Inexorable hardening of positions

Jul 05, 2019 Editorial

The latest from Iran is: “We will enrich uranium in any amount we want” (July 3). And it has threatened to destroy Israel in half an hour should the US attack Iran. One makes possible the other. This is more than empty threat, or sinister promise. It could be chilling, devastating reality.
From an Iranian perspective, there is sharp awareness that it would be unable to emerge victorious in any head-to-head conflict with the United States. It may inflict some damage; squeeze world oil supplies and harm the global economy; and wage a wearing war of attrition. But it cannot outlast or outfight the might of the United States. But it can tie its hands behind its back; and cripple the superpower’s ability to act, whether preemptively or in a more traditional fashion of slow buildup and deployment of forces.
Iran can do so by targeting and broadcasting its readiness to rope Israel into the bigger military picture. To be sure, Israel possesses awesome weapons capabilities – including a nuclear arsenal – but it does not have the breadth and depth to absorb any sustained barrage of nuclear firepower unleashed in its direction. To absorb and emerge in any kind of recognisable shape to go on for another day. Its very survival would be at stake.
The Israelis know this; the Americans know this; and the Iranians know this and know that both of its sworn enemies also know this. The Iranians have a few more high value cards as part of its hand: that the American Congress would not dare to take the risk of considering such a likelihood; that the powerful American Jewish lobby and American Jewish Congressional Caucus would be effectively neutralised by such a public challenge, if not outright threat; and that no American leader – no matter how belligerent, how unthinking, and how unrestrained – would dare to test the Iranian posture, to ascertain if it is a bluff.
When backs have been forced against a wall with no way out, there is reaching for the desperate, and the unthinkable. Countries and their leadership are no different from individuals when the circumstances call for such an untried, risky strategy. It is only made more credible when announced beforehand and before the whole world; and when it is noticed that the Iranians, whether justified or not, always had (no pun intended) that particular trump card in the back pocket, but in plain sight.
To put in the rawest terms: the friend of my enemy is my enemy. And in the unforgetting, unforgiving, and never less than unraveling Middle East, there are no more lethal enemies than the Persians and the Jews.
For emphasis: the great and loyal friendship of the Americans for the Israelis (major sores and all) is more than aced by the potency and toxicity of the enmity among the Iranians on the one side, and the latter’s readiness to go all out. This is the nightmarish scenario of the Mediterranean engulfed in unmanageable and uncharted warfare of a different kind, and at close quarters. This is Robert J. Oppenheimer’s most feared gauntlet thrown down. Step up and test, as to who has more resolve; who harbours more recklessness, more unbridled courage to go down, and go down in the glory of flames.
It does not matter that there are no winners; such is the strength and (sickness, perhaps) of saints and martyrs. It sets the stage for greater leverage for North Korea with regards to neighbouring South Korea, and a near identical web of interlocking, and vulnerable rendering relationships. In a more direct comparison, it is how Pakistan nullified the overwhelming advantages of archenemy India.
This is taking mutually assured destruction to a different degree. There is the forced sensibility, diplomacy, civility, and continuity afforded by the shaky containment that buys respite through defanging the dogs of war. Scales are rebalanced through the taking of whole countries hostage.

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