Wednesday, June 27, 2007

Neoconservatives Going Down--Taking Iran with them

Neoconservatives Going Down--Taking Iran with them

John Bolton, former UN Ambassador has written another screed on Iran for the Jerusalem Post, calling for Iran's destruction because it is a danger to Israel.

I must say that I am absolutely flabbergasted at the persistent obsession in the
neoconservative camp with Iran. Other neoconservatives such as American Enterprise Institute denizen Meyrav Wurmser and others reflect this. What is astonishing to me is that the predictions that Iran is the principal danger for Israel absolutely
overlook the far more important and logical challenges to Israel on its
own borders.

There is some fantasy abroad that if only Iran would disappear or cease
some political operations (financial support, supplies of military
equipment, etc.), Hamas, Hezbollah and other groups challenging Israeli
operations vis-a-vis the Palestinians would simply dry up and blow away.
Witness the focus on the $22 million allegedly supplied to Hamas by Iran,
when in the same breath, more than twice that amount was acknowledged to
have been supplied by other Middle Eastern parties.

There is still no hard evidence that Iran even has a nuclear weapons
program, and yet we have Bolton and others fulminating over something
that, even if it existed as a threat, is far in the future, compared to
the immediate dangers Israel faces today from local actors who have been
so politicized and demoralized that they engage in the extreme violent
actions that all sensible people decry. These local actors are not going
to go away, or suddenly become docile as a result of attacking Iran. The
irony is that if the United States and Israel were to nuke Iran into
oblivion, Israel would be no safer at all--indeed, it would be in greater
danger than ever.

My guess is that the neoconservatives have realized that the Bush
administration has now destroyed their chances for political dominance in
the future, and if they don't act now to force the administration into
taking military action against Iran, it will never happen. They are going
down, and by golly, they are going to take Iran with them.