Thinking the Unthinkable on Iran

A tragically misunderstood Briton once proclaimed that, “the supreme function of statesmanship is to provide against preventable evils.” No better illustration of the truth of that maxim may be found than in our present struggle with the Iranian regime. The unhappy juncture that we have reached may be attributed to the failures of many who, in holding power, chose politics over statesmanship. Now, as Iran moves towards nuclear weapons we are left with nothing but bad choices. Blood will be shed - what remains to be decided now is merely whose and in what quantity.

Some people believe that there are alternatives to violence in this situation. Those people are tragically mistaken and are, in fact, the co-authors of the present calamity. Five years ago, the work of a single-afternoon might have ended Iran’s nuclear program. A single well-planned air assault. Or perhaps even simply a program of targeted assassinations against key personnel. For year after year they have counseled caution and delay until such a point where, with the Iranian nuclear program widely-dispersed and well-defended, our choices are reduced to fight or surrender. And, I hasten to add, the latter option might not even be available to some - the present Iranian Defense Minister is wanted by INTERPOL for blowing up a Jewish community centre in Argentina and the Iranian President has repeatedly, openly, and infamously proclaimed his desire to engage in genocidal campaign against the State of Israel while also spouting off about his belief in the need to bring about chaos on the Earth in order the the Hidden Imam may be made to show himself.

These are not rational people. They are not even the latter-day reincarnation of the banally-evil Nazi bureaucrats who managed the machinery of death - such creatures might well, under the right circumstances, have been reasoned with or bought off. They’re the better-armed cousins of the crazed Rwandan Hutus who hacked a million of their Tutsi neighbours to death with machetes fifteen years ago. Even if one believes that Israel is somehow responsible for all evil in the world, I believe that it is fair to say that a mass-murderer of Argentine Jews and the man who put him in charge of his military are motivated by something deeper than legitimate geopolitical grievances.

“The Iranians”, it is believed, “can be deterred just as the Soviet Union was.” Perhaps so. But I, for one, am not willing to bet my life - and for that matter the lives of millions of other people - on the belief that the Iran’s leader is just kidding when he goes around claiming to be preparing for the pseudo-millennial and apocalyptic unveiling of the Mahdi. A century and a bit ago the followers of some other nut who proclaimed himself to be to Mahdi cheerfully charged into British machine guns, certain that paradise awaited them on the other side, does it really seem so improbable that their descendants might believe that it lies on the other side of a mushroom cloud?

North Korea, it is pointed out, has been allowed to acquire nuclear weapons and the world has not ended (yet). I’ll grant the essential truth of this point - a nuclear North Korea has been appeased by a West willing to meet its demands. By surrendering twenty million people to a life of slavery under a family of obvious lunatics we have bought ourselves a little temporary safety. Of course, anyone viewing the situation with clear eyes can see that this is a “solution” only in the sense that cordoning off a school and leaving it to be administered by some guy who ran into it with an Assault Rifle and 10,000 rounds of ammunition is one also. Eventually he’s probably going to find some other target for his gun. Even if we ignore the basic immorality of leaving twenty million people as the literal slaves of a perverted madman, it’s pretty clear that the North Korean solution can only be replicated at the price of surrendering nation after nation to whatever strongman can acquire the bomb.

We have already seen that the Iranian people do not support the regime that rules them. We have already betrayed their noble efforts to assert their freedoms. If we fail to act against the regime now, we will lengthen - and perhaps make eternal - their oppression. If we make it our policy to cower before every dictator with a nuclear weapon and to refuse to take any effectual action to stop them from getting them then soon every dictator will have one and the world’s map will be converted into a picture of one hundred boots stomping on one hundred faces - forever.

The folly of appeasing maniacs is clear to any serious student of history. For that matter, the stupidity of negotiating with sociopaths ought to be known by any person with a passing familiarity with other human beings.

There’s a moment in Michael Shaara’s The Killer Angels that seems apropos at the moment. On the first day of the Battle of Gettysburg, the Army of the Potomac retreated in the face of the Southern army - but immediately began to fortify strong positions that, were they to hold, would give them the final victory. General Isaac Trimble noticed a vacant hill that, in Confederate hands, would have offered the ideal spot from which to threaten the flank of the Union forces. Later, he relates to General Lee what happened when he asked his commander for permission to act:

“Sir, I said to him, ‘General Ewell,’ these words, I said to him, ‘Sir, give me one division, and I will take that hill.’ And he said nothing. He just stood there and he stared at me. I said, ‘General Ewell, give me one brigade, and I will take that hill.’ I was becoming disturbed, sir. And General Ewell put his arms behind him and blinked. So I said, ‘General, give me one regiment, and I will take that hill.'

“And he said nothing. He just stood there. I threw down my sword, down on the ground in front of him.

“We, we could have done it, sir. A blind man should have seen it. Now they’re working up there. You can hear the axes of the Federal troops. So in the morning many a good boy will die, taking that hill.”

We are left with nothing but bad options. At worst, a nuclear Iran means millions of people dead - perhaps tens of millions - and at best it means the long-term slavery of the Iranian people under a regime many (if not most) of them openly despise. We failed to act and now, because of that, some - and perhaps many - will die. We don’t know if it will be Israelis, murdered by the regime. Some may be Iranians, killed by their increasingly-brazen leaders. Some may be the collateral victims of military action - people who wouldn’t have died if the strikes had come sooner, before the Iranians began to build more of their military facilities in areas with large civilian populations.

Either Israel strikes, the United States strikes (which seems to be unlikely, given the cowardice of the present Administration in Washington) or Iran goes nuclear. Whatever happens, people die who did not have to. The situation is fluid and dangerous.

Israel, we are told, does not have the capability to do more than set back the Iranian nuclear program by a few years - at best. This is obviously untrue and most of the people speaking it ought to or do know better. While it is true that the Israelis lack the ability to launch the sort of massive and coordinated air strike that the United States could launch to end the Iranian nuclear threat, it is also true that Israel does have the technical means - and perhaps the will - to end it by extraordinary measures. It is unlikely and unthinkable, of course, and would create an uproar unlike any other that we have seen in our lives but, faced with the choice between that and a Second Holocaust, Israel’s Prime Minister - a statesman whose writings and words reflect a deep understanding of the will that is required in combating preventable evils - would be irresponsible not to be thinking about the unthinkable.