Ami Isseroff gives us a convincing description of the most likely scenario if Iran’s progress toward a nuclear weapon is not stopped:
By “nuclear Iran,” I mean an Iran that at least makes a convincing case that it has or could have nuclear weapons – that it has completed the fuel cycle. They needn’t test an actual bomb. They will use their military muscle as an umbrella to further their two goals: eliminating the Great Satan, the USA, from influence in the Middle East, and eliminating the Little Satan, Israel. They will create a Hezbollah movement in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia for example, where there are aggrieved Shi’ite populations (a majority in Bahrain) and a lot of oil. They will certainly gain control of Iraq, as well as tightening their grip on Syria and Lebanon.
They will control most of the oil reserves of the Middle East and demand a price for the oil. That price will be, as their leaders have stated, a “referendum” about the future of “Palestine” (meaning Israel) in which all the “Palestinian Arabs” in the world are allowed to participate. As there are a very large number of candidates for eligibility as “Palestinian Arabs” if criteria are sufficiently lax and imaginative, there is little doubt as to what the result of the referendum would be. Mr. Obama might be able to “live” with that for a while, but of course that would not be the end of Iranian demands, since their ultimate goal as Mr. Ahmadinejad announced, is a “world without the United States and Zionism.”
There are various things that might derail this plan, but an imposed Israeli-Palestinian ‘peace’ agreement is not one of them. Indeed, such a deal with the Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority and in the presence of Hamas will simply create a hostile entity — another Gaza, if you will — next door to Israel’s heartland, completing its encirclement by Iran-linked enemies, and threatening a three-front war.
While the Iranian leadership obviously has religious and ideological reasons to want to eliminate Israel, there are also geopolitical ones: 1) Israel is the only state in the Middle East that is strong enough to be a threat to Iran’s plan to dominate the region, and 2) insofar as it is an ally of the US, it serves as a way for the US to project its power in the region.
It’s been suggested that an anti-Israel policy will get the conservative Arab regimes on our side, which will strengthen our hand with Iran. But those regimes will be the first targets of Iranian expansionism and they are already ‘on our side’ with regard to Iran (interestingly — although they will never say so publicly — some in the Arab world are hoping that Israel will solve the Iranian problem for them).
Israel is the keystone of Western interests in the region. If it’s removed, the structure will fall.
Can you imagine a world in which a third of the oil reserves — more, if you include Venezuela in the anti-US bloc — is under the control of Iran, where political speeches invariably close with shouts of “death to America!”?
US policy to contract and weaken Israel actually aids Iran, a declared enemy of the US. This policy is at best irrational and at worst treasonous.
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Just because someone is irrational doesn’t mean that he doesn’t have motives. Hitler lost the war in part because his irrational desire to wipe out the Jews of Europe at all costs interfered with rational decision-making.
There’s no shortage of important people who oppose Israel. There has always been a strong element, primarily in the State Department, that believes that the relationship between Israel and the US is an embarrassment, forced upon us by the Jewish Lobby. Truman recognized the state of Israel in 1948 in defiance of this group. It’s safe to say that there’s more than a bit of antisemitism among them.
There is also a Saudi-paid army of former officials and lobbyists that push this view. Chas Freeman, Jimmy Carter, James A. Baker, etc. are examples. Whatever their arguments, there’s a strong element of simple self-interest here.
More recently they’ve been joined by left-wing anti-Zionists, who consider the Palestinians third-world ‘people of color’ (never mind the actual colors of representative Israelis and Palestinians) who have been ‘colonized’ by Israel; these types suffuse the Obama Administration and apparently set the tone for White House attitudes. This is most likely Obama’s own view, although he plays his cards close to the vest. In recent years this group has also begun to be characterized by antisemitism.
Probably the only way to improve this administration’s policy will be to replace it.
Technorati Tags: Iran, Israel, Obama
The United States will it seems to me at some point realize that it can no longer be patient and allow Iran to be increasing in power on all fronts. It will have to confront them directly. At present however it seems content to try to deal with Iran through diplomatic means primarily. This is not working and will not work.
