The International Writers Magazine: Reality Check

The Israel Threat • James Campion A Sideways Path to War with Iran The near east U.S. military outpost known as Israel is about to go rogue. For all intents and purposes, much to the eternal glee of Hezbollah and whatever is left of al Qaeda, our overextended and bankrupt nation is about to be dragged into a direct confrontation with Iran.

This maneuver, while antithetical to any sane solution in dealing with an already heavily sanctioned and highly motivated regional instigator, bloodshed is coming; and not the big-talk, ostensibly humanitarian carpet-bombing campaign we usually employ. This is the IDF we're talking about, the most deadly efficient military in the world. It will not be pleasant and it will plunge the entire shit house into flaming wreckage and our fingerprints will be all over it.
    Make no mistake, the United States of America wants no part of Iran and hasn't for decades of seriously dangerous Iranian madness, not the least of which happened in the late-70's when its theocratic revolution topped off festivities by taking American citizens hostage. During the post-9/11 American "humanitarian carpet-bombing campaign" in Iraq, Iran (mortal enemies of Saddam Hussein's Iraq) repeatedly aided, funded and directly carried out insurrectionist attacks on U.S. soldiers and contractors.
    None of this brought about even a discussion on the invasion of Iran, nor did its tired rhetoric about turning Israel into rubble and massacring the evil Jew sautéed in a thick Arabic sauce of Holocaust denial. And this was during the Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld era of war-tribunal-free-for-all. Now after over ten years of Middle East wars, economic disaster and a renewed sense that no amount of bombing, killing and nation-building is going to take the crazy out of the crazies, a conversation about taking aggressive action against Iran is about as an unwelcomed as can be imagined beyond a CPAC Convention.
    This would normally be bad news for Israel. For without a nod from the United States, Israel cannot seriously contemplate all-out aggression against Iran, never mind the type of military invasion it has hinted at for months should Iran cross some imaginary "redline" of nuclear advancement.
    However, the bad news is also on the other foot, since according to Israel the "redline" is apparently within striking distance.
    This week's show biz routine rolled out by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, which featured an unveiling of an operational nuclear reactor with fancy fuel rods and impressive form-fitting white labs coats, was in one bold swoop a show of scientific progress achieved by 16th century tribesmen, a nose-thumb to international sanctions and a veiled threat to Israel. There was high talk of medical isotopes and major progress on nuclear centrifuges, all of which the U.S. State Department announced was "nothing new" and what the international community was expecting for some time, even in the face of Iran's continued insistence the operation is purely an energy upgrade.
    No one, of course, believes a word of it. But while the U.S. sees a slow-moving national ego-stroke within a region quickly turning into an anarchistic tinderbox in Syria, Egypt and Libya, Israel, and especially its knee-jerk Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, sees opportunity.
   The Central Intelligence Agency lists Netanyahu as a loose cannon, whose iron fist approach has garnered him non-consecutive victories over a 16-year period and a host of belligerent military campaigns of variant successes and failures. His performance last year berating the president of the United States in the Oval Office in front of the international press and the assassinations of Iranian scientists over a two-year period has put the U.S. on notice. Despite billions of American aid and military might, Israel will not sit this one out.
    For its part, Iran has been begging for an irate reaction from the blustery Netanyahu. Its underground terrorist hits of Israeli diplomats in separate bombings of India, the former Soviet Republic of Georgia and most recently Bangkok, the blame of which has been denied by Iranian officials, has carried with it an air of vengeance and overt saber rattling that flies in the face of its own diplomatic attempts to reopen nuclear talks with the West. This has all smartly transpired amid rumors that there could be an olive-branch agreement to allow UN inspectors to tour the Tehran nuclear facilities.
    This and U.S. intelligence reports that Iran is at best two years removed from achieving the ability to make warheads, has dispatched a State Department envoy to Tel Aviv to allay Israeli fears and keep the United States from dealing with what appears to be no imminent threat its interests.
    Although the same people who believe Iran is developing its nuclear capabilities for energy concerns also believe there will be a threat at some point in the next five to ten years, there is a two-front dilemma occurring in a more pertinent area to U.S. interests; the vital Strait of Hormuz. This slender waterway provides the transport of nearly one-fifth of the world's oil supply, which not only affects the West, but Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Oman, as well as the new burgeoning republic or Iraq to the north.
    The United States decade of carnage in the region and the crumbling resolve of a once moderate to malleable Arab coalition, one in which George H. W. Bush exploited to exacerbate the already pathetic ties to our oil addiction, has forced this stand-off into a diplomatic pussyfoot. Our Saudi alliance against a nuclear Iran, tenuously kept under wraps, is threatened by any hint of U.S. military involvement in Israel's growing fury. It is simple pragmatism. It confronts each and every era in this volatile loony bin called the Middle East to which we must bow or begin trading in those monster trucks for hybrid minis.
    Israel has every right to defend itself and has a fair argument against an emboldened Iran, but beyond finger-wagging speeches by the White House and deeper sanctions, which has already damaged the Iranian economy by over half; it will have to do so without an American figurehead.
    But what is the reality in that?
    As a wise man once uttered; "Slim to none and slim just left the building."
    And thus, in an ironic twist Israel has become as dangerous a threat to U.S. security as any terrorist organization.
© James Campion February 17th 2012
realitycheck@jamescampion.com

A Question of Secular Faith
The Role of Law in Perpetual Religious Times
James Campion
a divisive political climate and the opportunity of an election year has curiously turned a legal matter into an issue of "religious liberty", as in why should Catholic-run institutions be forced to provide a service its dogma is patently against?

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