The Iranian people, while perhaps not our friends, are alienated from their fellow Muslims and in proximity to two potentially hostile, greater powers, i.e., Russia and China. Their long-term interests would indicate a strategic alliance with the U.S., which is sufficiently powerful to help them ward off the Russians and the Chinese but sufficiently far away to appreciate their help in maintaining “stability” in the Middle East. The Shah, for all his faults, recognized this political fact of life. Unfortunately, he has been succeeded (thanks in part to the Carter administration) by a murderous, fanatic, corrupt, retrograde, theocratic oligarchy with an ambition for world conquest. Now, the best thing for all concerned would be for the Iranian people to overthrow these bad characters on their own, but they show no signs of being able to pull it off. The Mullahs have their collective foot on the collective neck of the Persian people.
Therefore, the ball is in our court. We can’t allow these madmen to go nuclear and kill 6-7 million Israelis. We can’t allow them to hand out brief-case nukes to their terrorist surrogates. We just can’t allow it, no matter how high the price of the action taken to stop it. We can’t trust to sanctions because they don’t hurt enough and there are too many ways around them, given the non-cooperation of Russia and China and the plethora of little rogue states out there. So what do we do?
We could allow Israel to hit the Iranian nuclear sites. The Israelis have good history of doing such things successfully and the fact that they think they can do it is probably a good indication that they can. But this will leave the Iranian military and its surrogates intact and invite a second round of hostilities in the Middle East and beyond. It also leaves the Iranian economy intact, which leaves the Iranians capable of rebuilding their nuclear capacity. Besides, despite Israeli optimism, expertise and courage, given the nature of the nuclear sites – hardened, secret, buried – it’s hard to be certain such a limited strike will be effective.
The other alternative is to cut the sinews of the Iranian war-making machine. All the Mullahs’ military and terrorist activities require money. The most irresponsible thing the West had done in the last forty or so years has been to transfer large amounts of money into the hands of irresponsible political actors in the Middle East. We have also been irresponsible in swallowing the ridiculous notion that the terror masters are shadowy, hard-to-identify figures with no hard targets to attack. Their organizations may be shadowy – although they seem to advertise on Al Jazeera – but their sources of funding are some of the most exposed hard targets in the world. The production and transport of oil is something the U.S. military can disrupt at will.
By the wholesale destruction of Iran’s ability to pump and transport oil, we rob them of the ability to finance their nuclear project and their terror surrogates. We destroy their reputation as a reliable energy supplier. We limit their ability to retaliate. We create the type of economic and social chaos in Iran which will loosen the Mullah’s hold on power (and we have not needed to kill very many Iranians to do it). We dry up sources of foreign investment in Iran. We also teach a salutary lesson to the Russians, the Chinese and the Saudis about the futility of “asymmetric” conflict with the U.S., a lesson which will lead to a more cooperative and peaceful world.
Of course, there are those who will complain that such a strike will send the price of oil skyrocketing. In the very short term this might be the case. But with oil already at $140/bbl, even the medium term price cannot go much higher. We are very close to the point at which coal liquification becomes economic. And when we hit that point, the U.S. goes from being an energy importing to an energy exporting nation.
Taking out the Mullahs is worth the risk or marginally higher oil prices.
