Guest Blog: American appeasement and the Iranian bomb

Saudi King Abdullah took the US president sternly to task over his emerging policy on Iran, Syria and Iraq, accusing him of giving the Islamic Republic free rein for its nuclear, expansionist and terrorism-sponsoring Middle East policies. (Source: http://www.debka.com/headline.php?hid=6012)

In 2003 President Bush invaded Iraq and completely upset the balance of power in the Middle East. Iraq under Saddam's Sunni regime was enemy and deterrent to Iranian hegemonic ambitions. By replacing Iraq's Sunni regime with one under Shi'ite control, Bush removed the single strategic threat, deterrent to Iranian ambitions. With the removal of Saddam, for all practical purposes the Persian threat to the Arabian Peninsula jumped from the Iraqi to the Saudi border.

And, having upset the balance between Sunni and Sh'ia inside Iraq, Bush set the stage for continuing sectarian strife in that country. Under these conditions the US grew increasingly dependent on Iran to control their Shi'ite militias. In the end Bush needed Iran to provide the fig leaf of an apparently successful "surge" which allowed the US to exit the quagmire with at least the appearance of dignity. For services rendered Bush compensated the Iranian president with the long-sought prize of US recognition of Islamic Republic legitimacy: Bush opened a State Department interest section in Teheran bringing to an end America's thirty year policy of containing the threat of the Iranian revolution.

Exit Iraq, one failed exercise in regime change, enter Afghanistan. But what about that increasing Iranian threat to the Arabian Peninsula oil producers, to Egypt, Jordan and Israel; what about that ever-closer achievement of the Iranian bomb? Until that much vaunted US National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) concluded Ahmadinejad is all bluff, that Iran abandoned its ambitions to build the bomb years earlier, Bush was committed to eliminating that threat by any means necessary. Then, suddenly the man-of-decision who had ignored Israeli and Saudi intelligence, had even defied his own CIA's advice not to invade Iraq, that Iran and not Iraq was the main threat to regional stability; given the excuse of the NIE Bush beat a hasty retreat on facing down Iran. The Iranian problem his policies helped create was no longer his responsibility, or interest.

And so the US under its new administration turned attention from the failure of Iraq to the failure of that longer war, Afghanistan.

With the loss of the US airbase in Kyrgyzstan, the Obama Administration scrambled to find an alternate airbase from which to supply its forces in Afghanistan. Enter Iran. The Islamic Republic, beneficiary of US arms in the removal of its primary enemy Iraq, is more than willing to assist the US to eliminate yet another enemy, Afghanistan. But in exchange for Iranian cooperation the US becomes protector of Iran's nuclear facilities from Israeli aggression.

On Friday, 3 April, IDF Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi, snubbed during his recent visit to Washington by Secretary of Defense Gates and his chairman Mullen, was summoned to Strasburg's NATO headquarters by Admiral Mullen. According to a report of the meeting in Debka :

The Obama administration has a bitter pill for Israel to swallow for the sake of progress toward a strategic (US) collaboration with Tehran on Afghanistan and Pakistan. It cuts close to the bone in terms of Israel's security and international standing:

1. Washington will not brook any unilateral Israeli military action that might upset US-Iranian moves towards cooperation in the Afgpak (Afghanistan/Pakistan) Arena.

2. Washington will apply all its resources to obstruct such action."

To reinforce the shift in US policy "Vice President Joe Biden [a long-time friend of Israel] issued a high-level admonishment to the new [Netanyahu] government, saying on Tuesday night that Israel would be 'ill-advised' to carry out a military strike against Iran." Soon after, "Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (another long-time friend of Israel) downplayed Iran's claim that it had developed new uranium enrichment technology."

Perhaps US-Iranian cooperation makes tactical sense in the context of the Afghan war. But should the Afghan war deserve priority in US regional strategy over the growing threat posed by Iran to US oil interests in the Middle East? Is Afghanistan more important than Iran's threat to the stability of oil production and transport in the context of a world already in economic crisis and dependent on secure and relatively inexpensive Middle East oil? Is a military supply corridor from Iran to Afghanistan of greater strategic importance than an oil supply corridor through the Straits of Hormuz? Is the bottomless pit that swallowed all invaders in the past more important to the US that the security of the Middle East, of Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Israel? Because unless the government of the United States answers these questions in the affirmative then its evolving policy of alliance with the single most dangerous threat to those interests, the Islamic Republic of Iran, defies reason and US global interests.  

I believe the present leadership of the United States is far more rational and capable than the one it succeeded. I have argued in the past that, since the Iranian threat is first to Arab oil, the threat posed by a nuclear Iran is primarily an American and Arab problem. The Saudis publicly recognize the problem but seem content for now to wait for the US or Israel to deal with it. But absent American willingness to take on the issue, it will fall to those states most immediately facing the threat to deal with Iran.

Israel has been threatening to bomb Iran's nuclear facilities for some time, and is thought to possess the means to do so. But before taking on Iran unilaterally Israel should enlist the Saudis and other Arab states to participate openly [not behind the scenes] in the strike. The reason is obvious: with the world teetering on the edge of economic catastrophe, any major military action in the Gulf would disrupt the supply of oil and worsen greatly the slide towards global depression. The country best able to weather the fallout from such a disaster brought on by an attack on Iran is the country most responsible for unleashing Iran - the United States. The country least able to withstand such fallout is Israel.

In the end Israel will do what its leaders believe to be in the interest of the state and, hopefully, our Diaspora. Operation Cast Lead proved again the vulnerability of the Diaspora to western anti-Semitism that follows Israeli actions.

The tragedy of the Iran nuclear problem is that the United States set in motion the Iraqi chaos leading to the Iranian threat that today faces us all. In a sense Joe Biden is right: Israel should not assume responsibility for cleaning up America's mess, should not unnecessarily subject herself to the fallout from the economic chaos military action will cause the world.

Should Israel act alone then it alone will bear the brunt of international condemnation, including that of its partner in the "special relationship," the United States. And international isolation may prove yet another existential threat to a state of the Jews.