This breathless dispatch, penned by Ethan Bronner,* directly contradicts what Charles Krauthammer, hitherto regarded, by himself, at least, as the world’s greatest expert on what Israel might do, has been saying, since it’s the Krautman’s line that Uncle Sam has to attack Iran, because if he doesn’t, well, we will be faced with “a catastrophic set of events like a regional conflagration, widespread acts of terrorism and sky-high oil prices.” But, according to Bronner’s new set of experts, not so much!
According to Bronner, who is quite the mind reader, “The [Israeli intelligence] estimates, which have been largely adopted by the country’s most senior officials, conclude that the threat of Iranian retaliation is partly bluff. They are playing an important role in Israel’s calculation of whether ultimately to strike Iran, or to try to persuade the United States to do so, even as Tehran faces tough new economic sanctions from the West.”
I will go out on a limb, as I often do, and stick to my old line, that this is the same old Israeli bullshit, albeit with a new flavor, designed, as always, to pressure the U.S. to attack Iran’s nuclear installations. The problem is, as those spoilsports over at Foreign Policy recently reported, it’s a terrible idea. According to former CIA and National Security Agency (NSA) chief Gen. Michael Hayden, who is an actual person, rather than one of the endless, and nameless, experts so beloved of the Times, “When we talked about this in the government, the consensus was that [attacking Iran] would guarantee that which we are trying to prevent – an Iran that will spare nothing to build a nuclear weapon and that would build it in secret.”
Hayden, who emerges as a total wetblanket in this piece, also said “The Israelis aren’t going to [attack Iran] … they can’t do it, it’s beyond their capacity. They only have the ability to make this [problem of Iran’s nuclear program] worse. We can do a lot better. Just look at the physics, the fact that this cannot be done in a raid, this has to be done in a campaign, the fact that neither we nor they know where this stuff is. They can’t do it, but we can.”
Yeah, we can do it, except that, in the long run, it would do nothing except irrevocably poison U.S. relations with the Muslim Middle East for generations to come. Which, of course, is exactly what the Likudist right in Israel,† and the U.S., would like to see.
*I’ve probably read Ethan’s stuff at some point in time, but I can’t remember having done so, so I can’t really make fun of him.
†Shockingly, a great many Israelis have no patience with the line of bull that Bronner is pushing. In fact, after telling us in his opening paragraphs that most senior officials agree with arguments that say Iran’s threats of retaliation are partlyly bluff, Bronner later tells us “Most Israeli analysts, like most officials and analysts abroad, reject these arguments.” So, according to Bronner, Israel’s government is likely to launch an attack on Iran on the assumption that Iran’s threats of retaliation are “partly bluff,” even though “most Israeli analysts” think Iran isn’t bluffing. That’s comforting.
