The unavoidable reality is that we now need urgently to steel ourselves to the ugly probability that diplomacy will not now suffice: one or way or another, unconscionable acts of war may now be unavoidable.
Those who say war is unthinkable are right. Military strikes, even limited, targeted and accurate ones, will have devastating consequences for the region and for the world. They will, quite probably entrench and harden the Iranian regime. Even the young, hopeful democrats who despise their theocratic rulers and crave the freedoms of the West will pause at the sight of their country burnt and humiliated by the infidels.
A war, even a limited one, will almost certainly raise oil prices to recession-inducing levels, as Iran cuts itself off from global markets. The loss of Iranian supply and the already stretched nature of production in the Arab world and elsewhere means prices of $150 per barrel are easily imaginable. Military strikes will foster more violence in the Middle East, strengthen the insurgency in Iraq and Afghanistan, fuel anti-Western sentiment among Muslims everywhere and encourage more terrorism against us at home.
All true. All fearfully powerful arguments against the use of the military option. But multiplied together, squared, and then cubed, the weight of these arguments does not come close to matching the case for us to stop, by whatever means may be necessary, Iran from becoming a nuclear power.
The consequences of failing to act couldn’t be clearer. A nuclear armed Iran would, as Baker says, be a singular moment in history and is likely to set into a motion a chain of events that we cannot predict today. What is certain that avoiding war with Iran now and allowing them to develop nuclear weapons would only delay war, not prevent it; a war would be fought, but it would be fought on Iran’s terms.
The possibilities are chilling:
If Iran gets safely and unmolested to nuclear status, it will be a threshold moment in the history of the world, up there with the Bolshevik Revolution and the coming of Hitler. What the country itself may do with those weapons, given its pledges, its recent history and its strategic objectives with regard to the US, Israel and their allies, is well known.
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If Iran goes nuclear, it will demonstrate conclusively that even the world?s greatest superpower, unrivalled militarily, under a leadership of proven willingness to take bold military steps, could not stop a country as destabilising as Iran from achieving its nuclear ambitions.
No country in a region that is so riven by religious and ethnic hatreds will feel safe from the new regional superpower. No country in the region will be confident that the US and its allies will be able or willing to protect them from a nuclear strike by Iran. Nor will any regional power fear that the US and its allies will act to prevent them from emulating Iran. Say hello to a nuclear Syria, Egypt, Saudi Arabia.
And the consequences would stretch far beyond the Middle East. Armed with nuclear weapons, Iran will become a haven for Islamofacist terrorism from which attacks can be launched, with virtual impunity, anywhere in the world.
[T]he kind of society we live in and cherish in the West, a long way from Tehran or Damascus, will change beyond recognition. We balk now at intrusive government measures to tap our phones or stop us saying incendiary things in mosques. Imagine how much more our freedoms will be curtailed if our governments fear we are just one telephone call or e-mail, one plane journey or truckload away from another Hiroshima.
Which, if we allow the mullahs in Tehran to attain nuclear status, it very well could be.
Its possible that war will not come, that we will be able to find some diplomatic solution to this puzzle that will keep nuclear technology safely out of the hands of these madmen. If it does, however, it will only succeed because the Iranians believed we were willing to go to war against them to guarantee that result.
Technorati Tag: Iran, Middle East, nuclear proliferation, Foreign Policy
