Iran, and the World, at the Brink

P. David Hornik, FrontPageMagazine.com:

The news about Iran always gets worse. On Wednesday The Guardian reported on a "western intelligence assessment," dated July 1, 2005, that "draws upon material gathered by British, French, German and Belgian agencies" and could seemingly shake even Western Europe out of its complacency and pacifism if that was still possible. READ MORE

The Guardian says that according to the 55-page assessment, "the Iranian government has been successfully scouring Europe for the sophisticated equipment needed to develop a nuclear bomb. . . . Scientists in Tehran are also shopping for parts for a ballistic missile capable of reaching Europe, with"—directly quoting from the report’s conclusion—"import requests and acquisitions ... registered almost daily."

The Guardian avers that "it is the detailed assessment of Iran’s nuclear purchasing programme that will most alarm western leaders, who have long refused to believe Tehran’s insistence that it is not interested in developing nuclear weapons and is trying only to develop nuclear power for electricity."

Those familiar with the West’s tendency to "sell its enemies the rope" will not be shocked to learn that "Iran has developed an extensive web of front companies, official bodies, academic institutes and middlemen dedicated to obtaining—in western Europe and in the former Soviet Union—the expertise, training, and equipment for nuclear programmes, missile development, and biological and chemical weapons arsenals."

One might think that if the web is so extensive, more people would get alarmed about what the Iranians are up to. According to The Guardian, "the leak of the intelligence report may signal a growing frustration at Iran’s refusal to bow to western demands that it abandon its programme to produce fuel for a Russian-built nuclear reactor due to come on stream this year." Where there is such frustration, is there hope?

The intelligence report also indicates what kind of world can be expected if the West keeps ignoring the dangerous trends that confront it: "It concludes that Syria and Pakistan have also been buying technology and chemicals needed to develop rocket programmes and to enrich uranium. It outlines the role played by Russia in the escalating Middle East arms build-up, and examines the part that dozens of Chinese front companies have played in North Korea’s nuclear weapons programme."

For now, though, at center stage is the Iranian despot, whom Charles Krauthammer described as a "certifiable lunatic . . . on the verge of acquiring weapons of the apocalypse," while predicting unreassuringly that "no one will do anything about it." Iran itself doesn’t seem worried, having, The Guardian notes, "raised the stakes in its dispute with the United States and the European Union [on Tuesday] by notifying the International Atomic Energy Authority that it intended to resume nuclear fuel research next week."

On one side, then, is the current most virulent proponent of the Islamist death cult, concerned only with power and subjugation and willing to wreak any conceivable mayhem. On the other side is an entity called the West, reputedly in love with life or at least with humane ideals, reluctant to fight even for genuinely held values, and so fractured that it is hard to speak of it as a single entity.

Against the Islamist death cult it is not reassuring to posit Western Europe with its declining birth rates, enduring cult of America- and Israel-hatred, and belief in "soft power." For a couple of years now, in a sort of division of labor, America has done most of the actual fighting in Iraq while Britain, France, and Germany "took on" Iran by trying to talk and bribe it out of its designs. Do not expect the abject failure of this exercise in "soft power," coupled with relatively small-scale eruptions of Islamist mayhem in Spain, Britain, and France, to jog Europe to the point that it would credibly threaten Iran, let alone act against it. Europe seems too far gone; a civilization that cannot sustain itself demographically seems unlikely to fight for what little of life it clings to.

Then there is Israel, where, despite its own descent into appeasement and delusion in the Osloera, the Iranian lunatic’s threats have a convincing resonance across the political spectrum. No Israeli government would face an internal political problem in attacking Iran, but it would face many operational ones—not only involving distance or the size of its air force, but also the surrounding terror enclaves that Israel has allowed to grow in Gaza, the West Bank, and Southern Lebanon, which, along with Iran itself, would pose a threat of devastating retaliation. Israel cannot be counted out, but its position is precarious.

That leaves the United States, far superior to either Europe or Israel in operational capability, and fortunately only partly infected with the self-negation virus. A sector of the American polity cannot, Europe-like, accept that it is at war and is more concerned with pillorying the president for wiretaps on terrorists four years ago than with imminent apocalyptic threats. The sane, strong America is again the world’s main hope.