Persian Storm Rising

One of the profound shames about my grandparents all being deceased is that I am unable to ask any of them what it was like to live through the run-up to the outbreak of World War II in Europe. In particular the year from the Munich Accords of September 1938 to the German invasion of Poland on September 1st, 1939. I find myself pondering that question with increasing frequency these days as we drift inexorably toward all-out war with Islamic and proto-nuclear Iran. In the hindsight of history it seems obvious that Hitler's Germany and the West were on a collision course, just as it's obvious now that unless the leadership in Tehran changes suddenly and drastically, a clash between the U.S. and Israel (at minimum) and Iran is inevitable. How did people with the hardheaded mental acumen to see the handwriting that American isolationism and Anglo-French appeasment had inscribed on the proverbial wall cope with that knowledge?

I'm assuming not like Hillary Clinton (h/t And Another Thing):

Senator Hillary Clinton called for United Nations sanctions against Iran as it resumes its nuclear program and faulted the Bush Administration for "downplaying" the threat. In an address Wednesday evening at Princeton University, Clinton, D-NY, said it was a mistake for the U.S. to have Britain, France and Germany head up nuclear talks with Iran over the past 2 1/2 years.

I will readily concede that the Bushies' handling of Iran has been as flaccidly feckless as its handling of Saddam Hussein and Iraq has been bold, visionary, and decisive. But Mrs. Clinton's criticism of the White House is silly and, above all else, appallingly cynical. Why? Because Bush has followed in dealing with Iran the very liberal "multi-lateralist," EUro-centric template they've spent the past three years ripping him for not applying to Iraq. All the elements are present - diplomacy-only, going through the UN, deferring to our "European allies" (in this case, Britain, Germany, and France). Indeed, this approach was even more doomed to failure vis-a-vie Iran than Iraq because in the latter instance there were already multiple Security Council Resolutions on the books, and the question was getting the SC to simply enforce them. With Iran, there are no SCRs, and cash-starved Russia and oil-starved Red China will never allow even one to be passed against their favored client state for fear of what the mullahs will do in retaliation.

If Hillary is advocating anything, it's probably John Kerry's one-step-further idea of not only negotiating directly with a regime with which we have not had diplomatic relations since I was in the ninth grade (which would mean reopening them, natch) but offering the mullahs the same sort of plumb deal that Bill Clinton gave to the Kim dynasty in 1994, which did more than anything else to pave the way for North Korea's entrance into the nuclear club. Otherwise it's difficult to see what our direct presence at the proverbial table would make.

But Mrs. Clinton holds no candle to the New York Times, which, via a David Sanger piece, is pretending to be the paper of born-again unilateralist cowboys (via CQ):

If diplomacy fails, does America have a military option? And what if it doesn't?

"It's a kind of nonsense statement to say there is no military solution to this," said W. Patrick Lang, the former head of Middle East intelligence at the Defense Intelligence Agency. "It may not be a desirable solution, but there is a military solution."

Mr. Lang was piercing to the heart of a conundrum the Bush Administration recognizes: Iran could become a case study for pre-emptive military action against a gathering threat, under a policy Mr. Bush promulgated in 2002. But even if taking out Iran's facilities delay the day the country goes nuclear, it would alienate allies and probably make firm enemies out of many Iranians who have come to dislike their theocratic government. And Iran simply has too many ways of striking back, in the oil markets, in the Persian Gulf, through Hezbollah.

"Could we do it?" one Administration official who was deeply involved in planning the Iraq invasion said recently. "Sure. Could we manage the aftermath? I doubt it."

Similar fears, he said, gave President Bill Clinton pause about launching a strike on North Korea in 1994. Later that year he reached an accord for a freeze on the North's nuclear production facilities. But in 2003 everything unfroze, and now the North, by C.I.A. estimates, has enough fuel for at least half a dozen bombs.

The Iranians took careful notes then, and here in Washington today the Korean experience underlies diplomacy-versus-force arguments that rarely take place on the record.

Aside from the fact that the NoKo nuke program was never "frozen" to begin with - they simply publicly confirmed that fact in late 2002 - can anybody in possession of all their faculties, physical and mental, take Sanger's pretending to take the Bush Doctrine seriously....well, seriously? Sure, a lot of what he writes in this article makes sense - Clinton's "Agreed Upon Framework" is a case study in how not to prevent an outlaw regime from getting the Bomb - but that feigned stance would last only to rattling of the first White House sabre at Tehran, and then the Times would be right back to its "warmonger Bush lying us into another quagmire" template. One might say that the Left is trying to bait the President into a military solution as eagerly as that crazy Hitlerian nutter Ahmadinejad is.

And that may be something that even his co-nutters are becoming decisively afraid of:

On December 16, gunmen opened fire on the motorcade of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as he toured the southeastern province of Sistan, along Iran's border with Pakistan.

According to news reports, Ahmadinejad's personal bodyguard and driver were killed in the ambush, although the president was unhurt. The government-controlled media in Tehran attributed the attack to "bandits," a term used to denote a wide range of armed groups, from drug dealers to opposition guerrillas.

But in this case, the attack may have been part of a plot to remove the Iranian president by a faction within the ruling clergy. At least, so believes a Western source who has just returned from talks with top officials in Tehran.

The faction seeking to remove Ahmadinejad does not object to the substance of the Iranian president's repeated vows to "wipe Israel from the map" and destroy America. Nor do they believe Iran should abandon its secret nuclear weapons program, top Iranian government officials said, according to the source.

Rather, they object to the fact that he has made such comments openly and without ambiguity. They believe that his frankness dangerously exposes them to attack from the United States, Israel or both.

