There have been a lot of reactions to the Jeffrey Goldberg piece on the coming Israel attack against Iran’s nuclear weapons program I talked about here.
The issue is discussed with the ever-irrepressible Christopher Hitchens. Conclusion? If Iran continues to pursue nuclear weapons, “I see no reason not to take out the regime.”
As usual, Ezra Klein and Juan Cole are clueless.
JournoList-founder Klein believes a strike would “make the Arab world in general, and Iran and various terrorist organizations, hate Israel even more.” The problems with this statement:
- Only for organizations already committed to Israel’s destruction and/or Iranian-backed groups (Hezbollah and Hamas), who will mainly be angry that Israel deprived them of far more potent weapons. A temporary increase in activity from the people who already want to see you dead seems like a good tradeoff for preventing a nuclear-armed Islamic Republic of Iran.
- Probably not for the majority of Sunni Arabs, most of whom regard Persian Shias with at best indifference and at worst racist xenophobia and contempt. Sure, they hate Jews worse, but beyond certain Muslim Brotherhood offshoots, there is very little in the way “Pan-Islamic Unity” in the Middle East.
- Ditto for for the Turks. Erdogan’s Islamist- and Iranian-leaning government would no doubt make a great deal of noise, but do very little in the way of concrete actions that they weren’t already pursuing against Israel, and the average Sunni Turk is likely to lose little sleep over an attack against Shia Persians.
- The leaders of most Arab countries seem to want the Iranians stopped as well. That would suggest that there will be very little response from those states beyond pro forma disapproval.
- Given that Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has already called for Israel to be wiped off the map, how much more could they hate Israel?
For his part, Juan Cole (after the usual conservative-bashing and name-calling) says:
Bibi Netanyahu, the prime minister of Israel, is for all his bluster far too personally indecisive to take such a major step (and certainly not without an American green light; Bibi thinks Clinton had him undermined and moved out of office for obstructing the Oslo accords, and does not want to risk the same fate for causing trouble for Obama in Iraq and Afghanistan)
This ignores the fact that the Dovish wing of Israeli politics has all but disappeared since the Oslo accords, in the wake of Arafat’s intransigence, Hamas’ takeover of Gaza, the war against Hezbollah, etc. Kadima, Likud and Yisrael Beiteinu are the three largest parties in Israel, and none are going to bring down the Netanyahu government should he order a strike on Iran. Even Kadima, the leftmost of those three, considers Iran’s nuclear program an existential threat. Kadima leader Tzipi Livni sounds only slightly less firm than Netanyahu, stating that “the free world cannot afford Iran with a nuclear weapon.”
Also, he ignores the fact that if it did come down to losing his job, or failing to prevent a nuclear holocaust against his nation, Netanyahu’s choice will still be pretty easy to make.
Finally, former UN Ambassador John Bolton says Israel needs to strike within eight days.