Fareed Zakaria calls it right on Iran, Israel

Thank goodness for Fareed Zakaria’s voice of sanity on Iran, at the WaPo today!
Zakaria strongly criticizes Sarah Palin and those many other influential voices in the US who are now baying louder than ever for a U.S. (or Israeli) military strike on Iran.
A military strike, he writes,

    would most likely delay the Iranian program by only a few years. And then there are the political consequences. The regime would gain support as ordinary Iranians rally around the flag… The regime would foment and fund violence from Afghanistan to Iraq and across the Persian Gulf. The price of oil would skyrocket — which, ironically, would help Tehran pay for all these operations.
    It is important to recognize the magnitude of what people like Palin are advocating. The United States is being asked to launch a military invasion of a state that poses no imminent threat to America, without sanction from any international body and with few governments willing to publicly endorse such an action. Al-Qaeda and its ilk would present it as the third American invasion of a Muslim nation in a decade, proof positive that the United States is engaged in a war of civilizations. Moderate Arab states and Muslim governments everywhere would be on the defensive. And as Washington has surely come to realize, wars unleash forces that cannot be predicted or controlled…

Actually, I think Zakaria doesn’t make the case as strongly as he could. He makes no mention at all of international law or Just War theory, for example. Both those extremely weighty bodies of thinking– along with common sense– proclaim a strong injunction against the launching of wars that are not “justified” by rock-solid bodies of evidence. Just War theory also requires an extensive calculation of the expected costs and benefits of any war, as well as a determination that all non-violent options have been exhausted.
Indeed, by not clearly naming the launching of a military strike as an act of war, Zakaria muddies the waters considerably.
A military attack against another state is indeed an act of war. And any such an act thereby provides every justification needed under international law for the state that is attacked to counter-attack. An Iranian counter-attack against the numerous U.S. military facilities, and their supply lines, that are currently strung out in very vulnerable ways along Iran’s eastern, western, and southern (sea) boundaries would not just be “the fomenting of violence”, as Zakaria describes it. They would also be acts of war.
So the U.S. would indeed find itself enmeshed in a third war in distant Asia. And this time, unlike in Afghanistan in 2001 or in Iraq in 2003, it would be at war against a capable, intact state that has significant networks of allies and trading partners amongst the other states in the United Nations.
So it is not just that “Al-Qaeda and its ilk would present it as the third American invasion of a Muslim nation in a decade”… This would actually be the third war the U.S. has launched against a Muslim country in a decade.
So Zakaria is significantly down-pedaling the enormity of what an unprovoked and unjustified “military strike” against Iran would actually be, and would be seen as, by the vast preponderance of the international community.
Nonetheless, his column redeems itself if only for the calm, matter-of-fact way he refers to the long-existing reality of Israel’s nuclear arsenal.
He writes,

    An Iran with nuclear weapons would be dangerous and destabilizing, though I am not as convinced as some that it would automatically force Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Turkey to go nuclear as well. If Israel’s large nuclear arsenal has not made Egypt seek its own nukes — even though that country has fought and lost three wars with Israel — it is unclear to me why an Iranian bomb would.

Brilliant! He gives us a helpful reminder that, indeed, Israel really is the only state in the region that has any nuclear weapons– but he inserts that reminder as a sub-clause into his counter to the oft-cited “argument” about the expected proliferatory effects of Iran acquiring any kind of nuclear-weapons capability.
Israel’s large, existing, and very powerful nuclear arsenal is always the elephant in the room of any discussion in the U.S. about nuclear weapons in the Middle East. In just about every area of discourse in the U.S. power elite– both inside and outside government– there is nearly always a complete taboo on mentioning it, or taking it into any account at all.
So huge kudos to Zakaria for mentioning it. (And yes, the argument he made there about the prospects for onward proliferation is a good one.)
He also makes a very solid argument that– contra all those who say there is something uniquely disturbing about the prospect of the ‘mad mullahs of Tehran’ getting a nuclear weapon– in fact, Iran’s clerical elite is “canny (and ruthlessly pragmatic)” … and therefore, subject to the same calculi of deterrence as any other state power.
So how long will it be till the war-mongers start baying for Zakaria’s blood, as well, I wonder?

