Introductory Comments
The Unifying Thread
The strung-out series on Iran's nuclear ambitions, now in its 7th installment, continues to pound along in its quirky offhand way . . . a few more articles still to come before the series reaches the finish line.
As the shrinking handful of buggy aficionados might recall, the series started back in June (2006) . . . prof bug always uncertain, whenever he starts a single-theme sequence like it, when it might end: in three articles or maybe twice that or even in a baker's dozen. It all depends, you see. Even now, in the 7th article on Iran, it depends on unpredictable moods and the ups and downs in buggy knowledge. Still --- despite some scuttling digressions, intended mainly to place Iraq's current clerical-fascist regime in the wider context of politicized Islamic revivalism (AKA, jihadi extremism ) --- what holds the series together should be evident to all its readers: for all the twists and turns of its arguments, each installment has determinedly sought to illuminate our chief concern: whether a clerical-fascist terror-state --- led now led by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a frenzied enthusiast of an imminent apocalyptic showdown with the infidel world that all Shiites and Sunni Muslims believe is inevitable --- can be reliably deterred from major threats to key US interests in the Middle East and Persian Gulf region, not to mention much further afield on a global scene.
The most ominous of these regional and global threats?
That's self-evident: the thrust of the Iranian extremist regime for the last 27 years --- again, ever since it came to power and established a clerical-fascist regime of Shiite extremism --- to place itself at the head of jihadi Holy War against the West and moderate pro-western Arab and other Muslim governments. In this holy quest, it has vied with the clerical-fascist Saudi government --- a Sunni rival, with a far greater Sunni population world-wide to mobilize for jihadi purposes.
More concretely put . . .
There are Four or Five Overarching Threats of a Nuclear-Armed Iran That Any US President and Congress Would Almost Certainly Want to Deter or Contain, Whether in the Near Future or Decades into It:
You need to ponder carefully each one of these threats listed here. All run contrary to pivotal American national interests, and none can change overnight or even easily over a longer period . . . what with the rangy entanglements of the US, the world's only superpower, around the globe these days.
Some of these pivotal national interests are strictly security in nature, such as powerful commitments to fight Islamic extremism and jihadi terrorism in a variety of ways: whether by means of military combat, shared intelligence work with allies, or support for allied governments in North Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia . . . some of which are headed by western-oriented Muslims. On the same security plane, we are right to worry about nuclear proliferation --- especially in the hands of enemy states like North Korea or Iran. Certain other key national interests are economic in nature, such as access to Middle East oil, at any rate until --- if we're lucky – we attain energy independence over the next decade or two. All of these threats, as it happens, are interconnected, and all are related to Iran's nuclear ambitions, even if there are other, secondary causes at work here as well. By extension, any US president and Congress --- no, not just George Bush or Hillary Clinton or John McCain or some other future candidate for the presidency might believe or not, and whether Congress is in the hands of Democrats or Republicans --- would very likely want to deter from materializing if Iran achieves a nuclear-armed status or, failing that, want to contain or reverse.
In particular, this or any future administration would want to prevent a nuclear-wielding Iran from intensifying its long-standing series of aggressive foreign and military policies --- anti-western and directly and indirectly aimed at undermining the American role in the Middle East, the rest of the Muslim world, and globally too --- that are likely to be charged with reckless, high-risk gambles of the sort, say, that Hitler or the Japanese militarists tempted fate with at the start of WWII.
Such hazardous long-shots, to be precise, like trying . . .
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To dominate the Middle East --- a Persian ambition that extends back thousands of years in time;
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To multiply Iran's long-standing nurture and support for jihadi terrorist movements like Hezbollah and Hamas in reckless adventurous ways;
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To encourage those terrorists to attack Israel with chemical and biological weapons or maybe with crude radioactive suitcase bombs, and maybe US allies in Europe or elsewhere . . . including the US itself.
- And, most ambitious of all, to make Iran the benighted, oil-rich head of global jihadi Islamist movements everywhere, whether Shiite or Sunni.
