Spengler on Iran

David P. Goldman - "Spengler" - analyzes Iran.

(This) is where the danger begins. The Persians invented chess. What opponent’s move would Ayatollah Khameini anticipate? Israel now has more leeway to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities than ever before, on the grounds that a regime that massacres peaceful demonstrators asking for their rights under law cannot be allowed to have nuclear weapons. Whether Israel plans to attack, I do not know, but that is the obvious move on the chessboard. Were Israel to strike successfully and set back nuclear weapons development by a number of years, it might humiliate the regime further, rather than rallying nationalist support.

What countermoves might Iran offer against an Israeli air raid? Iran is not without resources: it has the rocketeers of Hizbollah and Hamas, terrorist sleeper cells throughout the world, and considerable covert action capability inside Iraq. The price Israel likely would pay for a raid against Iran would be terrorist attacks against Jews overseas, on the model of the 1994 bombing of the Buenos Aires Jewish center that killed 85 people and wounded hundreds. A warrant is outstanding from Argentine prosecutors for the arrest of Hashem Rafsanjani in that affair.

Iran might seek to pre-empt what it anticipates to be the next move from Israel by demonstrating its capacity to inflict injury on Israel or on Jewish targets elsewhere. That would require careful judgment, for a heavy-handed action could provide a pretext for even more serious action by the Israelis and others. The same sort of consideration applies to Iranian support for Pakistan Shi’ites, for Hizbollah in Lebanon, and other vehicles of Iran’s program of imperial expansion.

This is an exceptionally dangerous moment, and it is important for the peripheral vision of Western security agencies to keep in view Iran’s external interests and vulnerabilities. The demonstrations in Tehran are in a sense the least interesting thing to watch from the standpoint of intelligence evaluation, because their evolution is the most predictable.

Read more of Dangerous When Cornered.