25 years ago today, the first battle between apocalyptic Islam and America came to an end when the Iranians released the American diplomats they had been holding for over a year. The release took place shortly after the inauguration of Ronald Reagan. The Iranians doubted their ability to play Reagan in the same way they had handled Jimmy Carter and essentially declared a hudna.
It is impossible for any American born after ~1965 to understand the miasma that infected our nation during the dark "malaise" of Jimmy Carter. We were slipping into second class status as a nation and his counsel was to accept our eclipse and prepare for taking our place as one of many among the nations of the world. The future seemed to belong to the new Soviet man who received every benefit of our newspaper's best efforts at propaganda.
The true greatness of Ronald Reagan was that he would not believe in, or tolerate, our nation's descent into national senescence; by his great optimism and strength of character he lifted the cloud and our country returned to its traditional optimism. His belief in, and commitment to freedom, enabled him to stand against the Russian colossus and ultimately led to our victory in the cold war. We could use his optimism now.
Unfortunately, while he faced down the great Russian Bear, he neglected the angry, squalling demon-beast that was raising its head in Iran. The evil that arose there became a template for Islamic fascism in the Islamic world and has infected communities around the world. Now the monster that was spawned under Jimmy Carter's tutelage, is ready to demand its adult prerogative and wage war.
In a sojourn through the commentaries, the portents are not auspicious.
As I pointed out last week, the psychology of the Iranian rulers does not allow them to compromise or back away from their vision of Apocalypse ushering in the return of the 12th Imam. In this Victor Davis Hanson concurs; he believes that the conference on the Holocaust is part of the Iranian regime's effort to lay the groundwork for their attack on Israel:
Money, oil and threats have brought the Iranian theocrats to the very threshold of a nuclear arsenal. Their uncanny diagnosis of Western malaise has now convinced them that they can carefully fabricate a Holocaust-free reality in which Muslims are the victims and Jews the aggressors deserving of punishment. And thus Ahmadinejad's righteously aggrieved (and nuclear) Iran can, after "hundreds of years of war," finally set things right in the Middle East.
AJ Strata takes an only slightly less pessimistic tone. He again concurs:
Iranian President Ahmadinejad’s desire to take the world to God’s final judgment is real. He strangely cannot wait to place his name into history as the man who destroyed Israel, and the history itself as the human race is forced to face its maker.
And adds this:
If Iran has 1-10 nukes and starts vaporizing cities in the region, we will step in and neutralize them with such force no one will ever forget the message - for centuries. Survival is a strong instinct, and we have it in spades. The world constantly believes the US is incapable of digging down deep and doing what it takes to survive. Why this is given our penchant for guns and our cowboy image, not to mention we have done this twice before, escapes me. Somehow the fact we are serious about being peaceful and not running the world morphs in people’s minds as to some inability to pull the trigger when we have to.
France has announced its intention to use nuclear weapons if attacked with WMD. As Dymphna points out, this may be more problematic than President Jacques Chirac would prefer:
So does this mean that his tactical strike will be on the Paris suburbs? Because that’s where the armaments very likely are stored even as he bloviates.
Anyone who reads knows that behaving as if the Iranians are deterrable is to inhabit a fantasy world. They have announced their intentions as clearly as Hitler announced his intentions in the 1930's. Much of the commentary on Iran has to do with the type of attack and the timing of the attack. Almost no one believes that a Iran developing nuclear weapons will lead to a stable balance of terror; for such a balance to work, both sides must have an equal desire to survive. Joe Katzman at Winds of Change believes that there is no way to avoid the looming catastrophe:
I personally believe that we're very likely to see at least 10 million dead in the Middle East within the next two decades, with an upper limit near 100 million. I do not believe pre-emptive action will be taken against Iran. I do, however, believe the extremist mullahs in Iran mean exactly what they say. They are steeped in an ideology that believes suicide/murder to be the holiest and most moral act possible. They have been diligent in laying strategic plans for an offensive Islamic War against Israel, America and the West. Plans backed by 25 years of action, and stated no less clearly than Mein Kampf. I believe that Ahmedinajad's talk of 12th Imam end-times and halos around his head at the UN aren't the ravings of an isolated nut, simply an unusually public (and unusually noticed) expression of beliefs that are close to mainstream within their ruling class. That class of "true believer" imams and revolutionary guard types have been quietly consolidating their control over all sectors of Iranian society over the last few months, and I do not believe anyone in the world today has both the will and the capability to stop them. A key pillar of The Bush Doctrine is about to fail.
It is very difficult to see a way out of the fix we are now in. I do not think an American invasion is possible or likely. It is more likely that any American action, either a bombing campaign to reduce their infrastructure to pre-industrial levels or a brief invade, clear, and leave, in Iran will be met with a reaction from Islamic radicals already in place within the heart of Europe and quite possibly here at home. Further, the Shia of Iraq are likely to react as well, especially since the Iranians have been cultivating their connections and building networks throughout Iraq since before we invaded. With Iraq up in flames, the Saudis (traditional, hated enemies of Shia/Persian Iran) destabilized, sabotage in the gulf through which a significant fraction of the world's oil flows, terror attacks throughout Europe, Israel, and the United States, we will all have the chance to see how the world and more specifically, how America reacts to the most serious crisis of the last 50 years.
There is one slightly less pessimistic scenario that we can hope for. All fascist states are fragile, depending as they do on the willingness of the military to fire upon their own people. If there remain among the men with guns in Iran any who do not share the desire for righteous Armageddon, perhaps they can be convinced that their lives depend on the good will of the United States. They will then have some incentive for a coup d'etat. The American and European left make this less likely since they make it appear that America will be unable to act definitively in the face of international and domestic opposition.
Unfortunately, what so many do not realize is that the American invasion of Iraq was always an effort to save the Arab world from a disaster of their own making. If Iran precipitates a true "nakba", most Americans will be quite happy to "bomb them back to the stone age", cordon off their oil fields and leave them to stew in their own hatreds. It should be enough to concentrate the minds of the Iranians (and Saudis, Pakistanis, Russians, Chinese, French, et al) but no one ever lost money by assuming people behave irrationally.
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