The Case for Bombing Iran

By Norman Podhoretz
Commentary , June 2007

Edited by Andy Ross

September 11, 2001, plunged us headlong into war. I call this new war World War IV, because the cold war was actually World War III. Like the cold war, the one we are now in has ideological roots, pitting us against Islamofascism.

The military campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq cannot be understood as self-contained wars. We have to see them as fronts or theaters that have been opened up in the early stages of a protracted global struggle. The same thing is true of Iran.

The Iranians never cease denying that they intend to build a nuclear arsenal, and yet in the same breath they openly tell us what they intend to do with it. Their first priority, as repeatedly and unequivocally announced by their president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is to wipe Israel off the map. Ahmadinejad also wishes to dominate the greater Middle East, and thereby to control the oilfields of the region and the flow of oil out of it through the Persian Gulf. He has a larger dream of extending the power and influence of Islam throughout Europe, and what he describes as a world without America.

Consider the analogy with World War III. At certain points in that earlier war, some of us feared that the Soviets might seize control of the oil fields of the Middle East. In that case, we thought, the result would be what in those days went by the name of Finlandization. In Europe, where there were large Communist parties, Finlandization would take the form of bringing these parties to power. In the United States, where there was no Communist party to speak of, we speculated that Finlandization would take a subtler form. In the realm of foreign affairs, politicians and pundits would arise to celebrate the arrival of a new era of peace and friendship in which the policy of containment would be scrapped.

We won World War III. Alas, we are far from knowing what the outcome of World War IV will be. But in the meantime, looking at Europe today, we already see the unfolding of a process analogous to Finlandization: it has been called Islamization. In one recent illustration of this process, schools in England are dropping the Holocaust from history lessons to avoid offending Muslim pupils, whose beliefs include Holocaust denial. Much more, and worse, has been going on in other European countries, including France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Denmark, and the Netherlands. All of these countries have large and growing Muslim populations demanding that their religious values and sensibilities be accommodated at the expense of the traditional values of the West. Yet almost all European politicians have been cravenly giving in to the Muslims' outrageous demands. Already some observers are warning that by the end of the 21st century the whole of Europe will be transformed into a place to which they give the name Eurabia.

Confronted by Islamofascists armed by Iran with nuclear weapons, we would become more and more hesitant to risk resisting the emergence of a world shaped by their will and tailored to their wishes. For even if Ahmadinejad did not yet have missiles with a long enough range to hit the United States, he would certainly be able to unleash a wave of nuclear terror against us.

Bernard Lewis said that MAD, mutual assured destruction, was effective right through the cold war. Both sides had nuclear weapons. Neither side used them, because both sides knew the other would retaliate in kind. This will not work with a religious fanatic like Ahmadinejad. For him, mutual assured destruction is not a deterrent, it is an inducement. We know already that Iran's leaders do not give a damn about killing their own people in great numbers. We have seen it again and again. In the final scenario, and this applies all the more strongly if they kill large numbers of their own people, they are doing them a favor. They are giving them a quick free pass to heaven and all its delights.

Ayatollah Khomeini: "We do not worship Iran, we worship Allah. For patriotism is another name for paganism. I say let this land [Iran] burn. I say let this land go up in smoke, provided Islam emerges triumphant in the rest of the world."

Ayatollah Rafsanjani: "If a day comes when the world of Islam is duly equipped with the arms Israel has in possession ... application of an atomic bomb would not leave anything in Israel, but the same thing would just produce damages in the Muslim world."

If military force is ruled out, there is that good old standby, diplomacy. But since Ahmadinejad is a revolutionary with unlimited aims and not a statesman with whom we can do business, all this negotiating has had the same result as Munich had with Hitler. That is, it has bought the Iranians more time in which they have moved closer and closer to developing nuclear weapons.

Then there are sanctions. As it happens, sanctions have very rarely worked in the past. Since hope springs eternal, some now believe that the answer lies in more punishing sanctions. Their purpose would be not to force Iran into compliance, but to provoke an internal uprising against Ahmadinejad and the regime as a whole. After three years and more of waiting for the insurrection they assured us back then was on the verge of erupting, I have lost confidence in their prediction.

The weapons with which we are fighting World War IV are not all military. In exerting pressure for reform on countries like Egypt and Saudi Arabia, these nonmilitary instruments are the right ones to use. But it should be clear by now to any observer not in denial that Iran is not such a country. If Iran is to be prevented from developing a nuclear arsenal, there is no alternative to the actual use of military force, any more than there was an alternative to force if Hitler was to be stopped in 1938.

