Should the US Protect Iran Against a Possible Israeli Attack?

The question may seem absurd, but let us remember the statements of Zbigniew Brzezinski, former foreign policy campaign adviser to President Obama (Obama was his student at Columbia University), national security adviser to former President Jimmy Carter and ideologist of the Trilateral Commission.

In a September 2009 interview for a U.S. online publication, Brzezinski said that, in the event of an Israeli air attack against Iran, the United States should stop Israeli aircrafts. They will have to fly over Iraq, and the Americans will therefore be forced to react, or they will otherwise be accused of complicity. After being harshly attacked from all sides, the great international strategist had to tone down his statements.

Nevertheless, the idea remains more relevant than ever. Bibi Netanyahu’s latest visit to Washington at the beginning of this month, his talks with President Obama and his speech in front of 12,000 members of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee have pressed for a firm and concrete assertion of the U.S.’s support for Israel, while also testing the reaction of the United States in the event of an unilateral Israeli attack against Iran. The result was that Obama once again declared himself in favor of diplomatic solutions, even allowing for a new window of opportunity: Negotiations between the U.S., China, Russia, the United Kingdom, France, Germany and the Tehran authorities, which will take place at the beginning of April in Istanbul. Hillary Clinton described the upcoming negotiations in a message to the head of Russian diplomacy as “the last chance for Tehran to avoid war.”*

Brzezinski has not changed his position. He continues to believe that the far-right, belligerent Netanyahu-Lieberman government might represent a catastrophe for Israel and the entire world. At the beginning of March this year, in an interview for Deutsche Welle, Brzezinski again mentioned the “military adventurism” manifested by Israel against Iran. “Well, I don’t understand under what principle of international order a country which itself has nuclear weapons can categorically assert that some other country is not allowed to have a nuclear program unless the first country approves of it and if it doesn’t approve of it, it has a right to start a war … then expects the rest of international community, and in particular the U.S., to support it.” Brzezinski is certain that, if Israel launched an attack against Iran, the consequences of such an attack would be catastrophic first and foremost for the United States, which would pay “in blood and money.” (Nouriel Roubini estimated that, in the event of a war, the price of a barrel of oil would rapidly rise to $200). There is only one solution — the diplomatic one, and “true friends of Israel will try to help it avoid making crazy mistakes and criticize them.”

It is true that, not long ago, it was again Brzezinski who noted that one can criticize the foreign policy of China, France or Great Britain, but cannot touch on the foreign policy of Israel without being violently labeled as an anti-semite.

I do not think that the U.S. will launch or encourage an attack against Iran before the elections in November. Brzezinski sees the anti-nuclear umbrella as a solution for peace and stability in the Middle East, similar to the way in which such an umbrella protected the countries of Western Europe against the former USSR during the Cold War.

With all the enormous pressure exerted against him during this electoral year, Obama will probably be wise enough to stick to diplomacy. In spite of all the support that his old friend Bibi Netanyahu is ready to provide, I do not believe that Mitt Romney — who is such a master of blunders that many wish he were “Mute” Romney — has a serious chance of becoming the next U.S. president.

*Editor’s note: the original quotation, accurately translated, could not be verified.