From the article
The new war in Iraq spurred you to write an
article defending the Bush administration's original
invasion and critical of President Barack Obama's subsequent policies.
Now that the Sunni terrorist organization ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant) is taking over the western part of the country,
Obama is sending U.S. troops there. What is your position
on this current strategy?
"We have no good option in Iraq at the moment, but the
greater immediate danger is that Obama will use this as
another excuse for letting Iran off the hook in the negotiations over
its acquisition of nuclear weapons."
You have advocated bombing Iran. Not believing that the Obama
administration is going to it, you have said that it will
have to be up to Israel. But can Israel go it alone?
"Yes. According to assessments of people I trust, Israel
has the capability to inflict a lot of damage in one day.
The real question is what happens on Day 2. The Obama administration
would undoubtedly be furious at Israel for undertaking it unilaterally. But I think it would be enormously popular in the United States.
"In 1981, When Israel bombed the Osirak reactor in Iraq,
the Reagan administration condemned it; even [U.S.
Ambassador to the UN] Jeanne Kirkpatrick, who was a passionate
friend of Israel's, had to vote against it. Yet popular opinion was more than
80 percent in favor. Americans were saying, 'Why don't we
have the guts to do something like that?'
"I think you would get a similar reaction from the American
public if Israel bombed Iran; in which case, whether he
liked it or not, President Obama would have very little choice but
to resupply Israel."
Even as a lame duck president? Would he really have to take
public opinion into account?
"He wouldn't have to, but it's very hard to resist that
kind of pressure."
You have always said that Israel needs the U.S. and therefore
cannot afford to dismiss its wishes. How, then, can you
support Israel's thumbing its nose at its most important
ally?
"Israel does need America, and the strategic necessity of
keeping it friendly is an overriding consideration in
almost every situation -- except this one. Iranian nuclear weapons
would put Israel in immediate mortal peril. Under such extreme circumstances, and left to its own devices by the West, Israel wouldn't have
much choice but to take military action.
"You know, everyone has been saying that one of the worst
things that will happen if Iran gets the bomb is that
there will be a nuclear arms race across the Middle East. My view is that we would be lucky to have enough time for an arms race. If
Iran gets the bomb, Israel will be in a hair-trigger
situation of a kind that has never existed since the invention of
nuclear weapons. In the event that Iran gets the bomb, Israelis will ask
themselves: 'Do we sit and wait to be attacked and then
retaliate out of the rubble, or do we pre-empt?' The
Iranians will be asking themselves the same question. So, one is going to beat the other to the punch."
This sounds like Mutual Assured Destruction, as existed between
the U.S. and the Soviet Union during the Cold War. Why is
this situation any different?
"The difference is that the Soviet regime was evil, but it
was not suicidal; it was very prudent. Whereas, from
everything we can tell, the mullocracy in Iran doesn't care about the prospect of destruction. We know that the Ayatollah
Khomeini had said he didn't give a damn about Iran; what
he cared about was the Muslim umma. Even [Iranian politician
Akbar Hashemi] Rafsanjani, who is considered a moderate in the West, once said that if Iran has a nuclear exchange with Israel, Israel
would be completely destroyed, but the Muslim world would
survive. He did not refer to Iran.
"According to their religious ideology, patriotism is a
form of idolatry. And [Supreme Leader Ali] Khamenei gives
every indication of believing the same thing.
"During the Iran-Iraq War, the Iranians sent hundreds of
thousands of children into mine fields with plastic keys
-- the keys to paradise -- around their necks. There was nothing similar
in Soviet mentality or behavior. The only thing that comes close was the
Japanese Kamikaze pilots in World War II. But even that
was considered a desperate measure taken by the Japanese
when they were losing. In any case, they had a totally different world
view from that of the Iranians."
Nevertheless, the P5+1 countries are engaging in negotiations
with Iran, while pressuring Israel to make a deal with
Palestinians, many of whom are backed by Iran. How do you
explain that?
"They do not believe that Iran is suicidal, and that a deal
can be reached with it. And though I hate to resort to
what the philosopher, Leo Strauss, called argumentum ad Hitlerum,
the situation now is very similar to 1938-39 in Europe, when the British and
the French were unable to admit to themselves that Hitler
was a dangerous foe.
"'We can do business with Herr
Hitler,' was the slogan. And it's because they weren't prepared
to do what was necessary to resist him, they had to persuade themselves that it
wasn't necessary. In that case, they sacrificed the
Czechs for the sake of the deal they were making with
Germany. Today, there are many people who are willing to sacrifice the Israelis for the sake of a deal with Iran.
