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November 11, 2008
Exclusive: Obama and Iran – Tough Choices Face the Next President
One of the silliest analyses of Barack Obama's victory came from New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof. Foreign readers e-mailing his NYT blog on Election Night were delighted about Obama's win, leading Kristof into fantasy land. "In Switzerland, an American was bathed in compliments comparing the election to the fall of the Berlin Wall. An American in Kenya named Tom wore an Obama T-Shirt and found that his walk to work took more than an hour because so many people stopped to congratulate him and celebrate with him," Kristof wrote. "The outpouring suggests that the United States will enjoy an Obama dividend of global good will in the coming months, a chance to hammer out progress on common threats. 'Barack' means blessing in Swahili, and this election feels like America's great chance to rejoin the world after eight years of self-exile."
Back in the real world, however, Iran, Syria and the terrorists they support don't appear ready for Kristof's kumbaya moment. As Obama was winning the election November 4th, the Israel Defense Forces launched an operation in Gaza to destroy a tunnel terrorists had dug in an effort to kidnap IDF soldiers – a primary goal of Iranian-backed terror groups confronting the Jewish State, who have found kidnapping soldiers a productive way to force Israel to release imprisoned terrorists.
Israel launched the operation to prevent Hamas from launching an "imminent" attack, aimed at kidnapping more IDF troops. On Wednesday morning, Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, two of the Tehran/Damascus-backed terror groups based in Gaza, responded to the IDF raid by firing 35 rockets at Israeli civilians in cities and towns in southern Israel. Several of the rockets hit Ashkelon, a port city located approximately nine miles from Gaza. Since 2001, rocket fire from Hamas and other Gaza-based terror groups has killed 24 Israelis, wounded more than 1,000 and left many more civilians suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.
Since Israel's unilateral withdrawal from Gaza in August 2005, Iranian-backed terrorists have fired more than 5,800 rockets and mortar shells into Israel targeting civilians (nearly half of these were fired into Israel this year). Iran provides Hamas $20-30 million a year in training and weapons. In Lebanon, Hezbollah – the terrorist group perched near Israel's northern border – receives more than $100 million a year from Tehran. And Iran has supported Shi'ite and Sunni terrorists in neighboring Iraq. During the past two years, the U.S. military has repeatedly pointed to Iran's role in smuggling in roadside bombs and other weaponry used to kill and maim American soldiers. The smugglers include members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard – a number of whom have been arrested and detained by U.S. and Iraqi security forces.
All of this is taking place at a time when Iran lacks nuclear weapons. The status quo works well for Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Their surrogates have plenty of money to kill Americans, Israelis and others by proxy, while Iranian leaders behind the carnage live carefree lives safe from retaliation. In the event Tehran were to produce a nuclear bomb, its ability to foment terror and deter the United States and/or Israel would rise exponentially.
This creates a huge problem for Obama, an outspoken advocate of U.S. "dialogue" with Iran. As for pre-emptive U.S. military action to destroy Tehran's illicit nuclear facilities, neither Obama nor his Republican critics have much of an appetite for such a step. Last year, Obama went so far as to oppose designating the Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist entity, claiming such a step would be used to justify a military attack on Iran by the Bush Administration. If Obama 1) opposes military action against Iran and 2) simultaneously declares his opposition to Iran possessing nuclear weapons, he doesn't leave himself many options to stop Iran (aside from covert action which might delay the inevitable.) The only remaining alternative would be some form of Cold War era-style containment – deterring Iran in the same way the United States did with the Soviet Union during the Cold War.
It is an open question whether such deterrence could work. Khamenei and other senior officials have declared that Iran does not have nuclear weapons and that using them would be contrary to Islamic principles. But American Enterprise Institute scholar Michael Rubin points out that the Aytollah Ruhollah Khomeini, founder of the Islamic Republic, taught his disciples to engage in taqiya (i.e., religiously sanctioned falsehoods) in order to advance their goals.
In addition to the existence of a covert nuclear weapons program for more than two decades, there are plenty of indications that Iran seeks nuclear weapons and would not be deterred by the prospect of massive retaliation. Former Iranian President AliAkbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, who is usually depicted as a "moderate" in the Western press, said the following in a December 14, 2001, sermon at Tehran University. "The use of even one nuclear bomb inside Israel will destroy everything....It is not irrational to contemplate such an eventuality." Even if Israel responded with its own nuclear arsenal, Rafsanjani said, Iran has the strategic depth to absorb and withstand retaliation – meaning that the price may be worth paying: "It will only harm the Islamic world," he said. Since that time, various Iran clerics have spoken of the importance of the Islamic Republic having nuclear weapons.
Moreover, Ahmadinejad and other senior leaders speak in apocalyptic tones suggesting that mass death would be an acceptable price to pay to advance the regime's political goals. Mehdi Khalaji, a senior fellow at the Washingto Institute for Near East Policy, spent 14 years training in the religious seminaries in Qom, Iran. He writes: "Ahmadinejad appears to be influenced by a trend in contemporary apocalyptic [Islamist] thought in which the killing of Jews will be one of the most significant accomplishments" in the government of the Mahdi – Shi'ite Islam's messianic figure.
In a new AEI paper, Rubin makes a powerful case that the United States lacks the military forces in the Middle East necessary to deter Iran. Although the U.S. has bases in the region, it faces resistance from hosts like Saudi Arabia, Oman, Iraq, Kuwait and Turkey to the projection of American power. Saudi Arabia, for example, only permits Washington to maintain a small combined air operations center on its soil. Oman initially refused the U.S. Air Force permission to fly missions into Afghanistan from its territory after September 11th (an operation far less controversial than any strike on Iran would be). The Iraqi government wants the United States to evacuate according to a set timetable, a position not all that different from Obama's. The Islamist regime in Turkey has worked to improve relations with Iran and has sought to limit U.S. Air Force use of the Incirlik Air Force base. Countries like Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates, where the U.S. 5th Fleet uses facilities, remain vulnerable to Iranian air strikes.
These are just some of the obstacles to a serious U.S. effort to "deter" or "contain" Iran without using military force. Pundits who wax poetic about Obama (or any other U.S. politician) ushering in a new era of world peace are deluding themselves. And dealing with the mullahs could prove to be simple when compared to potentially more dangerous long-term problems with Russia and China.
FamilySecurityMatters.org Contributing Editor Joel Himelfarb is an editorial writer for The Washington Times. The views expressed here are his own.
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