Canada charts dangerous course on Iran nuclear plans
The wizened mullahs who rule Iran are odious and unhinged. But are they suicidal? Would they take actions that would see themselves, their country and millions of their people burn in the nuclear fire?
This is a question we must ask as the Harper government continues to quietly but unmistakably set the stage for eventual Canadian involvement in a looming Israeli military campaign against Iran’s nuclear program. If it happens, the already tenuous balance of chaos in the Middle East will crack like an eggshell, with unknown consequences.
First, let’s establish this: Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Foreign Minister John Baird are indeed laying the table — using very careful, deliberate language.
First came Harper’s Jan. 16 interview with the CBC’S Peter Mansbridge. Said the PM: “... these are people who have a particular, you know, fanatically religious world view, and their statements imply to me no hesitation of using nuclear weapons if they see them achieving their religious or political purposes.”
So yes, they would use them if they had them.
Then this past week came a foray in the Globe and Mail by Baird, in which he responded to an earlier article, stridently critical of the Harper government’s support of Israel, by left-leaning commentator Gerald Kaplan.
Baird’s piece was intriguing for several reasons. For one thing it was well written and subtly argued, belying his popular image (until recently) as a mere partisan attack dog.
More interesting though was the time the minister spent on establishing that the Iranian leadership is, in fact, insane to the point of being suicidal.
Baird writes: “Their (Iran’s) stated goal is the complete destruction of the Jewish state and the Jewish people. Will they carry out their promise? No one can be one hundred per cent sure. But if the 20th Century taught us anything, it is that when fanatics issue clear threats, it is smart to take them at their word.”
Compelling stuff. The Iranian regime is, in fact, criminal. It does persecute its own people. It does sponsor terrorism beyond its borders. Through its addled mouthpiece, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, it regularly spews hatred at Israel. And if there were clear evidence that Iran was imminently poised to deploy a weapon of mass destruction, chemical or nuclear, against Israel, the West would be entirely right to prevent it using any means necessary.
But that is not the case, now. Those who compare the current situation with Iran to that with Nazi Germany in 1939, ignore this: By the time war broke out, Hitler had already annexed Austria and the Sudetenland. Iran’s leaders periodically make outrageously bellicose noises, but there is no evidence they plan to use weapons of mass destruction on Israel, or anyone else.
The reason for that is simple: Were they to do so, they and their country would be destroyed. Israel possesses an estimated 200 nuclear weapons. The United States possess- es thousands, and could within a few hours turn all of Iran into a radioactive pyre. By what logic can anyone assume the Iranians would unilaterally deploy nukes if they had them? It’s a ludicrous proposition.
Far more plausible is that, in seeking nuclear weapons, the Iranians intend to forever alter the balance of power in the Middle East, creating for themselves an insurance policy of the kind enjoyed by Pakistan, North Korea, India and others. Given the doctrine of pre-emption initiated by the George W. Bush administration in 2003, such a desire is logical. North Korea, charter member of Bush’s axis of evil, went nuclear and was not invaded. Saddam Hussein had no WMD and was deposed and hung. Gadhafi gave up his WMD and was deposed and shot.
Neither Pakistan nor North Korea can be said to be stable, clearly. Would either country deploy a nuke, knowing the retaliation that would follow? And why would Iran be any different?
The base-case question, it seems to me, is this: Is maintaining the current balance of forces worth igniting a conflict that may be impossible to contain? And would any conflict, short of invasion and occupation, in fact maintain that balance of forces, or merely accelerate Iran’s underground nuclear development? Is the West prepared to make war on, invade and occupy Iran?
It is clearly not in Canada’s interest for Iran to go nuclear. But neither is it in our interest for Israel to launch World War Three. Punitive economic sanctions, together with a proffered carrot of re-admittance into the community of nations, will change Iranian behaviour, given time. That should be the focus of Canada’s Iran policy.