Israel Matzav

Carter 2.0

Mort Zuckerman is (belatedly) worried about President Obama's approach to Iran.

Obama did his bit to press the reset button with grace and eloquence. He apologized for America and its past conduct in the region; he avowed respect for the Iranian government; he was the most restrained of the Western leaders when the ayatollahs violently suppressed protests by millions of Iranians over a flawed election.

And what was Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's response? Ridicule in sermons and speeches and the assertion that Obama's agents had been behind the protests. Raising the level of insult, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad demanded that Obama apologize for his later, sharper critique: Obama said he was "appalled" by the violence, but he said this only after days of denunciation from Republicans and after both houses of Congress condemned Iran's crackdown. We are still waiting for Iran to unclench its fists.

...

The upheaval in Iran has been an impressive and moving demonstration of how millions of Iranians feel. But it has greatly diminished the chances that the Iranian leadership will bend on the issues that count for us, especially the pursuit of nuclear weapons. If anything, the uprising has intensified a shift to an ideological military dictatorship, committed to its version of revolutionary Islam that neither needs nor wants an accommodation with the West. The violence we have seen should dispel any illusions that this regime is capable of internal evolution toward moderation. As one commentator put it, "The real question is not whether or not to go to war against Iran but how to end the war that Iran has been waging against the U.S. for three decades."

...

Ayatollah Khamenei, whose authority enforces the radical Islamic nature of Iran's leadership, has done us all a favor by revealing what kind of government his country will have as long as he is around. Iran will clearly continue to be the most active state-sponsor of terrorism, meddling malevolently around the world. It will continue to support and fund Hamas and other Palestinian terrorist groups, Hezbollah, Iraqi-based militants, Taliban fighters in Afghanistan, and radicals in the Sudan, as well as radical Islamists and anti-American allies and surrogates all through the Middle East and, indeed, even beyond. Iran's destructive involvement in the Middle East is the biggest impediment to reigniting the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. The danger is clear and present: If a covert convoy of Iranian missiles had not been bombed by Israel but had ended up in Gaza, Hamas could have put virtually all of Israel within accurate range of lethal missiles, making an all-out regional war unavoidable.

The Iranian dream is of a bloc of Muslim states led by a nuclear Iran to challenge America's power, the Sunni Arab states, and, of course, Israel's existence. The nightmare of the Arab world is a grand plan, concocted by the Iranians, to penetrate Arab countries and spread networks of sleeper cells to carry out terrorist attacks and assassinations and provoke violent clashes between the street demonstrators and local security forces—all with the idea of destabilizing Sunni Arab countries. Witness the discovery of a Hezbollah terrorist cell in Egypt. Saudi Arabia fears Iran will challenge it as the regional leader. Egyptian officials say that Qatar has fallen into Iran's trap, with al Jazeera becoming a mouthpiece for the Iranians. The Palestinian cause is already subject to a hostile takeover bid by Iran and its clients, a testimony to the weakness of Arab rulers in other states. Jordan's King Abdullah has also warned of Iran's plan to extend the tentacles of terrorism to Lebanon, to seize critical points of power in Iraq, and to use Sudan as a base for sending thousands of terrorists into Egypt and Saudi Arabia. As for Israel, the aim is to put it between Hezbollah's hammer to the north and Hamas's anvil to the south.

The consequences of an Iranian nuclear arsenal would be catastrophic. It would enable Tehran to spread the Islamic revolution without pressing a button, since the threat of a nuclear weapon is an incredible force multiplier, even a game changer. Who will stop a nuclear Iran from swallowing or dominating its energy-rich neighbors?

And that is only for starters. Iran also aims to get into a position where it can control the lifeblood of the industrialized world. Ahmadinejad, along with Syrian President Bashar Assad, recently declared in Damascus that the time of the West is over and that a new world order is emerging.

The mostly Sunni Arab regimes confronted by an Iranian Shiite domination will feel compelled to seek their own nuclear insurance, creating a Middle East nuclear arms race and ending, as a pratical matter, the credibility of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. If Iran is allowed to continue on its nuclear course, the Saudis will conclude America cannot stop Tehran. They are already concerned that extending a hand to Iran will entrench Iran as a Middle East power while failing to end its nuclear program.

...

The danger is that Obama's foreign policy direction puts him on the path to becoming Jimmy Carter 2.0. Carter took office with similar illusions about the Soviet Union, promising to cure our "inordinate fear of communism." He asked America to put aside its concern with traditional issues of war and peace in favor of the "new global issues of justice, equity, and human rights." He asserted that we had betrayed our principles in the course of the Cold War. The Soviet answer to that brave, new world was the invasion of Afghanistan in December of 1979, a single event that Carter described as teaching him more about the Soviet Union than any other event since he'd been president. This from the same president who refused to supply tear gas to the shah of Iran to help him control the crowds that ultimately overthrew him. We do not need Carter's naiveté back in the White House.

Well good morning, Mort. It's good to see you.

I want to say "I told you so," but I want to say something more than that. There's not a single country in this region - whether Israel, the Sunni Muslim countries, or for that matter the Shia Muslim and secular Arab countries - that believed that 'engagement' ever had a chance of working. The revolution following the elections brought everything into focus much more quickly than would have been the case otherwise. And while it may have made Iran more inflexible, it made it more likely that the sane countries of the world (which unfortunately do not include the United States these days) will get together and do something about Iran's nuclear capability or at least create the conditions that will help Israel do something about it.

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 9:15 PM