Which course on Iran?

There are two essays up on The American Thinker which should be read and compared. One is by James Lewis and the other is by Steven M. Warshawsky. To summarize Mr. Lewis believes that we should avoid hasty action against Iran. He believes that Iran is a few years away from having a deployable atomic weapon and that the Western World will wake up and take some action in about two years.

Mr. Warshawsky believes that waiting any longer than it takes to amass the necessary forces to ensure victory would be a mistake. He points out that “waking up and taking action” are two things that are completely out of character with everything that we’ve seen from Western Europe for the past several decades (England being the exception).

The basic idea which informs Mr. Lewis and all the other voices which counsel time and caution in dealing with Iran is the assumption that the leaders of Iran are sane. After all, we are assured, the mullahs surely must know that to attack Israel or the US would be suicide. Both nations have nuclear weapons of their own and would retaliate in a devastating fashion.

To answer that line of reasoning I would take the reader back in time a bit more than 60 years to a war-torn city called Berlin. Let us observe Adolph Hitler and one of his closest confidants Joseph Gobbles drinking champagne as they toast the imminent victory of the German Army over the enemies of the Reich. What caused this bizarre outburst of confidence when enemy armies were advancing across German soil and the Wehrmacht was crumbling? Years before Dr. Gobbles had paid an astrologist to cast a horoscope for the Reich which had predicted that after a period of success the Reich would suffer setbacks before an event occurred which would bring about ultimate victory. The news of FDR’s death had just been announced and the occult believing Nazi leadership believed that the Allies were about to fall before them.

Another lesson from the Second World War is in order. After the invasion of the Soviet Union collapsed and the German military was in full retreat before the Red Army and the successful D-Day invasion had established a beachhead in France through which was pouring the entire military might of the United States and Great Britain Adolph Hitler diverted trains from carrying desperately needed war materials to the front so that even more Jews could be sent to the death camps.

Please listen carefully, JUST BECAUSE SOMEONE IS IN CHARGE OF A COUNTRY THAT DOES NOT MEAN THAT HE IS SANE OR WILL BEHAVE RATIONALLY!

Montezuma, the last Aztec priest-king, ruled over a mighty empire whose tens of thousands of warriors carried spears which could be accurately thrown a longer distance than the primitive firearms used by the Europeans of the time could shoot. Yet he allowed his empire to be conquered and destroyed by a handful of Spanish adventurers because he was in possession of an ancient prophecy which predicted that white men from the east would destroy the Aztec Empire.

There are other examples, like the Taliban of Afghanistan refusing to surrender or expel Osama bin Laden in the belief that Allah would protect them from an American invasion, but these should suffice.

There is no reason to believe that a national leadership will behave in a sane and rational fashion just because it is a national leadership. The leadership of Iran may be composed of hypocrites who do not truly believe what they have dedicated their lives to preaching, but do we really want to count on it?

Also, I doubt that we have years in order to ponder our decision. As I wrote here there is no good reason to think that Iran will take years to deploy its bomb. Whatever we are going to do we had better do it and soon.