- precipitate a nuclear arms race in the entire region, itself the most unstable and potentially explosive in the world . . . with all that the political, military, and diplomatic fallout that would follow.
Nor Is That All
The most menacing of a nuclear-armed Iran's aggressive actions would be a nuclear strike out of the blue against Israel, something that Ahmadinejad's vicious Jew-hating rhetoric has hinted at from time to time, or against US bases in the Middle East. That aggressive action can't be dismissed, but it's probably the unlikeliest of threats that a nuclear-armed Iran might pose for the United States; implementing it would entail sure-fire national suicide for Iran by means of Israeli or American nuclear retaliation, and the likelier threats lie elsewhere.
That doesn't mean the US would be detached from an Israeli-Iranian war --- just the opposite.
For one thing, the American people heavily sympathize with Israel as compared with the Palestinians: roughly, by a margin of 4:1 over the last four decades: or about 60% as opposed to 15%. (Revealingly, even European opinion --- markedly anti-Israeli --- has been shifting the last year; the most recent French opinion poll shows that 39% of Frenchmen favor Israel and a like number the Palestinians in their dispute --- a huge drop in pro-Palestinian sympathy and a huge rise in pro-Israeli sentiments.) More strikingly still, a Gallup poll found last February (2006) that 68% of Americans had a favorable view of Israel as a friendly democratic country. For another thing, Israel --- only 6 million people --- is by far the most powerful country in the Middle East and our only reliable ally, which happens to be light years ahead of Iran in any potential nuclear standoff: in the numbers of deployed warheads, in the variety, number, accuracy, and invulnerability of its delivery systems by air, cruise missiles, ground missiles, and submarine missiles, and in anti-missile development and deployments.
What follows?
In effect, while Ahmadinejad or any other high-risk hothead in Teheran's clerical-fascist government might discount a pre-emptive US nuclear strike in the future, even a Martyrdom-Champ of the Armageddon like Motor-Mouth Mahmoud himself --- the Messianic-Messiah's own personal vassal, if we're to believe him --- wouldn't be in any doubt that his martyred-status would be brusquely achieved, possibly in his second or third year of office, if it threatens basic Israeli interests . . . including, of course, national and biological survival.
Remember here: all these great martyrs who head the jihadi Holy-War terrorist movements --- from bin Laden to the kill-crazy zealots in charge of al Qaeda's spinoffs and imitators world-wide, Hezbollah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad and on and on --- don't volunteer either themselves or their family-members for suicidal attacks on hated demonic infidels and western-oriented Muslims . . . or, in Iraq, come to thing of it, on the members of the wrong Muslim sect. If anything, the religiously inspired Arab mass-killers there relish the use of not just fragment-grenades and bombs, but drills into heads, head-chopping, and various other fiendish and sadistic atrocities that fanatics delight in using . . . all in the service, you understand, of Allah's favor.
All of which leads to . . .
Some Further Clarifying Remarks to Place This 7th Article in the Context of the Wider Series on Iran and Its Nuclear Ambitions
Now the president of Iran for little more than a year, Ahmadinejad has actually added little by way of substantive dogma, let alone specific policymaking, to the Islamo-fascist zealots who have ruled Iran since 1979.
When you get down to it, almost all his influence has been rhetorical and a lot of swaggering motor-mouth diplomacy. Thus Iran's nuclear weapons programs started way back in the 1980s; tens of billions of dollars have gone into their R&D, courtesy of Iran's oil sales --- this, you understand, in a country where over 40% of the population is stuck in poverty. By comparison, when the monarchical system was overthrown in 1979 by Shiite revolutionaries, the poverty level was a quarter less. Then, too, the clerical regime's sustained support for Hezbollah and more recently Sunni terrorist groups like Hamas pre-date Ahmadinejad's arrival in office last year. Its hatred of Israel and the US and contempt for pussy-footed EU engagement are nothing new either.