Israel Matzav

Iran is not the Soviet Union, and the War on radical Islam is not the Cold War

Scott at Powerline looks at an article in yesterday's JPost by Caroline Glick and at another by Dan Senor in today's Wall Street Journal's Opinion Journal and makes an important point:

Unrealistic realists such as Zbigniew Brzezinski and John Mearsheimer think Iran a conventional power that can be deterred by mutual assured destruction. They do not seriously attend to the most obvious features of the Iranian regime, such as words spoken and deeds done.

During the cold war, through their possession of nuclear weapons, the United States and the Soviet Union each acted as a check to the other's ambitions. The academics referred to the concept as mutually assured destruction (MAD). Since each side had a second-strike capability, the costs to the other side of making a first strike were too high.

But the differences between the leaders of the United States and the Soviet Union of the 1960's and 70's as compared with the Mullah's of Iran today ought to be obvious. Ahmadinejad and those who control Iran believe that by creating a nuclear holocaust in Israel they will bring about the coming of the "twelfth Imam" - a sort of Muslim Messiah. The Mullahs and Ahmadinejad are not rational actors. They have said that having half the population of Iran wiped out by an Israeli nuclear second strike is 'acceptable' so long as the Iranian first strike eviscerates the Jewish state.

Why do purported policymakers like Brzezinski, Walt and Mearsheimer ignore what the Iranians are saying? Why do they believe that the Iranians won't do what they say. As both Caroline Glick and Dan Senor point out, the Iranians have not hesitated to use terror until now. Why should they suddenly become responsible citizens of the world once they have nuclear weapons, whether before or after they - God forbid - wipe out Israel? Why are Brzezinski, Walt and Mearsheimer (and others) so smug that the only country in danger is Israel?

Is their Jew-hatred so powerful as to blind them to the danger that they themselves face?

Why can't they even identify radical Islam as the enemy?

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 9:16 PM