World

Why bombing Iran would be a disaster

August 17, 2010
An Iranian bomb would not threaten Americans. So why should they help Israel?
An Iranian bomb would not threaten Americans. So why should they help Israel?

An article in one of America’s most prestigious magazinesthe Atlantic—claims that Israel is on the verge of attacking Iran, that its government views the possibility of the Islamic state acquiring a nuclear missile as a threat to its existence and it will, within a year or two, scramble hundreds of bombers to attempt to destroy all of Iran’s nuclear facilities. The underlying message is that America should help, perhaps using its own military to do Tel Aviv’s bidding.

This is a remarkably dangerous notion. First, most strategists agree airstrikes will probably merely delay an Iranian nuclear weapon. Second, the ramifications of such an attack would be disastrous. At the very best, the price of oil will skyrocket. No broker will insure tankers through the Strait of Hormuz.

Certainly, Iraq’s fragile equilibrium will be shattered as Iran uses its Shiite proxies to threaten American troops and their allies.  And a foreign attack will give Iran’s repressive government back the legitimacy that it has squandered during thirty years of corrupt theocratic rule. And as David Patrikarakos pointed out in Prospect in July, the nuclear threat from Iran is certainly overstated. Iran’s rulers may be unpleasant, but they are not insane. They know that any attack on Israel would bring a terror storm from the air that would devastate their country. Having a nuclear weapon is not the same as using it.

The article’s author, Jeffrey Goldberg, was a cheerleading voice in the run up to Bush’s invasion of Iraq. His “links” between the Baathist regime and al Qaeda were later proved spurious. One would have hoped that that alone would have disqualified him from being published in a respectable magazine. An American who served in Israel’s army, rather than his own, it is hard not to take his article as anything but a ploy by Israel’s government to blackmail America to do their fighting for them.

An attack on Iran would be a disaster—for Iran, for America, for the world, even for Israel. Israelis don’t realise how shallow their support from America is. A few years ago, after spending several months in the West Bank and Gaza, I returned to New York disappointed at my government’s support for Israel's policies, which I saw as detrimental to America's national interest. I vowed that whenever I sat in a bar, I would turn to the stranger beside me and criticise the occupation and my government’s support for it. I expected to get into fistfights. But much to my surprise, just about everyone agreed with me, often vociferously. I began to wear a Yasser Arafat t-shirt, trying to prompt dirty looks. Instead, bystanders would come up to me, say “cool shirt”, and ask me where they could get one. I realised that although the American government and media support Israel, only a fraction of its people do. I shouldn’t have been surprised. After all, it is hard to root for the tank against the kid with a stone.

The American Jewish community used to be monolithic in its support for Israel. No more. If you go to a pro-Palestinian demonstration in New York, probably one third of the participants will be Jewish. Younger Jews, more and more, are abandoning their parents’ reflexive support for Israel. For years, American politicians have automatically backed Likudnik policies, fearful that standing up to them would unleash a tsunami of cash for their opponents. But as American Jewish support for Israel is ageing and splintering, that fear will in time dissipate.

If America aids Israel in an attack on Iran, the ramifications for all of us will be far worse than anything out of Iraq or Afghanistan. Americans, understanding that a Iranian missile could never hit Kansas, will ask themselves why we went along, why we took such risks for such a tenuous payout. The answer will be obvious, and the reaction will be the sudden and brutal erosion of American public support for the Jewish state. And that, more than a single solitary Iranian nuclear bomb, will prove a much greater existential threat to Israel.

My advice to Goldberg: stop blackmailing your own country. Israel ought to try to earn American support, instead of taking it for granted.