". . . the ever memorable and blessed Revolution
A city cemetery could contain
the coffins filled by that brief Terror which we have all been so diligently
taught to shiver at and mourn over; but all France could hardly contain the
coffins filled by that older and real Terror -- that unspeakably bitter and
awful Terror which none of us has been taught to see in its vastness or pity as
it deserves.
-- Mark Twain
Bastille Day Edition
July 14, 2008
The Last Adventure
Will Israel and / or the U.S. Attack Iran?
By URI AVNERY
IF YOU want to understand the policy of a country, look at the map - as
Napoleon recommended.
Anyone who wants to guess whether Israel and/or the United States are going to
attack Iran should look at the map of the Strait of Hormuz between Iran and the
Arabian Peninsula.
Through this narrow waterway, only 34 km wide, pass the ships that carry
between a fifth and a third of the world's oil, including that from Iran, Iraq,
Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar and Bahrain.
* * *
MOST OF the commentators who talk about the inevitable American and Israeli
attack on Iran do not take account of this map.
There is talk about a "sterile", a "surgical" air strike. The mighty air fleet
of the United States will take off from the aircraft carriers already stationed
in the Persian Gulf and the American air bases dispersed throughout the region
and bomb all the nuclear sites of Iran - and on this happy occasion also bomb
government institutions, army installations, industrial centers and anything
else they might fancy. They will use bombs that can penetrate deep into the
ground.
Simple, quick and elegant - one blow and bye-bye Iran, bye-bye ayatollahs,
bye-bye Ahmadinejad.
If Israel attacks alone, the blow will be more modest. The most the attackers
can hope for is the destruction of the main nuclear sites and a safe return.
I have a modest request: before you start, please look at the map once more, at
the Strait named (probably) after the god of Zarathustra.
* * *
THE INEVITABLE reaction to the bombing of Iran will be the blocking of this
Strait. That should have been self-evident even without the explicit
declaration by one of Iran's highest ranking generals a few days ago.
Iran dominates the whole length of the Strait. They can seal it hermetically
with their missiles and artillery, both land based and naval.
If that happens, the price of oil will skyrocket - far beyond the 200
dollars-per-barrel that pessimists dread now. That will cause a chain reaction:
a world-wide depression, the collapse of whole industries and a catastrophic
rise in unemployment in America, Europe and Japan.
In order to avert this danger, the Americans would need to conquer parts of
Iran - perhaps the whole of this large country. The US does not have at its
disposal even a small part of the forces they would need. Practically all their
land forces are tied down in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The mighty American navy is menacing Iran - but the moment the Strait is
closed, it will itself resemble those model ships in bottles. Perhaps it is
this danger that made the navy chiefs extricate the nuclear-powered aircraft
carrier Abraham Lincoln from the Persian Gulf this week, ostensibly because of
the situation in Pakistan.
This leaves the possibility that the US will act by proxy. Israel will attack,
and this will not officially involve the US, which will deny any responsibility.
Indeed? Iran has already announced that it would consider an Israeli attack as
an American operation, and act as if it had been directly attacked by the US.
That is logical.
* * *
NO ISRAELI government would ever consider the possibility of starting such an
operation without the explicit and unreserved agreement of the US. Such a
confirmation will not be forthcoming.
So what are all these exercises, which generate such dramatic headlines in the
international media?
The Israeli Air Force has held exercises at a distance of 1500 km from our
shores. The Iranians have responded with test firings of their Shihab missiles,
which have a similar range. Once, such activities were called "saber rattling",
nowadays the preferred term is "psychological warfare". They are good for
failed politicians with domestic needs, to divert attention, to scare citizens.
They also make excellent television. But simple common sense tells us that
whoever plans a surprise strike does not proclaim this from the rooftops.
Menachem Begin did not stage public exercises before sending the bombers to
destroy the Iraqi reactor, and even Ehud Olmert did not make a speech about his
intention to bomb a mysterious building in Syria.
* * *
SINCE KING Cyrus the Great, the founder of the Persian Empire some 2500 years
ago, who allowed the Israelite exiles in Babylon to return to Jerusalem and
build a temple there, Israeli-Persian relations have their ups and downs.
Until the Khomeini revolution, there was a close alliance between them. Israel
trained the Shah's dreaded secret police ("Savak"). The Shah was a partner in
the Eilat-Ashkelon oil pipeline which was designed to bypass the Suez Canal.
(Iran is still trying to enforce payment for the oil it supplied then.)
