by Bruce S. Thornton<\/p>\n
FrontPage Magazine<\/em><\/p>\n The 33-year farce of Western appeasement of Iran may be reaching its denouement. For the last few months, the pace of events have quickened as the West sanctions and threatens, and Iran blusters about closing the Strait of Hormuz, cutting off oil to Europe, and unleashing its terrorist proxies. Just last week Iran\u2019s \u201cSupreme Leader\u201d Ayatollah Ali Khamenei subtly suggested that Iran would step up its already considerable support of terrorist outfits targeting Israel and the US: \u201cFrom now on, in any place, if any nation or any group confronts the Zionist regime, we will endorse and we will help. We have no fear expressing this.\u201d Indulging traditional Islamic anti-Semitic language, Khamenei said Israel was a \u201ccancerous tumor that should be cut and will be cut,\u201d and claimed that the US would suffer defeat and damage its regional prestige if it decides to use military force to stop the country\u2019s nuclear program.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta has said there was a \u201cstrong likelihood\u201d that Israel would attack Iran in April, May, or June of this year, a supposition reinforced by French President Nicolas Sarkozy. And Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak said in his remarks at the Herzilya Conference that Iran\u2019s \u201cmilitary nuclear program is steadily nearing ripeness and is about to enter the \u2018immunity zone.\u2019 From that point on, the Iranian regime will be able to act to complete the program, with no effective disturbance and a time that is convenient for it.\u201d The backdrop of this war of words is the West\u2019s imposition of yet more sanctions, while the Iranian regime once again rope-a-dopes the International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors, and rumors of American troop concentrations in the region abound.<\/p>\n A constant in all this the diplomatic fencing is the threat of military action by Israel, along with the rumors surrounding such an event and speculations about the extent of Israel\u2019s military capabilities. More important, however, is the unsavory way the Obama administration is using the threat of Israeli military action to influence Iranian behavior, at the same time it positions itself to avoid any responsibility for an attack. Thus Panetta publicly has been warning Israel against attacking, listing all the \u201cunintended consequences\u201d that would follow, at the same time the US demands that Israel do nothing without alerting the United States in advance. However, despite these public warnings to Israel, it has long been clear that the administration\u2019s diplomatic efforts have all been underwritten by the implicit threat that Israel will take unilateral military action. So it is that Israel is made the Dirty Harry of the Middle East, her actions decried by Western nations too cowardly to do what they know needs to be done, as in 1981, when Israel destroyed Iraq\u2019s Osirak atomic reactor only to be condemned by the United States.<\/p>\n For make no mistake, Iran cannot be allowed to succeed in manufacturing nuclear weapons, or even achieving \u201cnuclear latency,\u201d the ability rapidly to produce them when needed. Such armaments in the hands of an Iranian regime besotted with apocalyptic Twelver Shi\u2019ism and religiously sanctioned Jew-hatred would radically reconfigure the Middle East, sparking nuclear proliferation in the region and endangering not just Israel, but a large portion of the world\u2019s oil supply. Yet on her own, Israel can at best delay Iran\u2019s progress for at best three to five years. Apart from the logistical challenges of such a complex attack, nuclear production facilities in Iran have been dispersed into 17 known sites, many of which have been moved deep underground into fortified bunkers and tunnels.<\/p>\n The fallout of such an attack, moreover, could hit Israel hard. By Israeli estimations, Iran\u2019s proxy Hezbollah has stockpiled in Lebanon 50,000 missiles, which can reach every corner of Israel. Following the fall of Mubarak and the ascendancy of the Muslim Brothers, the southern border with Egypt is no longer secure, thus providing an avenue for Hamas terrorist attacks. A beleaguered Bashar al Assad in Syria could distract attention from his slaughter of Syrians by attacking Israel in the Golan. Although the United States has said it would defend Israel in these circumstances, it is not certain how reliable that pledge is in an election year, with a US president who already has shown by his actions a marked dislike for Israel. After all, this is a president who counts Turkey\u2019s Recep Erdogan as one of his closest international buddies, despite Turkey\u2019s naked support for the genocidal Hamas, but who publicly disparages Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu. Certainly, Israel would find little sympathy and support in the UN or the EU after an attack on Iran.<\/p>\n Yet despite these difficulties, Israel cannot coexist with a nuclear Iran that has threatened to \u201cwipe Israel from the map,\u201d as Iranian president Ahmadinejad has said, or any longer bide her time hoping economic sanctions will work on religious fanatics. Israel takes seriously the post-Holocaust \u201cnever again\u201d pledge that the rest of the world professes, but does little to enforce. No one should expect that a people who lost six million people to a lunatic ideology that had announced its intentions in advance, would make the same mistake twice. Nor should we expect a country that since its birth has been attacked three times by its more populous neighbors, and subjected to continual terrorist murder of its citizens by peoples who have made clear that Israel\u2019s existence is an intolerable crime against their faith, to roll the dice and accept letting the world\u2019s foremost supporter of jihadist terrorism acquire weapons of apocalyptic lethality. Yet at least publicly, there has been little appreciation of Israel\u2019s existential predicament on the part of her presumed allies. On the contrary, for decades now Israel has been pressured to make concession after concession to enemies seeking her destruction, pilloried on the diplomatic world stage as a neo-colonialist racist oppressor, and blamed for every political and social dysfunction in the region, all at the hands of Western nations that would not tolerate living with Israel\u2019s existential threats for five seconds.<\/p>\n