April 17, 2006
Boy, did the "fuck you" letters come flying in last week after I said that strategic planning to bomb Iran's nuclear facilities wasn't such a bad idea.
So, what do you know -- Iran's president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad spoke out again on Friday, saying Israel was a "constant threat" and predicted that it was on the verge of "being eliminated." Eliminated how? one is prompted to wonder. Well, President A-jad had been rather specific last year when he discussed "wiping Israel off the map." On Friday he referred to Israel as a "rotten, dried tree" that would collapse in "one storm." Interesting metaphor. Did he mean one atomic bomb? That would probably do the job to a nation about the size of Maryland, when you take into account the nuclear contamination, though a toxic smear could be carried downwind east as far as China, blowing back in Iran's face, so to speak.
Anyway, Mr. A-jad's remarks came during the same week that he publicly announced, with great fanfare, his government's success at enriching uranium into fissile material. It wasn't hard to put two and two together: wiping Israel off the map + how to.
The controversy over strategic planning of the harshest kind boiled over after Seymour Hersh's story "The Iran Plans" broke in the April 17th issue of The New Yorker. The agitated public and the news media (except for Terri Gross on NPR's "Fresh Air" show) generally overlooked remarks in the article made by Robert Baer, former CIA agent in the Middle East and author of See No Evil and Sleeping With the Devil, who, among other things, had investigated the Iran-sponsored Hezbollah group's links to the 1983 US Marine Barracks bombing in Beirut. Baer had followed President A-jad's career and connections for two decades, after Ahmadinejad had distinguished himself as a leader among the Revolutionary Guard "students" who captured the American Embassy in Teheran in 1979 and took 52 employees hostage.
Hersh writes:
"Baer told me. . . that Ahmadinejad and his Revolutionary Guard colleagues in the Iranian government 'are capable of making a bomb, hiding it, and launching it as Israel. They're apocalyptic Shiites. If you're sitting in Tel Aviv and you believe they've got nukes and missiles -- you've got to take them out. These guys are nuts, and there's no reason to back off.'"
So it would appear that the practical question is not so much what America might do but what Israel might do first. And that question puts everybody in the West in an uncomfortable position -- since a strike by Israel could 1.) ignite a major regional conflagration leading to even wider war, and 2.) shut down Middle East oil production (or even permanently cripple it). Baer seems to think that this is exactly what President A-jad wants. I think so, too. Crazy as it might seem, it is not crazier than waging war by suicide bombers. It's just kicking it up a notch, in the immortal words of Emeril Lagasse. It's jihad x-treme. And the reward, in Mr. A-jad's thinking might be that a large part of the Islamic world would survive, while Israel would be ganged up on and eliminated -- and the Shiites would get credit for it! (not to mention first-class tickets to heaven and all those waiting virgins).
Therefore one of the more remarkable elements of the story is Israel's restraint so far. By historical measure, the extremely belligerent remarks by Iran's president would have already invited an armed response by any sane nation. You wonder how many more times Mr. A-jad will spell it out before something has to happen.
No comments:
Post a Comment