he writes, he talks but life is not just about that, man also has to act. And there always comes a time to act.
Yamit
Something very similar happened in 1943. The Allies were told of the camps but the Allies decided the murdering of the Jews was not THAT important. Their pilots overflew the camps.
It was really an Alliance with the Nazis.
Then post war the Alliance was set in stone (Christopher Simpson Blowback)
D0N’T FORGET RUSSIA: The Russian government knew about the Germans’ annihilating the Jews in the conquered Soviet Union from day one, from the burning of Jews in Byalostok, but didn’t warn the Jews to flee for their lives—which they still had enough time to do, even on foot. Ukrainian, Latvian, Estonian, Lithuanian, Russian, and Byelorussian populations assisted the Germans in hunting down, rounding up, and massacring the Jews. Most European Christian nations showed similar zeal in helping the Germans to finish the Jews off. Evidently on Stalin’s orders, the Soviet Army avoided bombing the death camps during the massive bombing raids into German-occupied Eastern Europe. Primo Levi testified to daily bombings of “work” camps around Auschwitz, but not a bomb touched the death camp itself.
Nothing has changed since the Holocaust. In 1967, as the Arab armies were massing at Israel’s borders, as the IDF was digging thousands of graves open for Jewish bodies, as common Israelis thought in terms of the Holocaust—what did the world do? Nothing. Nasser and the Syrians were explicit about their intentions to annihilate all the Jews rather than merely dismantle the Zionist state.
The world screamed at Israel in disappointment when she preempted and survived.
It is incorrect to say that the world learned nothing from the Holocaust. It learned a tremendously important thing: murdering millions of Jews is socially acceptable,and it’s okay to kill Jews.
Also, the allies were begged to bomb the rail lines carrying the jews to the camps but they refused. Perhaps the only real guarantee for the jews is to make sure that WMD is accessible to every major city not only of the direct enemy but also those who are collaborating in the war against the Jews. That a holocaust of the Jews should be a holocaust for the world. I have often felt that Europe was more deserving of the A bombs than Japan in WWII. The one people who would be justified in terror acts are not committing them.
Ever more reason to stamp out anti-Semitism. Our educations system in the US sucks. Our children need to be taught the sins of anti-Semitism and how hateful it is.
How is it we are called out on remarks about Islam, we can’t say nigger anymore without being called out yet nobody has guts enough to call out others on anti-Semitism.
Shame on us.
Rongrand: You are as always right on the mark. Shame on us.
The nazis and the allies were in fact in lock step during the war despite all the propaganda to the contrary..
My question is: Does Israel’s enemies desire that Israel’s infrastructure be kept intact? We know they don’t value Jewish lives, or the lives of their own kind seemingly, but do they value the infrastructure at all?
The hatred has always been as impulsive as it was idealogical. If it meant consuming everything of any realistic value in a radioactive inferno, just to ‘kill the Jews’, they would do it.
The ecological fallout of hundreds of thousands of burning oil wells throughout the ME and beyond would create a nuclear winter, wipe out most of all living organisms, kill hundreds of millions by radiation and destroy every civilization in existence. No sun no food, no economies and a lot of death by disease, radiation and by any manner one can imagine.
14:6 And it shall come to pass in that day, that there shall not be light, but heavy clouds and thick;
4:12 And this shall be the plague wherewith the Lord will smite all the peoples that have warred against Jerusalem: their flesh shall consume away while they stand upon their feet, and their eyes shall consume away in their sockets, and their tongue shall consume away in their mouth.
14:13 And it shall come to pass in that day, that a great tumult from the Lord shall be among them; and they shall lay hold every one on the hand of his neighbour, and his hand shall rise up against the hand of his neighbour.
14:15 And so shall be the plague of the horse, of the mule, of the camel, and of the ass, and of all the beasts that shall be in those camps, as this plague.
14:16 And it shall come to pass, that every one that is left of all the nations that came against Jerusalem shall go up from year to year to worship the King, the Lord of hosts, and to keep the feast of tabernacles.
14:17 And it shall be, that whoso of the families of the earth goeth not up unto Jerusalem to worship the King, the Lord of hosts, upon them there shall be no rain.
14:19 This shall be the punishment of Egypt, and the punishment of all the nations that go not up to keep the feast of tabernacles.
Yamit, ‘Moshe Dayan said “Israel must be like a mad dog, too dangerous to bother.” Were this to be true there would be peace and security. But where are the leaders who will state this and are willing to think big like in 67, Entebbe and the 73 crossing of the canal? North Korea is given more respect than Israel because they are feared. I wonder if it is possible for Israel to seize the saudi oilfields and remove the funding for jew killing. Certainly they could also take the Suez Canal and keep the fees. If this were done perhaps sanctions need not be feared. Everyone would want to buy the Israeli oil and would seek accommodation. If this were done the cacophony of jew killers would cease and they would all fear being next. the sudden profit to israel and loss to the terror states would be a welcome shock and a real gain. If one seeks justification one merely need claim reparations for funding the killing of Jews. All that investment in the military would be realized.
There is no question about it; the saudis are the worst antisemites and anti-americans of that whole sad lot. 9/11 was funded by saudi money and 13 out of 15 of 9/11 perps were saudis.
If there is a will and the right Jewish leadership, I believe it’s doable. Israel could use Muslim Mercenaries and control from a distance. Thinking again out of the BOX, Israel aligned with Iran could control the ME and render Egypt Israels most dangerous existential enemy near harmless to us.
Yamit. certainly the oilfields are already run by foreigners. It would be like the hitler stalin pact or even Yalta where russia and us divided europe. However,although Iran was an Israeli ally in the past I dont see what they would gain from such an alliance, in their own eyes. Most of these ME states are familiar and satisfied with Israel as the red herring to control their population, it would be hard for any of them to give that up. The Iranians would want the oil for themselves. Such an alliance would be beneficial but what could israel give Iran. Israeli control of mideast oil and the suez cansl could rearrange world politics. Perhaps an arrangement with china and north korean troops serving as mercenaries. I would think a muslim mercenary force, as you suggest,or a puppet muslim govt(haashemites, palestinians) would be best. Perhaps maintaining the sunni shiite divide can be profitable. The key is to seize the oil profits to change world alliances. I do believe that if there are Israelis, and others, who could think out of the box and seek to profit from the huge military investment already made,it can be solved. I think we agree that it is militarily doable but the problem is sustaining it over the long term. Of course, brute force is always an option but Jews are loathe to gain from such motives. This should be a scenario to solve as any other problem. How could this work short and long term?
Also, I am wondering if there could be an islamic perspective that can paint the jews in a light to muslims as allies. In such a scenario eg where Israel collaborates with shiite or sunnis one against the other.Far fetched I know, but I am trying to think out of the box as you say. That is the beginning of great possibilities. The usual suspects have the Jews thinking in the box enslaved by chains and boundaries while they galavant throughout the world in their own interest. Israel is also the red herring of the US, for the arabs, to keep the arabs dependent on the US. This is why the US always holds Israel back. They seek to preserve the european ghetto jew.