The article is entitled 'Bombs Away: A Suitable Case for Pre-Emption?'. It warns of the threat posed by Iran's supposed programme to develop nuclear weapons. It notes that the Israeli prime minister has said that his country cannot live with a nuclear-armed Iran. The article declares that if sanctions are not successful in curbing Iran's nuclear ambitions, then Israel (inevitably supported by the USA) has plans to launch a pre-emptive military attack against Iranian nuclear sites. Faced with a dire threat to its very existence, the state of Israel reserves the right to strike first.
Given its content, a casual reader might think this article appeared in the media today, or yesterday, or maybe last week. In fact it was published in 'The Economist' magazine in July 2007, more than five years ago. One would have thought that if Iran was an existential threat to Israel in 2007 the latter country would have taken some action by now to remove the threat, instead of endlessly postponing its attack from year to year.
The fact is that Israeli governments are rightly worried about starting a new war in the Middle East whose final outcome nobody can definitely predict. In the end Israel can probably co-exist with a nuclear-armed Iran, just as the USA learned to live with a nuclear-armed Soviet Union. After all, Israelis and Iranians have one thing in common: both groups dislike the Arabs. Saudi Arabia and the other Arab monarchies in the Gulf Co-operation Council (GCC) have played as great a role as Israel and the USA in bringing about the present situation where an attack on Iran seems increasingly likely. Indeed Saudi Arabia has now replaced Egypt as Israel's principal de facto Muslim ally, whatever the denials from Riyadh.
Thus the forces assembling to assault Iran are not doing so because of some existential threat posed by that country, but are engaged in an exercise in great power aggression, a war of choice. The three principal actors - Israel, the USA, and Saudi Arabia - believe that curbing Iran's power will benefit their interests. Israel wants to preserve its monopoly of nuclear weapons in the Middle East; America wants vengeance on the only non-nuclear armed state which has persistently defied its hegemonic power since 1979; and Saudi Arabia desperately wants to preserve its self-declared leadership of the Muslim world in the face of Iranian challenges. Will these three powers succeed in their aims?
If past precedent is anything to go by, they may be successful, at least in the short run. The traditional script for an Israeli or American attack on a Muslim country in the Middle East goes as follows. Israel/USA is said to be provoked beyond endurance by the state and threatens military action. The target Muslim state blusters and makes wild threats of the destruction it can reap on the attackers, a refrain taken up by its various supporters around the world, who forecast nothing less than world chaos if the country is attacked. Israel/USA launches a military assault on the country; it is quickly defeated; and the world does not collapse into chaos. Any wider effects of the conflict (higher oil prices, etc.) are only short-lived. The regime of the country may or may not be overthrown as a consequence of its defeat, but it will certainly be reluctant to face such a military onslaught again, no matter how much its people may resent their humiliation.
Only if Israel or the USA unwisely turns military victory into the occupation of Muslim territory does their success all too quickly turn to prolonged, expensive and bloody asymmetric warfare. Israel learned this in the Arab lands seized in 1967 and in Lebanon after 1982; the USA has had similar experiences in Afghanistan since 2001 and in Iraq from 2003. Governments are easy to curb or overthrow, but popular resistance is much more difficult to suppress.
Despite Iran's dogged performance in its war with Iraq from 1980 to 1988, when it eventually ended up fighting an Iraq supported not just by the rest of the Arab world but also by the USA and other Western states, such prolonged revolutionary resistance is unlikely in a future conflict. More likely a new war with Iran will follow the scenario noted above. Israel and the USA (now with the added assistance of a Muslim power, Saudi Arabia) will find continued Iranian intransigence a provocation and will threaten military action. The Iranians will bluster and threaten the destruction of anybody who attacks them, while worldwide 'liberal' opinion will prophesy the end of civilisation if war comes to the Middle East. Iran will be attacked and its armed forces swiftly crushed (so that oil prices do not soar to great heights for too long). The chastened ayatollahs will have to admit defeat, but most Iranians will never forget this unholy onslaught by Christians, Jews and (Sunni) Muslims, and sooner or later Iran will return to the pursuit of the nuclear option as the only way to guarantee national independence.
Of course the past is merely a possible guide to the future. Nothing is inevitable. If, unlike Nasser's Egypt in 1967 or Saddam Hussein's Iraq in 2003, Iran can survive the initial attack and preserve the means to retaliate, then it may be able to sustain a prolonged war against its principal adversaries, certainly longer than the one month war recently forecast by an Israeli government minister. The longer the war goes on, the more likely its effects will further damage an already weak world economy.
