So
What About Iran?
By Uri Avnery
04 Octobe, 2007
Gush Shalom
It is no secret that the Pro-Israel lobby and its allies - the (mostly
Jewish) neo-cons and the Christian Zionists - are pushing America into
this war, just as they pushed it into Iraq.
A
RESPECTED American paper posted a scoop this week: Vice-President Dick
Cheney, the King of Hawks, has thought up a Machiavellian scheme for
an attack on Iran. Its main point: Israel will start by bombing an Iranian
nuclear installation, Iran will respond by launching missiles at Israel,
and this will serve as a pretext for an American attack on Iran.
Far-fetched? Not really.
It is rather like what happened in 1956. Then France, Israel and Britain
secretly planned to attack Egypt in order to topple Gamal Abd-al-Nasser
("regime change" in today's lingo.) It was agreed that Israeli
paratroops would be dropped near the Suez Canal, and that the resulting
conflict would serve as a pretext for the French and British to occupy
the canal area in order to "secure" the waterway. This plan
was implemented (and failed miserably).
What would happen to us if
we agreed to Cheney's plan? Our pilots would risk their lives to bomb
the heavily defended Iranian installations. Then, Iranian missiles would
rain down on our cities. Hundreds, perhaps thousands would be killed.
All this in order to supply the Americans with a pretext to go to war.
Would the pretext have stood
up? In other words, is the US obliged to enter a war on our side, even
when that war is caused by us? In theory, the answer is yes. The current
agreements between the US and Israel say that America has to come to
Israel's aid in any war - whoever started it.
Is there any substance to
this leak? Hard to know. But it strengthens the suspicion that an attack
on Iran is more imminent than people imagine.
DO BUSH, Cheney & Co. indeed intend to attack Iran?
I don't know, but my suspicion
that they might is getting stronger.
Why? Because George Bush
is nearing the end of his term of office. If it ends the way things
look now, he will be remembered as a very bad - if not the worst - president
in the annals of the republic. His term started with the Twin Towers
catastrophe, which reflected no great credit on the intelligence agencies,
and would come to a close with the grievous Iraq fiasco.
There is only one year left
to do something impressive and save his name in the history books. In
such situations, leaders tend to look for military adventures. Taking
into account the man's demonstrated character traits, the war option
suddenly seems quite frightening.
True, the American army is
pinned down in Iraq and Afghanistan. Even people like Bush and Cheney
could not dream, at this time, of invading a country four times larger
than Iraq, with three times the population.
But, quite possibly the war-mongers
are whispering in Bush's ear: What are you worrying about? No need for
an invasion. Enough to bomb Iran, as we bombed Serbia and Afghanistan.
We shall use the smartest bombs and the most sophisticated missiles
against the two thousand or so targets, in order to destroy not only
the Iranian nuclear sites but also their military installations and
government offices. "We shall bomb them back into the stone age,"
as an American general once said about Vietnam, or "turn their
clock back 20 years," as the Israeli Air Force general Dan Halutz
said about Lebanon.
That's a tempting idea. The
US will only use its mighty Air Force, missiles of all kinds and the
powerful aircraft-carriers, which are already deployed in the Persian/Arabian
Gulf. All these can be sent into action at any time on short notice.
For a failed president approaching the end of his term, the idea of
an easy, short war must have an immense attraction. And this president
has already shown how hard it is for him to resist temptations of this
kind.
WOULD THIS indeed be such an easy operation, a "piece of cake"
in American parlance?
I doubt it.
Even "smart" bombs
kill people. The Iranians are a proud, resolute and highly motivated
people. They point out that for two thousand years they have never attacked
another country, but during the eight years of the Iran-Iraq war they
have amply proved their determination to defend their own when attacked.
Their first reaction to an
American attack would be to close the Straits of Hormuz, the entrance
to the Gulf. That would choke off a large part of the world's oil supply
and cause an unprecedented world-wide economic crisis. To open the straits
(if this is at all possible), the US army would have to capture and
hold large areas of Iranian territory.
The short and easy war would
turn into a long and hard war. What does that mean for us in Israel?
There can be little doubt
that if attacked, Iran will respond as it has promised: by bombarding
us with the rockets it is preparing for this precise purpose. That will
not endanger Israel's existence, but it will not be pleasant either.
