The Atlantic headline from 2009 reads, “Netanyahu to Obama: Stop Iran – Or I Will.” Four years later we can see that nothing happened. The Israeli prime minister huffed and puffed, and the U.S. president remained unmoved. There has been no Israeli attack on Iran, and there probably won’t be. By some accounts Iran already has a nuclear weapon and will soon be producing more. President Obama wants a diplomatic solution, and there is no end to negotiations and meetings. In fact, Obama and Russian President Vladimir Putin have agreed to meet and discuss the Iran problem during the upcoming G-8 summit in Northern Ireland. So what are we to make of further Israeli threats?
There is an unspoken rule in politics: One should never threaten. Nothing exposes weakness more readily than a series of empty threats. If you can do something, then do it. Don’t talk about it. In this respect, talk without action makes everyone suspect that you are impotent. Talk is cheap, as the saying goes. Actions are something entirely different. If actions follow closely upon your words, then people will be genuinely moved by what you say. If four years pass without action, people will conclude you are a wind bag.
The Times of Israel ran the following headline on Sunday, “Nuclear talks only gave Iran more time.” On the American side, talk is a medium for wasting precious time. The five power (plus one) talks in Kazakhstan have served Iran well. For while the five powers talk, Iran is getting the bomb. And once Iran has the bomb, nobody will dare to act. For who would attack a nuclear power? Prime Minister Netanyahu is quoted in the article as saying that Iran is “continuing to defy the international community…. Like North Korea, it continues to defy all the international standards and I believe that this requires the international community to ratchet up its sanctions and make clear that if this continues there will also be a credible military sanction.”
Yet another threat is made, incredibly. Why make such a statement, indeed? What purpose does it serve? The Iranian leaders are not deterred. And as the Israeli foreign minister has stated, everyone knows that Iran isn’t backing down. If anything, the Iranians have many avenues for acquiring a bomb. They obviously are working with the North Koreans, and could – if necessary – produce nuclear weapons under Pyongyang’s auspices. Such weapons could be shipped from North Korea to Iran via submarine and nobody would be the wiser. Therefore, even an attack on Iranian nuclear facilities would accomplish nothing. And truly, in this context, who would dare bomb the North Korean regime? This is a government that already possesses several nuclear weapons and is fully prepared to bomb Tokyo or even send a missile with a nuclear warhead against the United States.
Already the West has waited too long without acting. In 1949 Stalin got the bomb, and he was perhaps the deadliest psychopath of them all. Mao Zedong got the bomb in 1964. So what did we do? We lived with it, and will we die with it. The fact is, crazy people already have the bomb, and one day they will use it. (Oh yes, they will.) The strategic algebra is undeniable, though we live in a society and culture that denies such things; for our very way of life depends upon such denial.
War is coming because war always comes. We will be unready for war because that is the way we are. That is how history works. If these points are not understood in the West, they are certainly understood in the East. Last week President Putin ordered Russian military leaders to make “urgent improvements” to the armed forces. “Attempts are being made to tip the strategic balance,” said Putin to an assembly of Russian military officers. “Russia’s armed forces must move on to a new level of capabilities in the next three to five years.” Meanwhile, back in the USA, the armed forces are facing automatic cuts and a drastic reduction of capabilities.
The present situation is perfectly obvious. Netanyahu will bluster, Obama will negotiate, and the Iranians will build their bomb. The pattern is set and nobody can alter what has been decades in the making. Every period of decline is punctuated by economic and military setbacks. We are seeing the economic setbacks. Soon we will see the military setbacks.
