No Third World War on horizon

An Israeli military assault on Iran “would turn into World War III,” warned Brigadier General Amir Ali Hajizadeh, a senior Revolutionary Guards officer in charge of missile systems. Earlier, the Commander of the Pasdaran, General Mohamed Ali Jafari, was even bolder as he concluded that war between Iran and Israel “will eventually happen, but it is not certain where and when.” To prevent such an attack, Hajizadeh told the Arabic language Iranian television network, Al Alam, Tehran could launch a pre-emptive strike. Should Israel and Iran engage militarily, he affirmed, “nothing is predictable.”

This may come as a total surprise to both Iran and Israel but World War III is not scheduled to start anytime soon. Of course, Iran would respond to any Israeli strikes, through a three pronged retaliation: via Hizballah from Lebanon; through long-range missile launches on various Israeli military and civilian targets; as well as US installations in the Gulf region. Indeed, Tehran’s reactions could inflict heavy damage, though one doubts that such ripostes would “be a prelude to [Israel’s] obliteration” or to any international military coalition against Iran. Thousands might perish though most governments will call for a cease-fire and move on.

Regrettably, Israeli and Iranian rhetoric have now reached peaks, with frequently leaked Israeli stories suggesting that military operations would begin with massive cyber-attacks against Iranian infrastructure, followed by a barrage of ballistic missiles launched at nuclear facilities, which would then be trailed by attacks on military command-and-control systems, research and development facilities, and the homes of senior political and military leaders.

For his part Jafari claimed that Iran would annihilate Israel: “If they begin (aggression), it will spell their destruction and will be the end of the story,” words that mimicked his president’s oft repeated fare. Indeed, Mahmoud Ahmadinajad uttered incendiary remarks at the United Nations, where he asserted that he had no fear of an Israeli attack on his country’s nuclear facilities. He used colorful language and avowed that Israelis “had no roots in history,” and that “they did not even enter the equation for Iran,” which was contradicted by his commanders’ claims that war was imminent. Simply stated, one did not engage in battle with a non-entity, and time will tell whether Israel is an aberration in contemporary Middle Eastern history.

Still, although Jafari’s deputy, Brigadier General Hossein Salami, boasted that Iran would “crush” its arch-foes by hitting “enemy bases in the region,” elementary military logic ought to consider that Israelis practice the Massada Complex—named after the location near the Dead Sea where 960 Jews committed suicide in the first century rather than surrender to the Romans and acquiesce to the loss of independent statehood—which nearly guarantees an Israeli use of nuclear weapons.

This is all unsettling but we should not dismiss the option that Israel and Iran were allies under the Shah, cooperated under Ayatollah Khomeini, and might enjoy mutual coexistence in the future. Both loathed Arabs and the real danger in the future is an Israeli-Iranian alliance against Arabs in general and Gulf monarchies in particular.

In the Middle East, the more one talks, the less likely one is ready to attack others and this truism is accurate for both Iran and Israel. Neither Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu nor President Mahmoud Ahmadinajad are about to start wars, pre-emptive or otherwise, for both lack the power to sustain long-term conflicts.

It must also be acknowledged that most Western governments perceive the Iranian quest for nuclear status as being largely compatible with their respective interests, as long as Tehran does not destabilize the Gulf region. Speaking to the New York Times in 2007, the former French President Jacques Chirac maintained that it would not be dangerous for Iran to have a “bomb or perhaps a second [one] a little while later,” but was concerned of proliferation and in the temptation “for other countries in the region that have large financial resources to say: ‘Well, we too are going to do that; we’re going to help others do it.’ Why wouldn’t Saudi Arabia do it? Why wouldn’t it help Egypt to do so as well? That is the real danger.”

Although Chirac formally retracted these remarks, his official communiqué at the time affirmed Iran’s “right to civilian nuclear energy.” What this rare moment of candor in Western political annals suggested, however, was that many viewed the Middle East in general, and the Gulf States in particular, as being unstable. Naturally, this became more urgent after the post-2010 Arab uprisings, which will probably take years to unfold.

Consequently, it behoves us all to remember that when Western governments urge Israel to give diplomacy and sanctions more time, that is because no one is ready for, nor wants, World War III. One is not about to occur anytime soon.