The Shah helped to infiltrate Israeli army officers into the Kurdish part of
Iraq, where they assisted Mustafa Barzani's revolt against Saddam Hussein. That
operation came to an end when the Shah betrayed the Iraqi Kurds and made a deal
with Saddam. But Israeli-Iranian cooperation was almost restored after Saddam
attacked Iran. In the course of that long and cruel war (1980-1988), Israel
secretly supported the Iran of the ayatollahs. The Irangate affair was only a
small part of that story.
That did not prevent Ariel Sharon from planning to conquer Iran, as I have
already disclosed in the past. When I was writing an in-depth article about him
in 1981, after his appointment as Minister of Defense, he told me in confidence
about this daring idea: after the death of Khomeini, Israel would forestall the
Soviet Union in the race to Iran. The Israeli army would occupy Iran in a few
days and turn the country over to the much slower Americans, who would have
supplied Israel well in advance with large quantities of sophisticated arms for
this express purpose.
He also showed me the maps he intended to take with him to the annual strategic
consultations in Washington. They looked very impressive. It seems, however,
that the Americans were not so impressed.
All this indicates that by itself, the idea of an Israeli military intervention
in Iran is not so revolutionary. But a prior condition is close cooperation
with the US. This will not be forthcoming, because the US would be the primary
victim of the consequences.
* * *
IRAN IS now a regional power. It makes no sense to deny that.
The irony of the matter is that for this they must thank their foremost
benefactor in recent times: George W. Bush. If they had even a modicum of
gratitude, they would erect a statue to him in Tehran's central square.
For many generations, Iraq was the gatekeeper of the Arab region. It was the
wall of the Arab world against the Persian Shiites. It should be remembered
that during the Iraqi-Iranian war, Arab Shiite Iraqis fought with great
enthusiasm against Persian Shiite Iranians.
When President Bush invaded Iraq and destroyed it, he opened the whole region
to the growing might of Iran. In future generations, historians will wonder
about this action, which deserves a chapter to itself in "The March of Folly".
Today it is already clear that the real American aim (as I have asserted in
this column right from the beginning) was to take possession of the Caspian
Sea/Persian Gulf oil region and station a permanent American garrison at its
center. This aim was indeed achieved - the Americans are now talking about
their forces remaining in Iraq "for a hundred years", and they are now busily
engaged in dividing Iraq's huge oil reserves among the four or five giant
American oil companies.
But this war was started without wider strategic thinking and without looking
at the geopolitical map. It was not decided who is the main enemy of the US in
the region, neither was it clear where the main effort should be. The advantage
of dominating Iraq may well be outweighed by the rise of Iran as a nuclear,
military and political power that will overshadow America's allies in the Arab
world.
* * *
WHERE DO we Israelis stand in this game?
For years now, we have been bombarded by a propaganda campaign that depicts the
Iranian nuclear effort as an existential threat to Israel. Forget the
Palestinians, forget Hamas and Hizbullah, forget Syria - the sole danger that
threatens the very existence of the State of Israel is the Iranian nuclear bomb.
I repeat what I have said before: I am not prey to this existential Angst.
True, life is more pleasant without an Iranian nuclear bomb, and Ahmadinejad is
not very nice either. But if the worst comes to the worst, we will have a
"balance of terror" between the two nations, much like the American-Soviet
balance of terror that saved mankind from World War III, or the
Indian-Pakistani balance of terror that provides a framework for a
rapprochement between those two countries that hate each other's guts.
* * *
ON THE basis of all these considerations, I dare to predict that there will be
no military attack on Iran this year - not by the Americans, not by the
Israelis.
As I write these lines, a little red light turns on in my head. It is related
to a memory: in my youth I was an avid reader of Vladimir Jabotinsky's weekly
articles, which impressed me with their cold logic and clear style. In August
1939, Jabotinsky wrote an article in which he asserted categorically that no
war would break out, in spite of all the rumors to the contrary. His reasoning:
modern weapons are so terrible, that no country would dare to start a war.
A few days later Germany invaded Poland, starting the most terrible war in
human history (until now), which ended with the Americans dropping atom bombs
on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Since then, for 63 years, nobody has used nuclear
weapons in a war.
President Bush is about to end his career in disgrace. The same fate is waiting
impatiently for Ehud Olmert. For politicians of this kind, it is easy to be
tempted by a last adventure, a last chance for a decent place in history after
all.
All the same, I stick to my prognosis: it will not happen.
Uri Avnery is an Israeli journalist, member of Gush Shalom and contributor to
The Politics of Anti-Semitism (AK / CounterPunch).
http://www.counterpunch.org/
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
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