by Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n
National Review Online<\/em><\/p>\n W<\/span>e are now acquainted with the familiar scenario: Iran is supposedly poised to become another disaster like Iraq. The United States, bruised in Iraq, needs redemption, and so will either press onto Teheran in its vainglorious imperial ambitions, or seek to direct attention away from Iraq by conjuring up another dragon to slay.<\/p>\n The Left further alleges that, once more, we favor preemption, wish to attack an Islamic country, will act unilaterally, and will sex up the intelligence to construct a\u00a0casus belli<\/i>\u00a0about mythical \u201cweapons of mass destruction.\u201d The result is that the mere idea of preemption in Iran is just too messy even to contemplate, so we may end up timidly \u201coutsourcing\u201d the problem to others. That is the general critique of our Iranian policy.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, amid that conundrum, the Iranians are engaged in a three-part strategy to obtain nuclear weapons. First, they conduct military exercises, showing off novel weapons systems with purportedly exotic capabilities, while threatening to unleash terror against global commerce and the United States. It may be a pathetic and circus-like exercise born of desperation, but the point of such military antics is to show the West there will be some real costs to taking out Iranian nuclear installations.<\/p>\n Second, Iranians simultaneously send out their Westernized diplomats to the U.N. and the international media to sound sober, judicious, and aggrieved \u2014 pleading that a victimized Iran only wants peaceful nuclear energy and has been unfairly demonized by an imperialistic United States. The well-spoken professionals usually lay out all sorts of protocols and talking-points, all of which they will eventually subvert \u2014 except the vacuous ones which lead nowhere, but nevertheless appeal to useful Western idiots of the stripe that say \u201cIsrael has a bomb, so let\u2019s be fair.\u201d<\/p>\n Third, they talk, talk, talk \u2014 with the Europeans, Chinese, Russians, Hugo Chavez, anyone and everyone, and as long as possible \u2014 in order to draw out the peace-process and buy time in the manner of the Japanese militarists of the late 1930s, who were still jawing about reconciliation on December 7, 1941, in Washington.<\/p>\n During this tripartite approach, the Iranians take three steps forward, then one back, and end up well on their way to acquiring nuclear weapons. Despite all the passive-aggressive noisemaking, they push insidiously onward with development, then pause when they have gone too far, allow some negotiations, then are right back at it. And we know why: nuclear acquisition for Iran is a win-win proposition.<\/p>\n If they obtain an Achaemenid bomb and restore lost Persian grandeur, it will remind a restless population that the theocrats are nationalists after all, not just pan-Islamic provocateurs. A nuclear Iran can create all sorts of mini-crises in the Gulf \u2014 on a far smaller scale than Saddam\u2019s invasion of Kuwait \u2014 which could spike oil prices, given the omnipresence of the Iranian atomic genie. The Persian Gulf, given world demand for oil, is a far more fragile landscape than in 1991.<\/p>\n The Islamic world lost their Middle Eastern nuclear deterrent with the collapse of the Soviet Union \u2014 no surprise, then, that we have not seen a multilateral conventional attack on Israel ever since. But with a nuclear Islamic Iran, the mullahs can claim that a new coalition against Israel would not be humiliated \u2014 or at least not annihilated when it lost \u2014 since the Iranians could always, Soviet-like, threaten to go nuclear. There are surely enough madmen in Arab capitals who imagine that, at last, the combined armies of the Middle East could defeat Israel, with the guarantee that a failed gambit could recede safely back under an Islamic nuclear umbrella.<\/p>\n Lastly, Iran can threaten Israel and U.S. bases at will, in hopes of getting the same sort of attention and blackmail subsidies it will shortly obtain from the Europeans, who likewise are in missile range. All failed states want attention \u2014 who, after all, would be talking about North Korea if it didn\u2019t have nukes? So, in terms of national self-interest, it is a wise move on the theocracy\u2019s part to acquire nuclear weapons, especially when there is no India on the border to play a deterrent role to an Iran in the place of Pakistan.<\/p>\n T<\/span>here are only two slight problems with this otherwise brilliant maneuvering: George Bush and the government of Israel. Conventional wisdom might suggest a chastised president is only showing the preemption card to play the \u201cbad cop\u201d alternative to the Europeans. Pundits also point to George Bush\u2019s low polls to illustrate how straitjacketed the president is in his options, as Iraq, Katrina, and illegal immigration sap away his strength.<\/p>\n Again, I\u2019m not so sure. Low polls work both ways. Is an advisor likely to whisper to a second-term Mr. Bush, \u201cBe careful about preemption in Iran, or your approval rating polls might sink from 40 to 35?\u201d<\/p>\n Moreover, who knows what a successful strike against Iranian nuclear facilities might portend? We rightly are warned of all the negatives \u2014 further Shiite madness in Iraq, an Iranian land invasion into Basra, dirty bombs going off in the U.S., smoking tankers in the Straits of Hormuz, Hezbollah on the move in Lebanon, etc. \u2014 but rarely of a less probable but still possible scenario: a humiliated Iran is defanged; the Arab world sighs relief, albeit in private; the Europeans chide us publicly but pat us on the back privately; and Iranian dissidents are energized, while theocratic militarists, like the Argentine dictators who were crushed in the Falklands War, lose face. Nothing is worse for the lunatic than when his cheap rhetoric earns abject humiliation for others.