If the American attack turns
into a long war of attrition, and if the American public comes to see
it as a disaster (as is happening right now with the Iraqi adventure),
some will surely put the blame on Israel. It is no secret that the Pro-Israel
lobby and its allies - the (mostly Jewish) neo-cons and the Christian
Zionists - are pushing America into this war, just as they pushed it
into Iraq. For Israeli policy, the hoped-for gains of this war may turn
into giant losses - not only for Israel, but also for the American Jewish
community.
IF PRESIDENT Mahmoud Ahmadinejad did not exist, the Israeli government
would have had to invent him.
He has got almost everything
one could wish for in an enemy. He has a big mouth. He is a braggart.
He enjoys causing scandals. He is a Holocaust denier. He prophesies
that Israel will "vanish from the map" (though he did not
say, as falsely reported, the he would wipe Israel off the map.)
This week, the pro-Israel
lobby organized big demonstrations against his visit to New York. They
were a huge success - for Ahmadinejad. He has realized his dream of
becoming the center of world attention. He has been given the opportunity
to voice his arguments against Israel -- some outrageous, some valid
-- before a world-wide audience.
But Ahmadinejad is not Iran.
True, he has won popular elections, but Iran is like the orthodox parties
in Israel: it is not their politicians who count, but their rabbis.
The Shiite religious leadership makes the decisions and commands the
armed forces, and this body is neither boastful nor vociferous not scandal-mongering.
It exercises a lot of caution.
If Iran was really so eager
to obtain a nuclear bomb, it would have acted in utmost silence and
kept as low a profile as possible (as Israel did). The swaggering of
Ahmadinejad would hurt this effort more than any enemy of Iran could.
It is highly unpleasant to
think about a nuclear bomb in Iranian hands (and, indeed, in any hands.)
I hope it can be avoided by offering inducements and/or imposing sanctions.
But even if this does not succeed, it would not be the end of the world,
nor the end of Israel. In this area, more than in any other, Israel's
deterrent power is immense. Even Ahmadinejad will not risk an exchange
of queens - the destruction of Iran for the destruction of Israel.
NAPOLEON SAID that to understand a country's policy, one has only to
look at the map.
If we do this, we shall see
that there is no objective reason for war between Israel and Iran. On
the contrary, for a long time it was believed in Jerusalem that the
two countries were natural allies.
David Ben-Gurion advocated
an "alliance of the periphery". He was convinced that the
entire Arab world is the natural enemy of Israel, and that, therefore,
allies should be sought on the fringes of the Arab world - Turkey, Iran,
Ethiopia, Chad etc. (He also looked for allies inside the Arab world
- communities that are not Sunni-Arab, such as the Maronites, the Copts,
the Kurds, the Shiites and others.)
At the time of the Shah,
very close connections existed between Iran and Israel, some positive,
some negative, some outright sinister. The Shah helped to build a pipeline
from Eilat to Askelon, in order to transport Iranian oil to the Mediterranean,
bypassing the Suez Canal. The Israel internal secret service (Shabak)
trained its notorious Iranian counterpart (Savak). Israelis and Iranians
acted together in Iraqi Kurdistan, helping the Kurds against their Sunni-Arab
oppressors.
The Khomeini revolution did
not, in the beginning, put an end to this alliance, it only drove it
underground. During the Iran-Iraq war, Israel supplied Iran with arms,
on the assumption that anyone fighting Arabs is our friend. At the same
time, the Americans supplied arms to Saddam Hussein - one of the rare
instances of a clear divergence between Washington and Jerusalem. This
was bridged in the Iran-Contra Affair, when the Americans helped Israel
to sell arms to the Ayatollahs.
Today, an ideological struggle
is raging between the two countries, but it is mainly fought out on
the rhetorical and demagogical level. I dare to say that Ahmadinejad
doesn't give a fig for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, he only uses
it to make friends in the Arab world. If I were a Palestinian, I would
not rely on it. Sooner or later, geography will tell and Israeli-Iranian
relations will return to what they were - hopefully on a far more positive
basis.
ONE THING I am ready to predict with confidence: whoever pushes for
war against Iran will come to regret it.
Some adventures are easy
to get into but hard to get out of.
The last one to find this
out was Saddam Hussein. He thought that it would be a cakewalk - after
all, Khomeini had killed off most of the officers, and especially the
pilots, of the Shah's military. He believed that one quick Iraqi blow
would be enough to bring about the collapse of Iran. He had eight long
years of war to regret it.
Both the Americans and we
may soon be feeling that the Iraqi mud is like whipped cream compared
to the Iranian quagmire.
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