It’s unlikely that Stephen Harper, John Baird, Mitt Romney or Newt Gingrich have ever heard of Tamir Pardo, Meir Dagan, Amos Yadlin, Gabi Ashkenazi or Yuval Diskin. But it would probably make no difference if they had. After all, Benjamin Netanyahu certainly knows them well and ignores them completely.
So the reckless escalation of aggression against Iran, both physical and rhetorical, continues apace. Presumably the end game is both regime change in Tehran and an end to Iran’s nuclear ambitions – admirable, if unrealistic, objectives. Far more plausible is an uncontrollable conflict that will spread throughout the Middle East and from there to, well, no one knows. But it is not wrong to fear the worst, as many knowledgeable observers do.
But those who know least, like the American lunatic fringe (aka the Republican Party) and the Harper government, are either willfully ignorant of or indifferent to the logical consequences of their positions.
The Iranians blame the U.S. and Israel for the latest murder of one of the country’s top nuclear scientists, among several other recent acts of sabotage. The U.S. flatly denies the charge, for what it’s worth, while the Israelis barely bother doing so. In fact many Israelis, including those at the top, want to go much further. They want to destroy utterly the entire Iranian nuclear potential and seem bizarrely indifferent to the threat to Israel of Iranian retaliation.
Iran is the convenient next common enemy that conservatives always seem to need. Having run out of communism, terrorism, Islamism, Saddam and Bin Laden, they’ve now fastened on Iran. In the endlessly repeated sound bite of Canada’s foreign affairs minister, John Baird, “We believe Iran constitutes the greatest threat to peace and security in the world.” It’s a spin line, not a serious analysis.
The implications of Mr. Baird’s assertion are spelled out across the border by the Republican presidential candidates. We can be confident that whoever wins the nomination will spend the rest of the campaign pushing the president toward a direct preemptive attack on Iran which he knows is madness.
Which is why Canada has a remarkable opportunity to introduce sanity into this debate and help President Obama find some sensible allies. But sanity and sense, tragically, are not part of the Harper government’s mideast vocabulary.
As Stephen Harper recently told Peter Mansbridge, “In my judgment, these are people who have a particular, you know, a fanatically religious worldview, and their statements imply to me no hesitation about using nuclear weapons if they see them achieving their religious or political purposes. And … I think that’s what makes this regime in Iran particularly dangerous.”
Every aspect of Mr. Harper’s position is flawed.
The proposition that Iran is “particularly dangerous,” the greatest threat to world peace and security, flies in the face of reality. To claim Iran is more dangerous than Pakistan requires a complete suspension of thought. To insist that Iran must not get nuclear weapons, which it does not have, while volatile and aggressive Pakistan can keep theirs, beggars understanding.
The proposition that the world does not have to demand denuclearization by Russia, China, North Korea – North Korea, for heaven’s sakes! – India, Israel, Britain, France and the U.S., but demands it from Iran, is beyond comprehension. Imagine your reaction if you were an Iranian, even an anti-government Iranian.
The proposition that Iran’s leaders would not hesitate to use nuclear weapons flies in the face of 33 years of evidence since their revolution. Reprehensible as they are, they have never attacked another country.
The proposition that Iran is more dangerous than Israel, which has repeatedly invaded its neighbours and sends saboteurs and death squads around the world to get its enemies, simply ignores reality.