<\/p>\n Finally, in a post-September 11 world, no American president wants to leave a nuclear Iran for his successor to deal with \u2014 especially when Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the one in control of the nukes and promising a jihad if confronted, is probably a former American hostage taker and terrorist.<\/p>\n The president still believes, as do many others, that the removal of Saddam was necessary, and that Iraq will still emerge as a consensual society. If he leaves office after birthing democracies in lieu of the Taliban and Saddam Hussein, and establishing that the region is free of nuclear weapons, despite the worst Iranian bullying, his presidency, for all the current hysteria, will be seen by history as a remarkable success.<\/p>\n And then there is Israel. All sane observers hope it is not drawn into this crisis, and for a variety of reasons. The emboldened Iranians count on this. Yet they do not realize the extent of the dilemma that their rhetoric and nuclear brinkmanship force on an Israeli president. To do nothing, a mere 60 years after the Holocaust, would imply three assumption on the part of an Israeli leadership \u2014 \u201cwiping us off the map\u201d is just theocratic rhetoric; if the Iranians ever do get the bomb, they won\u2019t use it; and if they use it, it won\u2019t be against us.<\/p>\n Those are, in fact, three big \u201cifs\u201d \u2014 and no responsible Israeli can take the chance that he presided over a second holocaust and the destruction of half the world\u2019s surviving Jewry residing in what the radical Islamic world calls a \u201cone-bomb state.\u201d<\/p>\n History would not see such restraint as sobriety, but rather as criminal neglect tantamount to collective suicide, and would reason: \u201cAn Israeli prime minister was warned by the president of Iran that he wished to wipe Israel off the map. He was then informed that Iran was close to getting nuclear weapons. And then he did nothing, allowing a radical Islamic regime to gain the means to destroy the Jewish state.\u201d<\/p>\n So for all the lunacy of Mr. Ahmadinejad, it is time for him to sober up and do some cool reckoning. He thinks appearing unhinged offers advantages in nuclear poker. And he preens that unpredictability is the private domain of the fanatical believer, who talks into empty wells and uses his powers of hypnosis to ensure his listeners cannot blink.<\/p>\n Iran, of course, is still an underdeveloped country. It seems to profess that it is willing to lose even its poverty in order to take out one wealthy Western city in the exchange. But emotion works both ways, and the Iranians must now be careful. Mr. Bush is capable of anger and impatience as well. Of all recent American presidents, he seems the least likely to make decisions about risky foreign initiatives on the basis of unfavorable polls.<\/p>\n Israel is not free from its passions either \u2014 for there will be no second Holocaust. It is time for the Iranian leaders to snap out of their pseudo-trances and hocus-pocus, and accept that some Western countries are not merely far more powerful than Iran, but in certain situations and under particular circumstances, can be just as driven by memory, history, and, yes, a certain craziness as well.<\/p>\n Ever since September 11, the subtext of this war could be summed up as something like, \u201cSuburban Jason, with his iPod, godlessness, and earring, loves to live too much to die, while Ali, raised as the 11th son of an impoverished but devout street-sweeper in Damascus, loves death too much to live.\u201d The Iranians, like bin Laden, promulgate this mythical antithesis, which, like all caricatures, has elements of truth in it. But what the Iranians, like the al Qaedists, do not fully fathom, is that Jason, upon concluding that he would lose not only his iPod and earring, but his entire family and suburb as well, is capable of conjuring up things far more frightening than anything in the 8th-century brain of Mr. Ahmadinejad. Unfortunately, the barbarity of the nightmares at Antietam, Verdun, Dresden, and Hiroshima prove that well enough.<\/p>\n So far the Iranian president has posed as someone 90-percent crazy and 10-percent sane, hoping we would fear his overt madness and delicately appeal to his small reservoirs of reason. But he should understand that if his Western enemies appear 90-percent children of the Enlightenment, they are still effused with vestigial traces of the emotional and unpredictable. And military history shows that the irrational 10 percent of the Western mind is a lot scarier than anything Islamic fanaticism has to offer.<\/p>\n So, please, Mr. Ahmadinejad, cool the rhetoric fast \u2014 before you needlessly push once reasonable people against the wall, and thus talk your way into a sky full of very angry and righteous jets.