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Irradiated Iran
July 5th, 2009When multiple pieces on a chessboard move simultaneously, the game will soon end unpleasantly.
This is not a reference to old men in the park engaging in fisticuffs over misplaces pawns. This is about Iran, Israel and an intervention that would change the scope of geopolitics forever.
In the last twelve hours, three separate news reports – if at all are true – spell doom for Iran’s nuclear program and perhaps its theocracy. The question is if Mad Mullahs will molder under the stress of a seemingly inevitable and tolerated Israeli attack, or if instead they will stand their ground and be evaporated.
The news of the hour is that America and Saudi Arabia apparently will decline to intervene against Israel, and that more clerics are openly opposing the continued presidency of Mad Mahmoud. Trouble on the inside, trouble on the outside, and Iran’s enemies and allies alike are making room for the fight.
Discounting for a moment that Obama’s Vice Presidential proxy is coherent and coherently relating Obama’s foreign policy, his statement that “Israel can determine for itself — it’s a sovereign nation — what’s in their interest and what they decide to do relative to Iran and anyone else” lacks ambiguity. We should recall that Obama selected Biden to shore up the formers foreign policy credentials. On such matters Biden often slides into idiocy, as he did during the campaign when proposing to partition Iraq by religion.
We know how well that has worked for Pakistan and India.
But his utterances cannot be dismissed due to his previous simplicity. His were blunt statements of stance about a current and well analyzed foreign policy moment. It is doubtful that even a man with perpetual hoof-in-mouth disease would wing it. Nope, this is Obama policy and a naked green lighting for an Israeli strike.
Saudi participation is a different matter. America has long defended Israel, right or wrong. Stepping aside while Israel attacks is expected even from Obama, a man who seems intent on holding talks with every radical on the globe. The Saudis however have been the epicenter of Arab outrage against Israel. Though less directly involved than Iran in instigating proxy wars in the Holy Land, they have traditionally been more ideologically aligned with their Persian neighbors than their Jewish bogymen.
But the Saudis supposedly lack nukes. A better armed Iran poses perpetual threats not only to Israel, but to the Saudi royal family as well. It is in Saudi Arabia’s interest to neuter Iran’s military might while not actually lifting a sword. This explains why a Mossad man who maintains a dialogue with the House of Saud claims that the King will ignore Israeli jets flying over his Kingdom if bombing runs are required.
For Arab instigators to suddenly cooperate with the Hebrew nation is one of those jaw dropping instances in history where you wonder if the world has gone terribly sane.
This has not gone unnoticed among Iran’s ruling Mullahs. Though the internal issue remains the lack of legitimacy of the recent Iranian election, some dissenting clerics openly questioning Iran’s Guardian Council is almost as atypical as Saudis and Hassidics sharing c-rations. Often in times of turmoil people seek survival by assassinating their own leaders, be it with AK-47s or calling their right to rule into question before seething mobs.
The cleric’s call-out is a confrontation against the same establishment that Israel wishes to obliterate and an elaborate form of self preservation. A velvet revolution beats being bombed any day.
If you need a big grin, put yourself in the Mullahs’ turban. A nation that your anointed president has repeatedly called to be wiped off the map suddenly goes quiet, a certain prelude to action. A representative of their chief ally is in-country and claiming they won’t stop any attack. Your primarily ideological ally reportedly will turn blind eyes to the proposed strike. And if that were not stressful enough, your own religious institutions are questioning your very legitimacy – chiseling away your foundation while a fist is streaking toward your nose.
Being a theocrat is only fun when people are not betraying or killing you.
These incidents alone are unconcerning. The fact that they are occurring in the same news cycle is. It smells as if a decision to strike has been made and the players opposed to Iran’s ruling regime are being moved into or out of position. The real question appears not to be if Israel will strike, but when and what ordnance they will use. The time to tour Tehran is past … it is time to bug-out.
