Iran Covenant, by Chet Nagle
(BookSurge Publishing, 306 pages, $16.95 paper)
Plan B for Israel, as it turned out, was the three-week operation
to stop Hamas from firing rockets at it. It may have discouraged
Iran temporarily from supplying Hamas with the rockets, but it
was no substitute for Plan A: crippling Iran’s nuclear weapons
development program.
Plan A never took off because our government turned down Israel’s
request to buy bunker-buster bombs. If there ever had been an
Iran Covenant between the United States and Israel — that is, a
promise to work together in the face of an Iranian threat to
Israel’s existence — it was put on the shelf in the final weeks
of the Bush Administration.
An air attack on Iran would never work, said numerous pundits.
Israeli aircraft wouldn’t be able to refuel for the mission; one
attack would not be enough; Iran’s nuclear facilities were too
dispersed; and, finally, the U.S. would be blamed for the attack
and if we, ourselves, launched it, we would be drawn into a
ground war. The pundits’ bottom line: if tried it would fail; it
would not halt the inevitability of Iran’s nuclear weapons
program. Only (surprise) diplomacy would do.
Those pundits should get a copy of
Iran Covenant by Chet Nagle, a former Naval officer
with extensive experience in the Middle East and, for many years,
one involved in international intelligence. His 306-page book is
a recipe for successfully damaging Iran’s nuclear program and
setting back its hegemonic impulse. This “recipe book” takes the
form of a novel, a gripping novel that is the kind of
stay-up-late-until-its-finished book that doesn’t come along
often.
The actual recipe begins about Page 272, but don’t cheat. Start
with Page One. In time you’ll get to the recipe which you will
conclude shows that its planners have thought through every
detail.
First, though, you will meet Jeremiah (Gerry) Adams, an American
intelligence agent, and his Israeli counterpart, Gideon Karski.
Just as the author does, these two know Iran and Iranians. One
who particularly holds the attention of Adams and Karski is
Morteza Dehash, the man in charge of Iran’s plan to destroy
Israel.
If you thought that Mr. Green, the eco-terrorist villain in the
latest James Bond film was evil, Dehash trumps him. He derives
pleasure from a variety of depraved and ghastly tortures. He is
fond of having some of his victims dismembered with parts of them
pickled in jars for the shelves of his library. He enjoys these
trophies whilst sipping expensive French wines.
He contrives a cluster of interrelated plans to draw the United
States and Israel into a shooting war with Iran. One involves
spreading a smallpox epidemic in Israel. There are plots within
plots, all designed to deflect attention from the ultimate plot.
By the time you get to that one and to the “recipe” for crippling
Iran’s nuclear program and its economy, I guarantee you that no
matter the hour, you will not put this book down until you have
finished it.
In her Senate confirmation hearing the other day, Hillary Clinton
hinted that, as Secretary of State, she would launch a fresh
diplomatic initiative toward Iran. If so this would be the
eleventy-seventh over the last five years, with as much chance of
success as its predecessors. While this is going on, let us hope
that the right people in the Pentagon are reading the dose of
realism that is Chet Nagle’s Iran Covenant. The
publisher is BookSurge, a unit of Amazon. The book is available
at
amazon.com and www.irancovenant.com.
Mr. Hannaford is a member of the Committee on the
Present Danger.
