When it comes to Iran, the U.S. may be facing a cataclysm
Victor Davis Hanson is a military historian; Robert Baer a former CIA field officer. Both have studied the Middle East for decades, traveled to the area repeatedly in recent years and written about the region extensively. And both have become convinced that we may be facing a cataclysm.
Hanson and Baer each presented his analysis during an interview this past week. Although they differ on certain matters, they agree on five observations.
There is more of the backstory on each of these in the article, but that doesn’t make the situation look any better.
The first: If not already capable of doing so, Iran will be able to produce nuclear weapons in mere months.
The second observation: The Iranians have no interest in running a bluff. Once able to produce nuclear weapons, they will almost certainly do so.
The third observation: As the Iranians scramble to produce nuclear weapons, the Obama administration appears too feckless, inexperienced or deluded to stop them.
The Chief doesn’t know whether it is the fecklessness, inexperience, or delusion that is causing the problem. Probably all three!
The fourth observation: Israel cannot tolerate a nuclear Iran.
The final observation: Iran would retaliate.
“Iran’s deterrent doctrine is to strike back everywhere it can,” Baer explained. “We should expect the worst.” Iran would attack American supply lines in Iraq and command Hezbollah to start a civil war in Lebanon. It would fire surface-to-surface missiles at every oil facility within range, wreaking devastation in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states while removing millions of barrels of oil a day from the world markets. The economy of the entire globe would suffer a paroxysm. The Middle East could descend into chaos. The U.S. would experience the worst crisis in decades.
After the assassination 95 years ago of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the great powers of Europe engaged in meaningless diplomatic maneuvers. “Austria has sent a bullying and humiliating ultimatum to Serbia, who cannot possibly comply with it,” British Prime Minister Herbert Asquith confided in a letter. “[W]e are in measurable, or at least imaginable, distance of a real Armageddon.”
A big nation attempting to humiliate a small nation in a way the small nation simply cannot accept. Unseriousness among great powers. A gathering sense of impending catastrophe. Once again, it may be Armageddon time.
Like the lyric of an old Warren Zevon song: “It ain’t that pretty at all!”.