An Israeli attack on Iran would probably seal Barack Obama’s political fate. However, the US president does not have much room to maneuver.
On the issue of the nuclear dispute with Iran, Israel’s increasingly violent saber-rattling is irritating the Obama administration and stirring up American fears of the whole Middle East going up in flames. On the other hand, it could be argued that Israel’s threats to bomb Tehran’s nuclear installations serve merely as one part of a large and clever strategy: Israel plays the aggressive attacker who is determined to do anything in order to force Iran to make concessions during upcoming rounds of negotiations. Meanwhile, Washington announces publicly that it wants to keep Israel away from launching an air strike while secretly hoping that a verbal escalation of the conflict might succeed in persuading Iran to back down.
Surely, such a scenario is possible, but the elevated anxiety within the Obama administration suggests another, much more dangerous scenario: Israel actually believes that the window of opportunity for an aerial strike could close in a few months, whereupon it would be impossible to prevent the Ayatollah from acquiring nuclear weapons. Therefore it’s necessary to strike now.
U.S. Intelligence Taking Action
This dangerous possibility explains the Obama administration’s frenzied activity with regard to Israel. National Security Advisor Tom Donilon was in Tel Aviv on Monday and Tuesday, and before the end of the week the director of national intelligence, retired General James Clapper, is also expected to fly to Israel. And as if that weren’t enough, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, U.S. Army General Martin Dempsey once again warned that an Israeli attack would have “destabilizing” consequences for the whole region.
An Israeli air strike in the coming months could be a political disaster for the president: Just months ahead of Election Day, Obama would be forced to deal with chaos in the Middle East, in addition to skyrocketing oil prices, which would strangle an already fragile economic recovery and therefore diminish Obama’s chances of being reelected.
The Danger of a Failed Attack
Even worse: If the Israeli attack were to fail — due to lacking military capabilities, an inability to penetrate Iranian strongholds or the whole of the Middle East being ignited — Obama would probably feel compelled to bring the U.S. military into play. The president would not have much room to maneuver since domestic political pressure alone would be enormous. His Republican rivals are beating the war drums, and they would unanimously support anything Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu came out with.
When Netanyahu arrives in Washington in early March, having courted the Republican Party and Jewish community ahead of the coming elections, he will do so with Republican devotion. Netanyahu has demonstrated more than once that he won’t hesitate to meddle in America’s internal affairs and that he can do so with the backing of the Republicans in Congress as well as the conservative American media.
We can only hope that Barack Obama remains steadfast and reiterates with due emphasis to his Israeli guest precisely what numerous American envoys have already told him: that an attack on Iran could bring about catastrophic consequences and should therefore be avoided.
Republicans have made huge fools of themselves over the last couple of years, both on the floor of the Congress and on the primaries campaign trail, that Obama has come into a significant amount of political capital just by letting the GOP self-destruct. He should therefore spend some of that capital by being upfront with the American public about the insanity of pursuing yet another unwinable and expensive Middle East war. He should also lay out very clearly that a “rock solid” commitment to Israel’s security is at the expense of US security, and that no American president has ever been elected to forfeit US security.
Bibi has got Israelis so hyped up on holocaust nightmares that the country is no longer capable of making rational decisions. The country is getting all too used to denying the “inalienable rights” of other peoples because, after all, they are “the people of the holocaust.” They’ve successfully denied the Palestinians their right to self-determination — a right that Israel fully enjoys. So why not deny Iran the “inalienable right” under the NPT to enrich uranium — another right that Israel has appropriated unto itself without signing the NPT.