Guest Blog: An Israeli attack on Iran should serve Israeli security, not US timetable

Regardless of the motive, it is former US president George W. Bush who overthrew Saddam Hussein's Sunni regime and replaced it with one led by the Shi'ites, a regime under the influence of Iran. It was Bush, not Obama, who opened the way for an Iranian military presence and threat along the Saudi and Kuwaiti borders. It was Bush who, facing a never-ending quagmire reminiscent of Vietnam finally turned to his main opponent in Iraq, the Islamic Republic of Iran, and asked it to control the Iraqi militias and allow the US to withdraw "with dignity."

This Aug. 12, 2006 IKONOS satellite image provided
by GeoEye purports to show the Natanz nuclear
facility in Iran. PHOTO: AP Photo/IKONOS satellite
image courtesy of GeoEye/WIA

Bush, in turn, rewarded Ahmadinejad with diplomatic recognition, a first-ever US interest section in Teheran. Iran, emboldened by Bush's weakness and dependency, challenged US interests in other areas of the region, missionizing in the Saudi Peninsula, in Egypt, and even far-off Morocco. Through its proxies in Lebanon and Gaza Iran took on the IDF in Israel's north and south. If Bush did not directly create the Iranian juggernaut, then he certainly contributed to the emerging confidence Iran displays today in defying American interests in the world and in suppressing its own citizenry.

For the US to permit or forbid Israeli action against the Iranian nuclear threat is to put the shoe on the wrong foot. The real question is not whether Israel should be allowed to bomb Iran but rather why Israel should go to war in order to solve or forestall a problem of American creation?

Again, it was the Bush administration that first forbade Israeli action against Iran when he needed Iranian assistance in controlling Baghdad's Sadrist militia during his much-vaunted surge. A year later it was the Obama administration that forbade Israeli action against Iran when, again, the US wanted Ahmadinejad to allow its air force to transit Iranian air space in order to replace its lost supply line for US forces in Afghanistan via Kyrgyzstan.

And today, in the wake of Ahmadinejad's "landslide" election victory and the heavy-handed suppression of demonstrators peacefully protesting the result; now that Ahmadinejad is publicly rejecting Obama's overtures to dialogue, now all of a sudden Biden signals to Israel  that the US won't stand in its way?

If the US fears a three-front war and yet another military disaster; if shoddy and confused US policy created the Iranian mess and continues to perpetuate it, why should Israel be the one to save America from itself, sacrifice life and treasure only to reap the wrath of a world surely to be thrown into deeper economic chaos the result of Iran threatening Gulf oil shipping? Why should Israel set itself up to be the fall-guy, likely face criticism even from its self-portrayed faultless senior partner (the same deniability being exercized today by the Saudis' reported approval of Israeli overflight en route to Iran)?

Does Iranian hegemony and nuclear ambition threaten Israel? Of course. But the threat is not imminent. There is time to sit back and allow the US to appreciate the full implications of its past and present actions in destabilizing the Middle East, reneging on its defense commitments to both Arab and Israeli allies, understanding the impact of its actions in the misconceived Iraq war in driving up oil prices and setting the world on the precipice of global economic disaster.

If, as is likely in the end, a timorous United States will once again fail to act to defend its interests threatened by Iran, if the US carries on with its inadequate response to North Korean and Iranian nuclear proliferation then, and only then, when the threat of immediate world economic depression subsides and with it the degree of world censure, when the Iranian threat is obvious to all, only then should Israel act unilaterally, in its own interest against Iran.