[Mb-civic] After Diplomacy Fails - Mark Helprin - Washington Post Op-Ed

[William Swiggard]

After Diplomacy Fails
Think Imaginatively About Iran
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By Mark Helprin
The Washington Post
Thursday, April 13, 2006; A21

Even were one to believe that, despite its low and stagnant per capita 
gross national product and having the world's second-largest reserves of 
petroleum and natural gas, Iran would invest uneconomically in nuclear 
power generation, one would also have to disbelieve that it wanted 
nuclear weapons. But with an intermediate-range strategic nuclear 
capacity, it could deter American intervention, reign over the Persian 
Gulf, further separate Europe from American Middle East policy, correct 
a nuclear imbalance with Pakistan, lead and perhaps unify the Islamic 
world, and thus create the chance to end Western dominance of the Middle 
East and/or with a single shot destroy Israel.

Iran's claim of innocuous nuclear ambitions comports both with the 
Islamic doctrine of taqqiya (literal truth need not be conveyed to 
infidels) and the Western doctrine of state secrecy (the same thing), 
and it is part of a strategy of deception and false compromise deployed 
to buy time. After almost three years, the Bush administration has 
maneuvered the International Atomic Energy Agency to refer Iran to the 
U.N. Security Council, where it will fall under the protection of Russia 
and China, which will make any resolution meaningless or veto it 
outright. In the event of sanctions, Iran can sell oil to China in 
exchange for all the manufactures it might need, trade on the black 
market and eventually reenter the world economy after the inevitable 
unveiling of Iranian nuclear weapons stimulates the resignation of the West.

Were Russia not playing a double game, it would not have agreed in 
December to upgrade the Iranian air force and sell Iran 29 SA-15 SAMs 
for the protection of key facilities. Russia and China can operate in 
contradiction of what many assume to be their self-interest because they 
have always had a different appreciation of and doctrine relating to 
nuclear weapons, because they are willing to live dangerously and 
because they are the least likely targets. In addition, the agitation 
that they support roils the smooth surface of the Pax Americana to their 
maximum opportunity and relief. For example, chaos in the Middle East 
makes Russia in comparison a stable supplier of energy and shifts 
European resources and dependency to Russia's advantage.

Other than the likely nothing, what will the United States have done in 
the months and years ahead to prepare for the failure of diplomacy and 
sanctions? The obvious option is an aerial campaign to divest Iran of 
its nuclear potential: i.e., clear the Persian Gulf of Iranian naval 
forces, scrub anti-ship missiles from the shore and lay open 
antiaircraft-free corridors to each target. With the furious capacity of 
its new weapons, the United States can accomplish this readily. Were the 
targets effectively hidden or buried, Iran could be shut down, coerced 
and perhaps revolutionized by the simple and rapid destruction of its 
oil production and transport. The Iranians know their obvious 
vulnerabilities, but are we aware of ours?

In this war with a newly revived militant Islam, we think systematically 
and they think imaginatively. As we strain to bring the genius of 
imagination to our systems, they attempt to bring systematic discipline 
to their imagination, and neither of us is precluded from success. 
Despite our superior power, its diminution by geography, overcommittment 
and politics means that they might confound us. And because they believe 
absolutely in the miraculous, one must credit their stated aim to defeat 
us in the short term by hurling our armies from the Middle East and in 
the long term by causing the collapse of Western civilization.

If, like his predecessors Saladin, the Mahdi of Sudan and Nasser, 
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad goes for the long shot, he may 
have in mind to draw out and damage any American onslaught with his 
thousands of surface-to-air missiles and antiaircraft guns; by a 
concentrated air and naval attack to sink one or more major American 
warships; and to mobilize the Iraqi Shia in a general uprising, with aid 
from infiltrated Revolutionary Guard and conventional elements, that 
would threaten U.S. forces in Iraq and sever their lines of supply. This 
by itself would be a victory for those who see in the colors of 
martyrdom, but if he could knock us back and put enough of our blood in 
the water, the real prize might come into reach. That is: to make such a 
fury in the Islamic world that, as it has done before and not long ago, 
it would throw over caution in favor of jihad. As simply as it can be 
said, were Egypt to close the canal, and Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Turkey 
to lock up their airspace -- which, with their combined modern air 
forces, they could -- the U.S. military in Iraq and the Gulf, bereft of 
adequate supply, would be beleaguered and imperiled.

In trying to push the Iraqi snake by its tail, we have lost sight of the 
larger strategic picture, of which such events, though very unlikely, 
may become a part. But because the Iranian drive for deployable nuclear 
weapons will take years, we have a period of grace. In that time, we 
would do well to strengthen -- in numbers and mass as well as quality -- 
the means with which we fight, to reinforce the fleet train with which 
to supply the fighting lines, and to plan for a land route from the 
Mediterranean across Israel and Jordan to the Tigris and Euphrates. And 
even if we cannot extricate ourselves from nation-building and 
counterinsurgency in Iraq, we must have a plan for remounting the army 
there so that it can fight and maneuver as it was born to do.

To make these provisions will secure our flanks and give us a freer hand 
in the potentially difficult project of denying to a rogue nation of 68 
million people, with a well-developed military and a penchant for rash 
action, the nuclear weapons it is bent on acquiring and rushing to 
construct. Our problem in Iraq has been delusion and lack of foresight. 
Iran is bigger and more powerful. What a pity it would be either to do 
nothing or once again to lurch forward with neither strategy nor thought.

The writer, a novelist and journalist, served in the Israeli army and 
air force. He is a senior fellow of the Claremont Institute. This 
article will also appear in the Claremont Review of Books.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/12/AR2006041201659.html
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