"They certainly don't see it that way; they persuade
themselves that by putting pressure on Israel, they're
doing Israel a favor. I remember a famous article written in 1977 by the former undersecretary of state, George Ball: 'How to Save
Israel in Spite of Herself.'
"That insane mentality of 'knowing Israel's interests
better than the Israelis do' still exists in the State
Department and in the foreign ministries of other Western countries. But many of them are, in fact, simply hostile to Israel."
Is this, as the Israeli Left likes to claim, the fault of Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu -- whom they accuse of
causing the isolation of Israel in the international community?
"That's absurd. The same attitudes towards Israel existed
when Netanyahu was still a furniture salesman, which is
what he was when I first met him. It has nothing to do with him.
It is true that he and Obama do not like one another. But it's childish to
think that personal relationships are a serious factor in
the actions of nations.
"Former U.S. president George W. Bush, who had a different
world view from that of Obama -- and who had a great
personal relationship with the late prime minister Ariel
Sharon -- did not bomb Iran either.
"I can apologize for him to this extent: Everyone in his
administration except [Vice President] Dick Cheney was
against it. Henry Kissinger once told me that these were the most
insubordinate State Department and Pentagon in American history.
"Though there was a moment at which Bush might have been
able to pull it off, the CIA sabotaged it by releasing an
intelligence report assessing Iran wasn't working on the bomb.
Some of us knew at that point that this was nonsense. But the fact is that it
made it impossible for Bush to be able to claim that
there was imminent danger.
"Before the CIA report came out, I had a 45-minute meeting
with Bush, during which I tried to persuade him to bomb
Iran. He listened very solemnly, interrupting once or twice to
ask a question.
"One question he asked was, 'Why are the Jews all against
me?' A few years later, I wrote a book ['Why Are Jews
Liberals?' 2010] trying to answer that question.
"But I had an article in galleys at that point in which I
predicted he was going to bomb Iran. I had a chance to
take that passage out or rewrite it, but I decided to let it stay, because I felt pretty sure when I left him that he was going to
do it. And I think he wanted to. He then justified his
inaction to himself by saying, 'Well, John McCain is going
to be the next president, and he'll be able to get away with it better than I.'
But, of course, Obama became the next president."
Obama has said that though he will exhaust every other avenue,
he will not let Iran get the bomb, even if he has to take
military action. Why is this any different from what Bush
said?
"Look, at a certain point in the early 2000s, every country
without exception said that Iran must not be allowed to
get the bomb. There was also a universal consensus that force should
be used, if necessary, not only because of nuclear proliferation, but because
Iran is a rogue regime that might not only use nuclear
weapons, but could give them to their proxies like
Hezbollah. This was the consensus even before Mahmoud Ahmadinejad became president, and his presidency only reinforced the idea
that the regime was crazy. Every intelligence agency in
the world -- without exception -- said that Iran was building nuclear
weapons. There was no debate about it. The only debate was weather it could be stopped short of military action, with carrots and sticks,
diplomacy and sanctions.
"That's when multi-party negotiations started.
"But as time went on, and it became clearer and clearer to
people involved in the process that they were not going
to succeed with negotiations, they were faced with the question of
what to do now: Do we let Iran have the bomb, or do we take military action?
"It was then that the foreign policy establishment in the
U.S. and other countries began to say, 'Well, we're
probably exaggerating; the Iranians are not really crazy.' And this meant that, due to Mutually Assured Destruction, we could
probably live with an Iranian bomb.
"The election of Hassan Rouhani, touted by the West as a
moderate, was confirmation of this idea in their minds,
which justified an escape from military action against Iran, and then
to go on pretending that an Iranian bomb can be prevented through an agreement.
"In any case, the only reason that Obama wants an agreement
is so that he can take credit for preventing Iran from
getting the bomb, knowing all the while, deep-down, that no agreement
they might reach would prevent Iran from getting the bomb.
"As for pressure on Israel: The view of one administration
after another has been that Israel needs to be forced to
make peace, as though it were up to Israel to do so. Only Bush
put the ball in the Palestinians' court.
"But the idea that this conflict is the key to stability in
the Middle East is ridiculous. Most conflicts in the
region since 1948, when Israel was established, have had nothing to do with Israel; nor did the Arab Spring uprisings have anything to
do with Israel. Yet many people still believe -- or
profess to -- that peace between Israel and the Palestinians is necessary
for stability.
"Putting pressure on Israel is what the diplomats believe
is a way of achieving détente with Iran. Though Iran
doesn't give a damn about a Palestinian state, it does care about wiping Israel off the map, so putting Israel in a situation of maximum
danger suits its purposes very well.