Which Iran would Israel bomb?

[IndianaGreen]

Last update - 07:43 21/06/2009

Which Iran would Israel bomb?

By Zvi Bar'el, Haaretz Correspondent

Suddenly, there appears to be an Iranian people. Not just nuclear technology, extremist ayatollahs, the Holocaust-denying Ahmadinejad, and an axis of evil. All of a sudden, the ears need to be conditioned to hear other names: "'Mousawi' or 'Mousavi,' how is it pronounced exactly?"; Mehdi Karroubi; Khamenei ("It's not 'Khomeini'?"). Reports from Iranian bloggers fill the pages of the Hebrew press. Iranian commentators - in contrast to Iranian-affairs commentators - are now the leading pundits. The hot Internet connection with Radio Ran (the Persian-language radio station in Israel) is the latest gimmick. And most interesting and important is that the commentary on what is taking place in Iran is not being brought to the public by senior intelligence officers, but via images transmitted by television.

Israel is now gaining a more intimate, accurate familiarity with the Iranian public. The demonstrations have made quite clear that there is not one Iran or even two, but rather a number of Irans. There is the Iran that belongs to those who screamed, "Death to America and to Israel," and there is the Iran that screams, "Down with the dictator."

The entire world intently listened to Iran's supreme leader with the same anticipation and focus with which it received Barack Obama's speech in Cairo, perhaps even more so. The political sermon delivered by spiritual leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, which included couched threats against his opponents, proved that not everything is done on the command of the supreme leader. He too needs to heed public opinion, he too needs to compromise, he too is operating within a system that includes religious and political adversaries. In short, it was not the son of God who spoke on Friday, but a politician who needs to preserve his system of rule as well as his own legitimacy.

Khamenei, like his rivals, knows that even if the world believes that the elections were as pure as snow, there are still, by a conservative estimate, at least 15 million grown men and women - who make up over one-third of Iranian citizens who have the right to vote - who stand in opposition to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. These are Iranians with families and businesses. Some of them oppose his economic policies, others his nuclear policy; some object to his denial of the Holocaust or his anti-American stance, or perhaps all of these things together.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1094453.html

[peacetalksforall]

1. I highly recommend. Thank you for posting. This is to keep..

[BrklynLiberal]

2. An excellent article asking a very important question.

A question that should always be asked before bombing a country.....it is a pity we never asked that question before attacking Iraq.

[leveymg]

3. Iran now has a human, sympathetic face. She was martyred seeking freedom yesterday. Her name is

Neda.

But, there are still those in Washington and Jerusalem who would murder her twice.

[mogster]

4. Will this also happen in Israel?

I'm curious. Throwing off the old ways and focusing on their kids, the future?

Benny and Dino, they're same shit IMO.

[GoesTo11]

5. For Israel, this isn't about hating a people, it's about nuclear threat

Let's be clear on the motivation here. If Israel bombs anywhere in Iran (which I don't support and I don't expect), Israel would bomb nuclear program sites, not population centers. We don't know how Iran's internal battle will resolve. If it ends up with people in charge who still want nuclear weapons to explicitly threaten Israel with, then that situation won't have changed.

What we can hope for is that (and I think this has a fairly good chance), somehow, a government arises in Iran that is not interested in confrontation for its own sake. Since 1979, Iranian leaders have been encouraging the "Death to Israel" sentiment in their country. They don't do it for self-defense, and they don't do it out of real concern for their Sunni friends (A-jad's threats hardly help the Palestinians, if anything, they drive Israeli elections to the right). They do it for the reason oppressive governments always create an enemy - to distract their own citizens from day-to-day concerns. This regime really is bad.

Perhaps a post-Shah, post-Ayatollah will be in a mood to engage constructively with the world.

[Leftist Agitator]

7. I'm pretty sure that the Israeli nuclear arsenal is a strong deterrent.

"Israel would bomb nuclear program sites, not population centers."

The recent Israeli incursion into Gaza says different.

[GoesTo11]

8. From Israel's point of view, A-jad's threats are serious.

He talks about wiping Israel off the map. He implies - in what he thinks is a clever way - that Iran may nuke Israel. He doesn't say anything like "of course, we would never attack Israel because of mutually assured destruction" - if anything, he acts as if it would be great martyrdom for Iran to take heavy casualties if in the process they destroy Israel.

I think that's all talk, but it's also brinksmanship and it should be obvious why Israelis would worry about someone who plays these games having nukes.

Not comparable to the Gaza situation. Although in the end, Israel's government didn't do the country any favors, it was acting in a manner consistent with its reading of the situation. Israel's objectives, such as they were, were basically to to disable Hamas from firing rockets and to weaken them so as to bring about regime change. Because Hamas was embedded within the population centers (not surprisingly), Israel attacked them in those centers and figured that the collateral damage was an acceptable level (and a natural consequence for Palestinians who supported Hamas).

With Iran, the military situation is much different and so is the political and diplomatic situation. It would be much more like Iraq in 1981, with the difference that instead of one nuclear reactor site there are many. There is no ground option for Israel military, there are no other factions they are hoping to deal with, etc. It's fair to guess that if Israel did attack and Iran had nuclear sites located in the heart of civilian areas, those sites would get hit. The whole idea of Israel either taking out Iran's nuclear capability or defeating them through air-war seems pretty unlikely to work, but this would be the basis of the cost-benefit thinking of Israeli leaders, not visceral hatred of Iranian citizens.

We don't have to bend over backward to try to find evil in Israel's stance regarding Iran. Really now, how much do you think they should trust Khameni and Ahmadinejad. They are obviously not good guys.

[ProgressiveProfessor]

6. Any one with nuclear weapons

The fight in Iran is between various levels of hardcore Islam, not between Islam and Democracy