U.S. national security adviser Tom Donilon is now in Israel for
talks with top officials. The Telegraph
reports that while Washington claims the visit is
routine, “Israel’s option of launching a strike on Iranian nuclear
facilities was expected to be the urgent topic of discussion.”
Israel has indeed been getting some further unfriendly
messages from Iran lately. Last week Iran attacked or attempted to
attack Israeli diplomats in Azerbaijan, India, and Thailand, with
Israeli sources
warning of further attempts. Currently two Iranian
warships have
docked at Syria’s port of Tartus.
Yet the message from Washington continues to be — don’t
do anything, the situation’s under control. It was further
amplified over the weekend by Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Gen.
Martin Dempsey, who
told CNN:
It’s not prudent at this point to decide to attack Iran. A
strike at this time would be destabilizing and wouldn’t achieve
their [Israel’s] long-term objectives…. We are of the opinion that
Iran is a rational actor. We also know, or we believe we know, that
the Iranian regime has not decided to make a nuclear weapon.
Those finely attuned to Iran’s rationality could feel
further encouraged by its
recent letter to EU foreign policy chief Catherine
Ashton, which proposes yet another round of nuclear talks and
promises “new initiatives.” Secretary of State Hillary Clinton
called it an “important step.” State Department spokeswoman
Victoria Nuland was more restrained, noting that “we’ve had
negotiations that… ate up a lot of time and didn’t go where they
needed to go.”
But is it rational to view Iran as rational? Steadily
mounting evidence says no.
Last week Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu
asserted that the sanctions on Iran are not
working, and “if anybody needed a reminder… it was the guided tour
by Iran’s president in the centrifuge hall.” He was referring to
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s
proud flaunting of Iran’s new, domestically
produced nuclear fuel rods at a Tehran reactor.
Netanyahu added:
They send children into mine fields, they have suicide bombers,
they send tens of thousands of rockets into our cities and towns.
Such a regime should obviously not have an atomic bomb….
The Israeli leader, though, is not the only one with a grim
assessment of the sanctions’ effectiveness. The Guardian
reported on Friday that U.S. officials “are
increasingly convinced that sanctions will not deter Tehran” from
pursuing nukes, and that “the US will be left with no option but to
launch an attack on Iran or watch Israel do so.”
The Guardian quotes one U.S.
official saying the “problem is that the guys in Tehran are
behaving like sanctions don’t matter, like their economy isn’t
collapsing, like Israel isn’t going to do anything.” And another
one: “We don’t see a way forward. The record shows that there is
nothing to work with.”
And at a meeting of the Senate Armed Services Committee on
Thursday, Defense Intelligence Agency chief Lt. Gen. Ronald Burgess
said Iran is “not close” to stopping its nuclear
program. Yet, while allowing that “Iran’s technical advances,
particularly in uranium enrichment” mean Iran is “more than
capable” of producing a weapon, Burgess said that decision would be
made by Supreme Leader Ali Khameini — who “would base [it] on a
cost-benefit analysis,” something that “plays to the value of
sanctions….”
Again, that strange mix of recognition and denial of
reality, as if to say: yes, there is a threat, but we’re dealing
with it effectively even though the indications are that we’re
not.
The Iran-as-rational-actor notion is even harder to
sustain in light of
mounting concerns about Iranian terror attacks on
U.S. soil. Such worries are, of course, more than plausible given
Iran’s plot,
uncovered last October, to murder the Saudi
ambassador to the U.S. in a Washington restaurant.
Meanwhile Britain’s Sky News reports
that “Iran and al Qaeda’s core leadership… have established an
‘operational relationship’ amid fears the terror group is planning
a spectacular attack against the West.” Sky News says it has seen a
“secret intelligence memo” that states:
Against the background of intensive co-operation over recent
months between Iran and al Qaeda — with a view to conducting a
joint attack against Western targets overseas…Iran has
significantly stepped up its investment, maintenance and
improvement of operational and intelligence ties with the al Qaeda
leadership in Pakistan in recent months.
Western refusal to come to grips with the fanatic nature
of the mullahs’ regime has a long pedigree. Such facts as
Ahmadinejad’s
fervent belief in the Mahdi — the mystical Shiite
redeemer whose arrival, he believes, can be hastened with violent
chaos — will not impress those determined not to be impressed by
them.
But in trying to get Israel — smack in the Middle East
and with much direct experience of it — to wait contentedly for
Tehran to apply “cost-benefit” calculations, the Obama
administration has its work cut out for it.