Ah, self-preservation, the great equalizer. Kinda hard to reign over a new Caliphate if it's a radioactive slagheap and you're part of the slag. The idea is not to back off from the goal of destroying the "Satans," great and small, but to do so without leaving any mullahgarchical fingerprints on the twitching Crusader and Jewish corpses. Hence Iran being Terror Central for the past quarter century-plus. Being a strutting meglomaniacal narcissist with a compulsion for kicking Uncle Sam in the nuts is a gimmick that didn't work too well for Mussolini or Hitler or even the mullahs' old enemy next door, Saddam. Throw nuclear brinksmanship into the equation and far more will pay the price than just Ahmadinejad. Small wonder, then, that....

American Enterprise Institute scholar and former CIA operations officer Reuel Marc Gerecht agrees that the new president could be a blessing in disguise for those who would support regime change in Iran.

"The only way Iran is going to get better is for it to get a lot worse - and Ahmadinejad may just possibly be the man to galvanize a broad-based opposition to the regime," he wrote recently.

In other words, the Ledeen approach - which I support, and would favor as the lead strategy against the spectre of a nuclear Iran, but for its imminence - according to one Iranian dissident group, the first nuclear test will occur before March 20. Remember as well that one of the core reasons why Ahmadinejad was elevated to the figureheadship was to crush any and all dissent against and opposition to the Islamic regime, something at which he has been ferociously effective. We can't rattle our sabres just in the hope that that will spur a popular uprising. Not only may it never come, but the mullahs might succeed in using that to rally popular support against us, not unlike the way Josef Stalin became a born-again Russian patriot when the Wermacht was tearing toward the gates of Moscow in 1941. The Soviet communists didn't dub that conflict "the Great Patriotic War" for nothing.

No, war with Iran is coming, one way or the other, either at the time of our choosing or theirs. Whether you think their motivation is mystical, anti-Semitic, or old-style imperialistic, the consensus is growing and solidifying that a nuclear mullahgarchy cannot be allowed and can only be stopped one way:

Washington will initiate military action against Iran only with extreme reluctance, but it will do so nonetheless, except in the extremely unlikely event that Ahmedinejad were to stand down. Rather than a legacy of prosperity and democracy in the Middle East, the Administration of US President George W. Bush will exit with an economy weakened by higher oil prices and chaos on the ground in Iraq and elsewhere. But it really has no other options, except to let a nuclear-armed spoiler loose in the oil corridor. We have begun the third act of the tragedy that started on September 11, 2001, and I see no way to prevent it from proceeding.

Some even consider an escalation to a regional nuclear exchange as unavoidable:

STEP 1: Presume Iran completes a nuclear weapon, or reaches the point where they are extraordinarily close to completing one.

STEP 2: ...Israel [and/or the U.S.] will hit Iran with everything it has, short of nukes, to eliminate Iran’s nuclear weapons. Because the Iranian nuclear program is dispersed, this probably means a lot of bombing runs over a lot of targets, with many casualties. I’m sure you can imagine the Al-Jazeera coverage.

STEP 3: ...the Iranians would hit Israel [and U.S. forces in Iraq] with everything they have, including every long-range missile....

[STEP 4:] If Israel [and/or the U.S.] did not destroy Iran’s nuclear capability in the first punch, does it seem all that unlikely that the Iranians would then use their remaining nukes [assuming that they already have some warheads - say, purchased from North Korea...] on Tel Aviv and/or Haifa?...

Under this bad scenario, the world has just witnessed at best a serious military strike and at worst the nuclear incineration of a major city, a Second Holocaust. At that point, the Israeli response is likely to be to hit Tehran with at least one of their remaining nukes and who knows where else. They’ll also be likely to hit any remaining potential Iranian nuclear facilities with their remaining nukes....

I’m not one to throw around doomsday scenarios. But looking at what we know, a nuclear exchange seems more likely than not.

Mr. "Some," aka TKS's Jim Geraghty, put a happier face on the coming confrontation today, or tried to, but as the old saying goes, just because the worst may not happen doesn't mean it won't. And there's plenty of bad things that can happen in this crisis short of a fresh crop of Middle East "mushrooms."

But Jed Babbin may have the high-tech answer that at the same time bows to the inevitability of war with Iran and does the most to ensure that we win it at a stroke before the mullahs even know what's hit them:

The war with Iran will have to be fought and we will, of course, defend Israel as best we can. But much bloodshed can be avoided, and Iran's nuclear objective put out of reach if we seize the advantage we gave up to Saddam in the UN. Surprise is a strategic advantage we must retain.

The alternative to a large war, which no one speaks about, is a surprise attack against Iran mounted before Israel acts, and before the predicted Iranian nuclear test happens. Such an attack would employ several unconventional weapons at once and could - if managed properly - be over before Iran knows it has begun. The world must know that we have done it. But after, not before....

It could, and should, be made one dark night. B-2 stealth bombers, each carrying twenty ground-penetrating guided munitions, can destroy much of Iran's nuclear facilities and government centers. Some might carry reported electro-magnetic pulse weapons that can destroy all the electronic circuits that comprise Iranian missiles, key military communications and computer facilities. And it may be that we have the ability to attack Iran's military and financial computer networks with computer viruses and "Trojan horses" that will make it impossible for Iran to function militarily and economically.

Our strategy must be implemented before Ahmadinejad can test his nukes. Whether that test can happen next month or next year is immaterial. The time for us to act is now.

Now, as in at the time, and by the means, of our choosing, not the mullahs'. Now, as in avoiding the Geraghty doomsday scenario. Now, as in, "Faster, please."

By my equivalent calendar, it's July 7, 1939. Time is a slip-slidin' away.

Wish I could talk to Grandma & Grandpa about it.