Israel Matzav

Only Israeli bombs can save the Iranian regime says... Roger Cohen

The New York Review of Books publishes a lengthy analysis of the current situation in Iran by New York Times columnist Roger Cohen. Cohen concludes that the only thing that can save the Iranian regime would be an attack by Israel on its nuclear facilities (Hat Tip: Hollywood Liberal).

Meanwhile the centrifuges spin. There are close to seven thousand of them now, and Iran has produced about a ton of low-enriched uranium. Israeli officials have stated that their red line is close and indicated more than once that Israel is prepared to bomb Iranian facilities to prevent the country becoming a nuclear, or virtual nuclear, power. Joe Biden said this is Israel's sovereign right, but Obama appeared to distance himself from the vice-president, saying that the US wanted to resolve the nuclear issue "in a peaceful way." Little would be left of the American president's pivotal outreach to the Islamic world if Israeli bombs rained down on Natanz: the distinction between Israel and the United States would be lost on hundreds of millions of Muslims from Cairo to Tehran and beyond.

Obama says his overture still stands. A path to normalization exists if Iran is willing to compromise on its nuclear program. But the whole putative process has clearly become more difficult: the Iranian government is of very dubious legitimacy, has blood on its hands, and is under destabilizing pressures that could prove explosive. Obama and leaders of the major industrial powers have now demanded an Iranian response on nuclear talks by September, moving up a loose deadline that had been set for the end of the year. There's official international "impatience" with Iran. But nobody can control or time the fallout from Ahmadinejad's power grab, and business as usual is clearly impossible as long as people are being clubbed in the streets.

The strategic imperative for engagement with Iran remains, evident from Iraq to Afghanistan and Gaza. The moral imperative to stand with democracy-seeking Iranians being beaten for protesting peacefully is also clear. This double, and conflicting, imperative argues for a period of coolness that could increase Ahmadinejad's vulnerability. Obama is good at cool.

Iran overwhelms people with its tragedy. At night, I would go out onto a small balcony off my bedroom or onto rooftops with friends, and listen to the sounds of Allah-u-Akbar and "Death to the Dictator" echoing between the high-rises. Often, Iran's brave women led the chants. Tehran is not beautiful, but spread out in its mountainous amphitheater, it is a noble and stirring city. Unrequited longing is a Persian condition. I've felt it in the Iranian diaspora—Iranians were globalized by Khomeini—and I feel it in the many Iranians I know who still quest for the freedom that their country has sought since people rose to demand a constitution from the Qajar dynasty in 1905.

A great desire and a great rage inhabited those rooftop cries. I hear them still. Iran, thanks in part to the revolution, now has many of the preconditions for democracy, including a large middle class, broad higher education, and a youthful population that is sophisticated and engaged. If Khamenei and the revolutionary establishment deny that, as they did with violence after June 12, they will in the end devour themselves. When that will be I do not know, but Iran's government and people are marching in opposite directions. I do know that if the hard-liners maintain their current tenuous hold, the one way they will lock it in for a long time would be if bombs fell on Iran. Offers of engagement have unsettled the regime. Military confrontation would cement it.

Cohen is wrong - again. The people of Iran are fed up enough with their government that even an Israeli attack on their nuclear facilities would not move them off attempting to overthrow that government. The Iranian people do not want to be canon fodder to be 'martyred' in a nuclear war between their oppressive government and Israel. They know that's where Ahamdinejad and Khameni are heading. They're not fools who are suddenly going to 'rally around the flag' and forgive all the bloodshed by the regime because Israel defends itself and tries to take out the regime's nuclear capability before it is weaponized.

Having spent so much time in Iran, one would think that Cohen had learned to respect its people's resolve. Sadly, he has not.

Read it all.

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 6:03 PM