Moment of Truth

By Paul Iddon

The fog of distortion and misinformation regarding the Islamic Republics nuclear program is finally beginning to clear.

IR-40 heavy water facility at Arak.

Reading news bulletins (and indeed this blog) over the past few years one finds oneself very much familiar with two recurring stories, one being of gradual developments in Iran's nuclear program which always concludes by reminding the reader that primarily the US and Israel accuse Iran of developing nuclear weapons whilst Iran continually asserts that its nuclear program is a wholly civil one. The second story is one that has taken many forms for a good four years now, the predominate ones being of the Israeli Air Force launching large scale exercises in preparation for a strike against Iran, whilst various Israeli political and military figures asserting that a nuclear Iran will not be tolerated and that they are prepared and will take military action against it.

With last weeks highly anticipated yet nervously awaited IAEA report that speaks of “credible” evidence that Iran is designing a nuclear weapon one feels that these ongoing threats and conflicting assertions of the true nature of the Iran's nuclear program may be reaching a gradual crescendo.

The Russian Foreign Ministers recent warnings regarding the increasing likelihood of an Israeli strike aren't in any way unprecedented, one remembers Russia warning the west back in 2007 that an attack on Iran would be considered an attack on Russia. Also Israel seeing the development of an Iranian nuclear weapon as an existential threat certainly isn't anything new or unprecedented neither. As I've made evident before when I pointed out that the current Prime Minister Mr. Netanyahu warned of a nuclear armed Iran manifesting itself within at least five years, he made this warning back in 1995...

Granted Iran's nuclear program was essentially halted in 2003, given that (and granting presumption that Iran has in fact been developing nuclear weapons all this time) Netanyahu's prediction was at the very least three years off.

Mr. Netanyahu is a man known to make some very questionable allusions. During the Second Lebanon War in 2006 he stated numerous times that the only historical example that could be drawn with regards Israel's so called disproportionate responses to Hezbollah rocket fire was the German V2 rocketing of London in the Second World War. As Netanyahu stated Churchill responded by firebombing Dresden, whilst he does assert that Israel tries to make some distinction between civil and military targets it was a rather odd and somewhat crass statement to make. And I'm sure some of the more astute historical conscious observers will also note that the bombing Dresden corresponded closely with the bombing of Hamburg and will recall that while Hamburg was indeed an industrious port city it was also home to a large number of working class families who never supported the Nazi Party and whom were the predominate ones who perished in those horrific bombings. Almost reminiscent to that was how the Israeli pummeling of Lebanon in 2006 empowered Hezbollah and pretty much destroyed any chance of the Cedar Revolution the year before evolving, manifesting itself, and gradually unifying the Lebanese people together on secular lines, rather than having them continually divided on sectarian lines.

All Hezbollah had to do during the summer war in 2006 was to survive, by kidnapping the two Israeli soldiers as they got exactly the kind of reaction they were gunning towards. And furthermore as even a fleeting observer will note Hezbollah since then has grown to be a force to be reckoned with in Lebanon, and has furthermore tripled its conventional military strength through increased arms replenishment's from Iran and Syria.

One finds the present tense atmosphere alongside with the Israeli threats to launch a preemptive strike to be very worrying and unsettling, when one considers once the missiles and jets start flying over the gulf the outcome will most likely see Iran bombarded until its ability to project conventional military force is destroyed, this in turn will see a lot of its infrastructure bombed in a manner similar to the coalitions Desert Storm operation against Iraq in 1991.

I've droned on before about how I think this outcome would be a catastrophe in particular for the Iranian people, as the Iranian regime would avenge their woes and brutally exert their violence on those within its own borders, doing away with them under the pretext that they are fifth columnists or foreign influenced enemies of the Islamic Republic.

Granting the premeditation that Iran is designing and developing nuclear weapons in which to meaningfully project fear and the means to extort its loathed gulf neighbours for its own strategic means, one has to ponder if launching a preemptive military bombardment to prevent it from doing so would play into the regimes hand. As if Iran were attacked in such a fashion it may ensure the regimes survival as well as its hegemony over the Iranian masses for up to another decade and also lay about the conditions of abjection in which the theocracy will thrive under, and cripple (and break the proverbial back of) the aspiring Iranian democrats who are at present struggling to liberalize the government and bring the Iranian state and her people into a more meaningful, productive and influential relationship with the rest of the world.

So to conclude the conundrum I've outlined isn't a pleasant one. Whilst I'm not advocating doing nothing in the face of a nuclear armed Iranian theocracy I'm merely pointing out it is sadly the masses of the Iranian people that will have to bare the brunt of the suffering that will come from such a military confrontation, the theocracy will ride it out, sleeping soundly at night knowing that they've not only stuck a finger to the west (you can be sure any war with Iran will see oil wells burning in Saudi Arabia) and secured their wealth and leadership positions but will have for the second time in less than 40 years plundered the Iranian peoples hopes for a future of hope and opportunity, and instead replaced it with a totalitarian theocratic future, where them and their brainwashed minions force their solipsistic outlook on the general populace, and forcefully ban any non-consensual form of internal debate or self-evaluation and criticism and instead blame the woes that come from the states impoverishment on foreign entities, ensuring that Iran for the foreseeable future will be a pariah state, its people forcibly closed off from the rest of the world, where they are violently subverted and forced to live their lives in a manner that the ruling zealots see fit.