11 thoughts on “Fareed Zakaria calls it right on Iran, Israel”

  1. Helena:
    Unfortuantely we still live in a might makes right world. If Israel were to attack Lebanon, Syria, Iran, or all three it will meet a crushing response that inevitably will kill a great number of Israelis.
    This is the ONLY reason they have not already launched another war.
    A recent speech by the Hezbollah leader who has great credibility in the Middle East is most instructive in this regard.
    http://www.almanar.com.lb/NewsSite/NewsDetails.aspx?id=125532&language=en

  2. Fareed Zakaria isn’t that sane. He actually gives the warmongers more ammunition when he gives credence to the IAEA statement.
    The International Atomic Energy Agency warned last week of its “concerns” that the Iranian regime was moving to acquire a nuclear-weapons capability, not just nuclear energy.
    There are two reasons not to pay this statement any heed.
    1. The IAEA is now, more than ever, a full-on political tool of the US, and as such it has no evidence to back up its “concerns.” None.
    2.The IAEA is not some kind of super watchdog agency and has no business involving itself in nuclear weapons programs. Its functions are limited by the Non Proliferation Treaty signed by Iran to ensuring that nuclear fuel is not diverted to weapons programs, which in the case of Iran they have continually done. NPT
    So the question of how the US should respond to this bogus IAEA statement is moot and never should have been raised.

  3. In same talk’n there are some inside US politics zone who prefer nuclear Iran!
    So the game still playing between two fronts.
    Iran’s Two-Edged Bomb
    By ADAM B. LOWTHER, Maxwell Air Force Base, Ala.
    February 8, 2010

    Believe it or not, there are some potential benefits to the United States should Iran build a bomb.
    First, Iran’s development of nuclear weapons would give the United States an opportunity to finally defeat violent Sunni-Arab terrorist groups like Al Qaeda. Here’s why: a nuclear Iran is primarily a threat to its neighbors, not the United States. Thus Washington could offer regional security — primarily, a Middle East nuclear umbrella — in exchange for economic, political and social reforms in the autocratic Arab regimes responsible for breeding the discontent that led to the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

  5. We already have nuclear weapons in the hands of a rogue state in the middle east – Israel. The botched murder in Dubai is just further evidence of the reckless and rogue nature of the current Israeli regime. Where is the talk about getting Israeli nukes under control? A nuclear free middle east should be the immediate goal of all sane people, followed by a nuclear free world.

  6. nukes? Obama’s working on it, with newspeak.
    WASHINGTON — The Obama administration plans to ask Congress to increase spending on the U.S. nuclear arsenal by more than $5 billion over the next five years as part of its strategy to halt the spread of nuclear weapons and eventually rid the world of them.–30 Jan 2010
    Now THAT’s a violation of the NPT, which calls for the elimination of nukes.

  7. Don Bacon’s Iran:
    قوات ايرانيةتعتدي على مركز حدودي عراقي في محافظة ديالى
    أفاد مسؤول في محافظة ديالى أن قوة إيرانية اجتازت إحدى المراكز الحدودية العراقية في المحافظة ورفعت الحواجز الإسمنتية المنصوبة فيه.
    وقال معاون محافظ ديالى حافظ عبد العزيز إن قوة إيرانية اجتازت أمس الأول منطقة التبادل التجاري ورفعت الكتل الكونكريتية، مشيرا إلى أن الجانب الإراني لم يستجب لطلب إدارة المحافظة إعادة الكتل الكونكريتية إلى مكانها السابق.
    إلى ذلك، أكد معاون المحافظ أن إدارة قيادات الحدود العراقية رفعت مذكرة رسمية بهذا الشأن للحكومة (العراقية).
    http://www.iraqoftomorrow.org/breaking-news/78791.html

  9. How about Iran’s side of this, Mr. Zakaria?
    from PressTV:
    Iran’s Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani has criticized the UN nuclear watchdog for failing to carry out its responsibilities to transfer know-how and technology to its member states.
    “Although the Islamic Republic has remained committed to its obligations to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the agency does not fulfill its duties about supplying fuel needed for the Tehran research reactor,” Larijani said in Tokyo on Wednesday.
    “Based on terms of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), the IAEA has no right to urge Iran to suspend its nuclear activities,” he told Japan’s House of Councilors President Satsuki Eda.

  10. Do you think Americans (or anyone) should fight and die
    Firstly, In 1991 The gulf hired 500,000 Americans to fight and die….as you a patriot US military guy who knew well what that words.
    Secondly SOFA agreement stated:

    In the case of any internal or external threats against Iraq or in the case of foreign attacks that jeopardize Iraq’s sovereignty, independence, and the territorial integrity of its waters, airspace or land, or survival of its democratic institutions, both sides, based on a request by the government of Iraq, go directly into strategic discussions, and according to what they agree on the U.S. shall take the appropriate measures that includes diplomatic, economical, or military actions, or a combination of the three, to deal with such threats.


    Thirdly, US as an occupying force required by the International laws responsible of the security of the citizens of the occupied territories and their land from external threats.
    You should go and do your homework ….

  11. I agree with most of the comments here, but disagree with the comment of Iranians rallying around the flag. I would say that the Ahmadinejad government is already supported by a vast majority of Iranians, and the 62% victory that he achieved is actually an underestimate. Therefore, we shoud discount the so called opposition and recognize that Iranian democracy is good and well ,and perhaps more advanced than our own

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