Since a ground invasion of Iran must be ruled out for many different reasons, the job would have to be done, if it is to be done at all, by a campaign of air strikes. Furthermore, because Iran's nuclear facilities are dispersed, and because some of them are underground, many sorties and bunker-busting munitions would be required. And because such a campaign is beyond the capabilities of Israel, and the will, let alone the courage, of any of our other allies, it could be carried out only by the United States.

The opponents of bombing disagree that it might end in the overthrow of the mullocracy. On the contrary, they are certain that all Iranians, even the democratic dissidents, would be impelled to rally around the flag. And this is only one of the worst-case scenarios they envisage. I readily admit that it would be foolish to discount any or all of these scenarios. But there is a good response to them. The only thing worse than bombing Iran is allowing Iran to get the bomb.

In his 2002 State of the Union address, President Bush made a promise: "We'll be deliberate, yet time is not on our side. I will not wait on events, while dangers gather. I will not stand by, as peril draws closer and closer. The United States of America will not permit the world's most dangerous regimes to threaten us with the world's most destructive weapons." The President was referring to Iraq, but the same principle applies to Iran.

Local resistance to Iran's bid for hegemony in the greater Middle East through the acquisition of nuclear weapons could have even more dangerous consequences than a passive capitulation to that bid by the Arab countries. For resistance would spell the doom of all efforts to stop the spread of nuclear weapons, and it would vastly increase the chances of their use.
 

AR  (2007) As a longtime student of the role of military force in political affairs and a lifelong admirer of Winston Churchill, I must confess I find Podhoretz' argument persuasive. The repercussions of a strike may be dire, but failing to take out a threat would be worse.
 

His Toughness Problem

By Ian Buruma
New York Review of Books, 54(14), September 27, 2007

Edited by Andy Ross

World War IV: The Long Struggle Against Islamofascism
by Norman Podhoretz
Doubleday, 230 pages

In his latest book, Norman Podhoretz refers to the neo-isolationism and pacifist sentiment that are supposedly rife in "the elite institutions of American culture." This elite appears to be made up largely of clever people in New York who run the media. It is essential to mobilize the common, decent, right-thinking people of America against this decadent elite. This is the essential message of World War IV.

Podhoretz is not hard to read. When it comes to the specifics of the war, he becomes fuzzy indeed. It is not very helpful to compare Osama bin Laden with Joseph Stalin and Adolf Hitler. Bernard Lewis is trotted out to lend some intellectual respectability. Podhoretz cites Lewis's analysis of Nazi as well as Stalinist influences on the growth of the Baath Party in the 1940s. These influences were real enough. Baathists, al-Qaeda revolutionaries, Shiite militias, Islamist insurgents, and terrorist gangs operating in the West are all brutal, dangerous, and capable of inflicting much harm. But to lump them all together as "Islamofascists" is a dangerous form of hysteria.

Podhoretz is aware that World War IV has its own special needs and strategies. Yet neither Podhoretz nor the "great president" he champions can resist the self-glorifying analogies of World War II.

Podhoretz points out that religious terrorism is the result of political oppression. As long as millions of Muslims are ruled by dictators, terrorism will grow apace. The neocon strategy is to "drain the swamps," to get rid of terrorism by democratizing the Middle East. That dictatorship breeds terrorism is certainly plausible. But "draining the swamps" doesn't work as well in practice as it might in theory.

Some of the dictatorships, such as the Iranian regime, are themselves active sponsors of Islamist terrorism. But as the United States has attempted to drain the swamp in Iraq, Iran has been greatly strengthened, while the Iraqi swamp is far from drained. Not only has the war unleashed a state of anarchy and civil war, but it has turned Iraq into a breeding place of revolutionary violence.

Podhoretz is convinced that the savage murders and daily atrocities in Iraq are actually "a tribute to the enormous strides that had been made in democratizing and unifying the country under a workable federal system." He wonders why men in the "so-called 'insurgency'" would be shedding so much blood if they didn't think the U.S. mission in Iraq was working.

If anyone is to blame, in Podhoretz's view, for setbacks in our war against Islamofascism, it isn't Bush, but Noam Chomsky, Susan Sontag, Norman Mailer, and those campus guerrillas of the "hard Left." Why? Because they have now joined Pat Buchanan on the right as isolationists.

Podhoretz's views matter. He has attracted allies in places he might have least expected it, among some former liberals and leftists, such as Christopher Hitchens: "The United States has placed itself on the right side of history."