Five crises since World War II have drawn the United States deeper into the morass of Middle East politics. President Barack Obama currently faces the distinct possibility that a sixth crisis in the near future, in which Israel attacks Iran in a desperate attempt to cripple or decapitate its budding nuclear program, will further envelop the United States in the deadly vortex of Middle East animosities.
This unnerving scenario is the subject of a timely and incisive book, The Sixth Crisis: Iran, Israel, America, and the Rumors of War (Oxford University Press), by Dana H. Allin and Steven Simon, both of whom are specialists in U.S. foreign policy.
Long before Iran’s nuclear ambitions became a topic of heated debate in Jerusalem and Washington, D.C., the United States was thrown into five crises whose lasting effects reshaped the Middle East.
They were as follows: the 1956 Suez War, the Six Day War in 1967, the Iranian revolution in 1979, Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990 followed by the Gulf War in 1991, and the Al Qaeda terrorist attack on the United States in 2001, which triggered still ongoing wars and insurgencies in Afghanistan and Iraq.
As a new year beckons, the United States faces a sixth crisis. As the authors put it, “There is every reason to worry that, in the coming years or even months, a fearful Israel will conclude that it is cornered with no choice but to launch a preventive war aimed at crippling Tehran’s nuclear infrastructure and thereby [remove], or at least forestall, what most Israelis consider a threat to the Jewish state’s very existence.”
The worst-case scenario, in which Israel attacks Iran, is not implausible, given what they describe as Iran’s “annihilationist” agenda with respect to Israel. Living in the shadow of the Holocaust, Israel has twice acted militarily to derail its enemies’ nuclear programs. In 1981, to international condemnation, Israel destroyed Iraq’s Osirak reactor. And in 2007, without ever acknowledging it, Israel obliterated a nuclear facility under construction in Syria.
Allin and Simon blame Iran for sowing the seeds of this crisis-in-the-making. They argue that Iran’s harsh and unrelenting rhetoric about Israel’s illegitimacy and impermanence, as well as its unbridled support of Hezbollah and Hamas, is creating a full-blown “mood of panic” in Israel.
Iran has been consistently hostile to Israel since the Islamic revolution, but only in recent years has Israel expressed real concern.
For about the first two decades after the fall of Iran’s pro-western Pahlavi monarchy, Israel was slow to recognize “the sea change” brought about by the overthrow of the shah, they say. Indeed, Israel secretly sold weapons to Iran in the 1980s.
Two events changed Israel’s outlook on Iran drastically.
In 2002, an Iranian exile group disclosed that Iran was actively assembling a nuclear device. Subsequently, the United Nations’ International Atomic Energy Agency confirmed that Iran was building an enrichment plant in Natanz and a heavy water factory in Arak.
The “crude posturing and incendiary rhetoric” of Iran’s current president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, closed the case as far as Israel is concerned.
When these developments are factored into Israel’s long-standing policy that a nuclear weapons capability in the region, other than its own, would pose an intolerable threat to its survival, one can perhaps understand why Israel might be tempted to deploy brute force against Iran’s nuclear facilities.
Claiming that Israel is capable of carrying out a unilateral attack, Allin and Simon discuss three plausible routes Israeli aircraft might use.
Israel’s decision to launch a raid on Iran would depend on several factors. The first would be its assessment of U.S. and international resolve to block Iran’s pursuit of nuclear arms. Additional considerations would turn on two other issues. Would an attack buy time for Israel, given its high risks and costs? What would be its impact on Israel’s key relationship with the United States?
Assuming that an Israeli attack would touch off a regional war, Allin and Simon conclude that it would be driven by Iran’s “recklessness” and Israel’s “fears.”
Although they understand why Israel might be forced to resort to military means to stop Iran from acquiring a nuclear arsenal, they believe that force would not be materially useful and might even be counter-productive.
In the event of an attack, they observe, the United States would become embroiled in an Iranian retaliatory strike against Israel, which could be extremely serious in terms of casualties and property damage.
Iran would probably retaliate against American regional interests, particularly in Iraq and Afghanistan. Oil prices would rise, heightening concerns about energy supplies. Washington’s outreach to the Muslim world, as spelled out by Obama in 2009 in a speech in Cairo, would be imperilled.
Iranians, even those opposed to Iran’s theocratic regime, would rally around the flag for nationalistic reasons. Iran would redouble its efforts to weaponize its nuclear program and very likely succeed in resurrecting it, they claim.
Furthermore, progress toward resolving Israel’s dispute with the Palestinians would be stopped dead in its tracks, especially if Israeli jets overflew Jordan and Saudi Arabia to reach targets in Iran.
Depending on the circumstances of an Israeli attack, Israel’s ties with the United States could be frayed, especially because Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Obama differ over a crucial matter.
Netanyahu has argued that Israel can only make concessions to the Palestinians after the urgent problem posed by Iran’s nuclear program is resolved. Obama has said that a resolution of Israel’s conflict with the Palestinians is required to enlist Arab backing for a strategy of containing and pressuring Iran.
If war is to be avoided, the authors contend, the United States must adopt a systematic policy of containment vis-a-vis Iran, impose tougher sanctions on Iran and try to persuade the Iranian government to limit its nuclear program.
Meanwhile, Iran’s “defiance” and Israel’s “panic” are the “fuses” that could spark a destructive war in the Middle East. “The sixth crisis could shape our world for many years to come,” Allin and Simon write ominously.
Their warning is not an idle one.
