Preparing for the Worst Case

20060207

The Times Online

     Last week, Gerard Baker, US editor for the Times Online, wrote a very good opinion piece pointing out that the world must prepare itself for the nearly inevitable reality that the nuclear standoff with Iran will likely only be resolved by military conflict. While this article rightly broaches the subject of preparing for the fact that such a war might occur, it does not consider the next subject, preparing for fighting such a war.

     Preparing for the nature of a war against Iran may be more important than accepting that the war must be fought, because a war with Iran will be nothing like any war that has ever been fought. War with Iran will be war with Islam, whatever the West may hope for or want.

     Consider the current, violent worldwide protests by Muslims against a handful of political cartoons published in Europe. If such protests- if burning embassies and attacking military installations can be called protesting- are the result of a political cartoon, how much less will be the reaction of the Muslim world to an attack by the West against the largest Muslim theocracy.

     Remember that the Islamic revolution in Iran was the first stroke in a wider movement to establish a new caliphate in the Muslim world. The Muslim revolutionaries in Iran want all Muslims everywhere subject to a single priest-king who is bound to the edicts of Islam and the teachings of its great teachers.

     Many Muslims see this new caliphate as the hope and salvation for modern Islam, and they secretly desire, and sometimes actively work toward, the realization of this dream. This is the dream that motivates the likes of Osama Bin Laden and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi to wage their wars against their own countries and the West. This is the dream that ties together Muslims in protests like the ones recently seen.

     All of that being said, if there is a war against Iran, it will likely degenerate very quickly into a war against radical Islam everywhere. It is very likely that, if Iran is attacked, the terrorists that Iran directly and idealistically supports will see such an attack as a charge to abandon secrecy and attack openly. Radical Muslim communities will see such an attack as a call to arms against the West.

     What does such a reality really mean? What the West needs to prepare for is that a war against Iran will become a war against the radical Muslims in our midst. There will be terrorist attacks, not just in the Middle East, but in our own towns. There will be protests whose violence will be unprecedented, even here in the US where we feel secure against such threats.

     Worse, some countries will have to accept the reality that a war against Iran could degenerate into civil war at home. Countries like France, Germany, Britain, Spain, and Italy all have Muslim populations numbering in the millions. If even a fraction of those people take up arms, the consequences will be dire.

     Ultimately, should war with Iran come, the world and the West must prepare itself to accept those consequences and see such a war through to its finish. If the West balks or hesitates, it will be finished, because its enemy will not.

DLH