<\/p>\n \u00a92006 Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Iranian president better sober up and do some cool reckoning. by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online We are now acquainted with the familiar scenario: Iran is supposedly poised to become another disaster like Iraq. The United States, bruised in Iraq, needs redemption, and so will either press onto Teheran in its vainglorious imperial […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[775],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-130","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":947,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/nuclear-realities\/","url_meta":{"origin":4030,"position":0},"title":"Nuclear Realities","author":"victorhanson","date":"February 26, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online Given the worrying over nuclear Iran, it is timely to review the rules of nuclear proliferation. Nuclear Cred Otherwise insignificant nations and failed states gain credibility by shorting their own people to divert billions of dollars to acquiring a bomb. Take away that\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Nuclear Warfare"","block_context":{"text":"Nuclear Warfare","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/war\/nuclear-warfare\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4779,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/words-that-dont-matter\/","url_meta":{"origin":4030,"position":1},"title":"Words That Don’t Matter","author":"victorhanson","date":"February 27, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"The new buss vocabulary of anti-Americanism. by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online \u201cPreemption\" is supposed to be the new slur. Its use now conjures up all sorts of Dr. Strangelove images to denigrate the present \"trigger-happy\" Bush administration. Partly the hysteria is due to the invasion of Iraq. Or\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "February 2004"","block_context":{"text":"February 2004","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2004\/february-2004\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3470,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/conventionally-ignorant\/","url_meta":{"origin":4030,"position":2},"title":"Conventionally Ignorant","author":"victorhanson","date":"December 14, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"The same old simplicities about Iraq. by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online Washington is an echo chamber. One pundit, one senator, one reporter proclaim a snazzy \u201ctruth\u201d and almost immediately it reverberates as gospel. Conventional wisdom about Iraq is rarely questioned. A notion seems to find validity not on\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "December 2007"","block_context":{"text":"December 2007","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2007\/december-2007\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4020,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/dead-end-debates\/","url_meta":{"origin":4030,"position":3},"title":"Dead-end Debates","author":"victorhanson","date":"April 14, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"Critics need to move on. by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online Currently, there are many retired generals appearing in frenetic fashion on television. Sometimes they hype their recent books, or, as during the three-week war, offer sharp interviews about our supposed strategic and operational blunders in Iraq \u2014 imperial\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "April 2006"","block_context":{"text":"April 2006","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2006\/april-2006\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6785,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/peace-for-our-time\/","url_meta":{"origin":4030,"position":4},"title":"Peace for Our Time","author":"victorhanson","date":"November 25, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/\u00a0National Review Online\u00a0 The Iranian agreement comes not in isolation, unfortunately. The Syrian debacle instructed the Iranians that the Obama administration was more interested in announcing a peaceful breakthrough than actually achieving it. The timing is convenient for both sides: The Obama administration needed an offset\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Iran"","block_context":{"text":"Iran","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/the-middle-east\/iran\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":7998,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/comparing-the-war-on-terror-with-wwii\/","url_meta":{"origin":4030,"position":5},"title":"Comparing the ‘war on terror’ with WWII","author":"victorhanson","date":"November 10, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ World Net Daily Over the years I\u2019ve debated scholars and pundits on issues ranging from illegal immigration (no to open borders), George Bush\u2019s troop levels in Iraq (don\u2019t add and don\u2019t subtract, but change tactics and force the Iraqis to step up), and World War\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Terrorism"","block_context":{"text":"Terrorism","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/war-on-terror\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"(Pearl Harbor via WND)","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/11\/PearlHarbor-1-500x279.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4030"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4030"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4030\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4031,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4030\/revisions\/4031"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4030"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4030"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4030"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}