re: #147 Gus 802

1) International law and the stewardship of the United Nations will have been irretrievably ruined. The mullahs will have broken every solemn undertaking that they ever gave: to the International Atomic Energy Agency; to the European Union, which has been their main negotiating interlocutor up until now; and to the United Nations. (Tehran specifically rejects the right of the U.N. Security Council to have any say in this question.) Those who usually fetishize the role of the United Nations and of the international nuclear inspectors have a special responsibility to notice this appalling outcome.

2) The “Revolutionary Guards,” who last year shot and raped their way to near-absolute power in Iran, are also the guardians of the underground weapons program. A successful consummation of that program would be an immeasurable enhancement of the most aggressive faction of the current dictatorship.

3) The power of the guards to project violence outside Iran’s borders would likewise be increased. Any Hezbollah subversion of Lebanese democracy or missile attack on Israel; any Iranian collusion with the Taliban or with nihilist forces in Iraq would be harder to counter in that it would involve a confrontation with a nuclear godfather.

4) The same powerful strategic ambiguity would apply in the case of any Iranian move on a neighboring Sunni Arab Gulf state, such as Bahrain. The more extreme of Iran’s theocratic newspapers already gloat at such a prospect, which is why so many Arab regimes hope—sometimes publicly—that this “existential” threat to them also be removed.

5) There will never be a settlement of the Israel-Palestine dispute, because the rejectionist Palestinians will be even more a proxy of a regime that calls for Israel’s elimination, and the rejectionist Jews will be vindicated in their belief that concessions are a waste of time, if not worse.

6) The concept of “nonproliferation,” so dear to the heart of the right-thinking, will go straight into the history books along with the League of Nations.

I have yet to see a hawkish article on this point that gives a serious look at the downside of such intervention, let alone serious analysis over whether the intervention would work.

We lived with a nuclear Soviet Union, who had thousands of such weapons and the ability to deliver them anywhere, anytime, for 40 years. That was scary but we managed it. And yet we wet our pants at the idea that Iran might get a few. I think the guy is scum, but he’s a state actor, which means if he lobs a nuke, his nation would cease to exist. He knows it, we know it, everyone knows it. Does anyone think he hates Israel enough to sacrifice Tehran? I understand that if you are Israel, maybe you don’t want to make that bet, and Israel acts, so be it. But that’s not an argument for us to do it.