*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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