Not under an Obama second term (G-d forbid), Shalom, and certainly not during the term he has now.
You just don’t understand Obama. I don’t blame you. He is hard to fathom for most relatively normal, rational people. Maybe it would help you if you can imagine a scenario in which Ilan Pappe was elected PM in Israel. It is that bad.
As I’ve said in other posts, I went to school with guys like him.
This is not about some rational appreciation of American interests. A clue here can be found in Vic’s column above, the bit about the far liberal left – Obama’s intellectual homeland – viewing the Palestinians as a “people of color”, victims of white guy colonial oppression, whose grievances derserve redress above all else…including the interests of the erstwhile biggest white guy colonial oppressor of all, the United States. You see, to this crowd – never mind A-jad – we really are the “Great Satan”. Samantha Powers and A-jad ought to go bowling or something….
There is a perverse – yes, treasonous – confluence of interests between those that walk the halls of power in Obama’s company, on the one hand, and the mullahs of Iran on the other. The terms are different, but all you have to do is read the foreign policy “bible” of Obama’s sort here – try Chalmers Johnson’s “Blowback” – and you’ll see that these people who surround Obama – and certainly Obama himself, that’s why he chooses these people – also see the U.S. as a kind of “Great Satan”.
According to their world view, it was our policies that produced the rage and hatred of Iranian leaders. Therefore, per this insane narrative, we have no moral authority to engage in a robust defense of our interests, because these “interests” are tainted by definition. In this Alice-in-Wonderland world, when we defend our interests, we are global bullies and exploiters. But when medieval mullahs, who send out armies of ten-year-old boys out as human mine detectors, try to dominate the whole of the Persian Gulf so as to extort the world with a commodity they wouldn’t even have to sell if we hadn’t developed it for them (‘cuz they were too busy living in the Middle Ages to bother with such things), that is “righteous justice for the oppressed dark-skinned peoples”.
Give peace a chance, baby!
So, hell no, the “United States” – as led by the likes of Obama – doesn’t have to realize a damned thing that makes any sense whatever, at any point in time. They are doing EXACTLY what they want to do: weaken America on the world stage, and trash anything that represents American values in the traditional sense of the word, values they consider irredeemably hypocritical and corrupt. Hence, their policies towards Israel.
Vic is right: This can’t be modified, and these people aren’t going to “learn” anything as we understand this process. So far as they are concerned, they already know the “truth” with a capital T, they won’t be talked out of what they are doing. They cannot be engaged or reasoned with. They MUST be replaced. They should not have been elected in the first place, but unfortunately, no one I know has a time machine handy.
We’re just going to have to oppose them as vigorously as we can, and we have to pound them and their sort into the ground as best we can in electoral terms every chance we get, starting with this fall. And in the meantime, you in Israel are going to have to suffer the very brunt of the consequences of their disgraceful, bankrupt, delusional, nihilisitc garbage that passes for policy, because in your success and your strength, combined with your faith and your – for want of a better phrase, “goodness”* – you above all else represent everything they detest, because you are the living repudiation of all they stand for, more than any other nation. I’m glad you are so tough and smart over there, you’ll need all of that you can muster.
*(Yes, “goodness”. I don’t know how else to put it. When I was over there in 2007, that was one of my major impressions of the country, in so many little vignettes I could relate. I’m hardly saying Israel is a nation of saints (even our tour guides pulled a little fast one on us that really pissed me off at one point, but that is another story), but I also met some amazing people, and saw incredible things that one would have great trouble finding in this much larger country that is my home.
I mean, heck, would YOU have elected Ilan Pappe??!! What does that say about us over here???!!!! I mean, if Israel were like the U.S. that way, all Ilan would have had to do to get elected was promise to pay people’s mortgages, for cryin’ out loud!!!!
Anyway, in the aggregate, it seems to me that there really is a kind of essential “goodness” about Israel that is hard for me to articulate any other way. I’m afraid this dog is a bit too old to learn the trick of fluency in modern Hebrew, a language in which I’ve had no instruction in any form, but I so badly want to retire there. That is my dream.)