Here’s welcome news: Key voices in Washington and elsewhere, including even some doves, now acknowledge that an attack on Iran’s nuclear installations may be necessary, feasible — and more likely.
That’s encouraging, not only because it suggests that the nightmare of a nuclear Iran is by no means inevitable — but also because a more credible threat to the mullahs might help convince them to abandon their nuclear chase, ironically making a confrontation unnecessary.
The heightened buzz of an attack is coming from columnists of all political persuasions, Gulf sheiks urging anyone who can stop Iran to do so and Tehran itself vowing fire and brimstone on anyone who dares to try. And America has plans, according to the Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Admiral Mike Mullen, who told NBC yesterday that a military attack on Iran was “one of the options the president has.”
Israel, notably, has suddenly gone mum on the subject.
Last week, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Tehran has “very precise information that [America and Israel] have decided to attack at least two countries in the region in the next three months.”
Also last week, the remains of six Israeli airmen — killed last Monday in a helicopter accident during search-and-rescue drills in Romania — were buried back home. Although it was a top news story in Israel, only scant information emerged about the previously undisclosed drills in Romania or what the helicopter crews were preparing for. Romania’s Carpathian Mountains’ terrain resembles the ridges where Iran’s nuclear facilities are secreted.
Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak conducted low-profile talks in Washington last week with Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and other national-security types, extending his stay longer than he had planned. Iran was one of the top topics.
Curiously, however, CIA Director Leon Panetta told ABC News recently that sanctions alone would “probably not” stop Iran’s nuclear dash, but Israeli officials now talk less loudly about “all options” than they did back in 2007, when the CIA was pooh-poohing Iran’s nuclear progress. As the Hebrew saying goes, “a barking dog doesn’t bite.” And vice versa.
Meanwhile, the United Arab Emirates’ ambassador to Washington, Yussef al-Otaiba, recently told a stunned Aspen, Colo., crowd that America should “absolutely” use force to stop Iran. The UAE denied the quote, as did the Saudis when The London Times wrote they’d “look the other way” if Israel would use their airspace on the way to Iran. But it’s clear how Iran’s neighbors view the situation.
“What is truly wrong is the reluctance of our politicians to express their opinions and concerns towards the most dangerous threat that is facing our region in a hundred years,” the general manager of the Saudi-backed satellite TV Al Arabiya, Abdul Rahman al Rashid, wrote last week in the Arabic-language newspaper al Sharq al Awsat.
Some Arabs quietly urge Israel to employ its self-styled nuclear-nonproliferation program against Iran as it did against Iraq in 1981 and Syria in 2007. As the president of Kuwait’s Center for Strategic Studies, Sami al-Faraj, told me last year, if Iran retaliates against Israel, missiles will “fly over our heads,” whereas retaliation against America would harm Kuwait.
As Mullen says, an attack on Iran wouldn’t be easy or cheap. Regardless of who does it, Tehran will blame both Israel and America. Hezbollah and Hamas will throw their all at Israel. There’s even talk of a Hezbollah preventive strike this summer. Tehran will attempt to disrupt
crude-oil supplies. Iranian allies in Iraq and Afghanistan will heighten their assaults on US troops and perhaps even pick terror targets here.
All bad but not as bad as a nuclear Iran. The Weekly Standard’s Reuel Marc Gerecht refutes the arguments made by Washington’s “sensible” types against an Israeli attack. On the left, Time magazine’s Joe Klein, who has consistently and passionately made those “sensible” arguments, now reports that an attack on Iran is “back on the table” in DC.
Predictably, Iran and its new regional ally, Turkey, are renewing their attempt to hustle the Obama administration back to dead-end negotiations. The mere hint of serious military planning in Washington has put the fear of Allah in the mullahs’ hearts. Even committed DC doves now uncomfortably admit that a US threat of force may help Iran reach the right conclusion (although they may say so merely to deter Israel from acting).
Now that it’s here, though, let’s remember: A threat of force only works when it’s serious. Beware the empty threats. beavni@gmail.com