Attacking Iran?

ACCORDING to the western media, Israeli plans for attacking Iran’s nuclear installations are ready, and it goes without saying who has supplied the bunker-bursting bombs, most probably free. But that is of little consequence, for Israel is quite capable of developing far deadlier bombs. The issue is the backing which Israel has been receiving from the US on the possibilities of a strike at Iran for solving the nuclear issue. Tel Aviv is now reported to be “sharpening” the military option idea if a diplomatic solution to the crisis is not found by March. This is as good as saying that an Israeli strike is a certainty, because a solution is nowhere in sight. Iran’s on again and off again dialogue with the European Three has been in progress since Mr Mohammad Khatami’s days, and there is nothing to suggest that the EU-3 and a government led by a hard-liner like President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad are going to clinch the issue within the next one and a half months. The “sharpening” of the military option idea is needed because some Israelis feel that the situation is not what it was in 1981 when Israel destroyed an Iraqi nuclear reactor. Actually, the situation favours Tel Aviv, because there never was an American administration more pro-Israel than the present one. In fact, the departure of Mr Colin Powell as secretary of state means the exit of the only man in the Bush cabinet who had stood up to the neo-cons, who — to quote the late Edward Said — “populate” the Pentagon and the State Department, Mr Lewis “Scooter” Libby’s departure from Vice-President Dick Cheney’s office having little impact on the conduct of foreign policy.

Mr Ariel Sharon’s moribund condition does not mean that the spirit of militancy and aggression that has characterized his policies is no longer there. Mr Binyamin Netanyahu, a former prime minister whose ambition it is to be prime minister again, said last month if he won the March election he would strike at Iran. This is in line with Mr Cheney’s instruction to the Pentagon last year to draw up a contingency plan for an attack on Tehran’s nuclear installations. In 1981, when the Saudi air force intercepted Israeli warplanes on the way to Iraq, Israeli pilots told them in Arabic that they were a Jordanian patrol. This time they are under no such obligation, because the US controls most of the air space which the Israeli planes will take on the way to Iran. So militarily, Israel has no problems with carrying out yet another of its attacks on a Muslim country.

What Israel and its backers should concentrate on is not the logistics of attack but the consequences of it. Already, the US has attacked two Muslim countries in the post-9/11 period and the Arab-Muslim peoples the world over hold America as much responsible as Israel for whatever is happening in Palestine. An attack on Iran will not only add to the list of Muslim countries targeted by the US, it will also add to the number of extremists and terrorists swearing to wreak vengeance on the US. Let America listen to what Prince Saud al-Faisal, the foreign minister of a country that is Washington’s ally, has to say. In an interview with the BBC Prince Faisal, admitting that Mr Ahmedinejad’s views were “extreme”, asked for a political solution to the crisis and said that the West was “partly responsible” for the crisis because it had helped Israel acquire nuclear weapons.
http://www.dawn.com/2006/01/17/ed.htm#1