The Iran Question

20060102

Fox News

         Mahmoud Ahmadinejad promises to make 2006 a long and difficult year for the rest of the world. He is in the news again for his fiery rhetoric, this time claiming that the nations of Europe chose to give the Jews a homeland in Palestine in order to complete the Holocaust.

         This man is a dangerous and unstable leader of a theocratic, totalitarian nation directly seeking to build nuclear weapons. It is difficult to imagine what other purpose his comments of the past year, followed by this one, seek to accomplish other than to incite a conflict with Israel. Unfortunately, such a conflict is long overdue.

         The reality is that 2006 will likely be the year that the West, especially the US and Britain, must make a decision about what to do with Iran. Unfortunately, the situation with that nation has festered long enough that the options available are few and dwindling. The remaining options take two distinctive flavors: civil uprising or military action.

         In a civil uprising scenario, the nations of the West will decisively begin openly to support political opposition groups within Iran to achieve the overthrow of the theocratic government. This scenario will require Western financial aid, military training, military hardware, and likely support, at least logistically, from Western militaries. The advantage of this option is that the collapse of Iran’s menacing regime can be achieved from within and without a dedication of a Western military presence.

         The military action option takes the form of a military campaign against Iran. Such a campaign will make the events in Iraq look like a vacation by comparison. While Iran does not have anything like a modern military, the threat of its potential possession of WMDs in combination with the fanatical religious support of the current governments supporters will inevitably result in an insurgent campaign much like the one that eventually defeated the Soviets in Afghanistan in the 1980s. The military option, while difficult, is winnable, however it will take a military and political resolve that the West has not shown in decades.

         The alternative to some kind of action is the fact that Iran will eventually develop nuclear weapons and will likely use them in a conflict against Israel. The results of such a conflict cannot help but create a worldwide response, both for and against Iran, that could spawn, in the worst case, another world war. Even in the best case, there is little doubt that there would be a large exchange of WMDs between Israel and some of its Arab neighbors, and such an exchange will result in consequences that last for decades, if not centuries.

DLH