Herbert Zweibon

Israel and the United States lost the first round in the war against Iran as its proxy Hezbollah humbled Israel and strengthened its grip on the weak government of Lebanon.

Now Iran presses ahead to become a nuclear power, toying with irresolute Western powers in a pattern of on-again, off-again negotiations. The very enormity of the stakes turns off Western politicians and opinion-makers alike: the thinking of the mullahs is so foreign to them that they cannot believe in the reality of an apocalyptic danger. Yet Hebrew University Professor of Islamic History Moshe Sharon lays it out succinctly: “What moves the Iranian government and leadership today is first and foremost the wish to bring about the twelfth Imam.” Nuclear weapons, in their view, provide the way to do so, for the twelfth Imam (the Mahdi), says Sharon, “needs a war. He cannot come into the world without an Armageddon. He wants an Armageddon.”

Only the Bush administration and Israel have any sense of urgency. But while Israel recognizes her existential danger, it is hard to imagine the feckless and incompetent Kadima government undertaking the militarily difficult and diplomatically even more hazardous task of taking out Iran’s nuclear facilities.

That leaves the United States. Thus far President Bush has relied on the UN, which is as likely meaningfully to confront Iran as Moveon.Org is to endorse the president’s policies on Iraq. The President has said that turning to the UN is important because the American people must “see the president try to solve problems diplomatically before resorting to military force.” But there are costs. While pursuing a diplomatic track, the Bush administration cannot alienate the existing leadership by engaging in a serious effort to bring down the regime by, for example, giving all-out support to dissidents within Iran.

At the end of the day, a military option may be the only one left. Charles Krauthammer has outlined the high costs of that option – and the even worse costs of submission to a nuclear Iran. An attack on Iran is likely to send oil prices sky-high, possibly inaugurating a world-wide recession; Iran would activate its proxies around the world, most dangerously al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army in Iraq; the diplomatic fall-out would be large, even if much of it hypocritical. Yet the alternative to doing nothing as Krauthammer notes is that “every city in the civilized world will live under the specter of instant annihilation delivered either by missile or by terrorist. This from a country that has an official Death to America Day and has declared since Ayatollah Khomeini’s ascension that Israel must be wiped off the map.” And a jihadist Iran would overnight become the region’s hegemonic power.

The implications of that hegemony are enormous: the weak states of the Persian Gulf will be the first to fall in line. Already Qatar’s Emir Shaikh Hamad Bin Khalifa (supposedly our biggest ally in the region) has run to Lebanon to fawn over Iran’s proxy, Hezbollah. Iran will control the Middle East oil spigot. There is much talk of a Middle Eastern “Shiite crescent” under Iran’s influence. But with Iran a nuclear power, Sunni states like Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan–even Turkey-- will also be forced to look to Teheran.

Recognizing the extent of the danger, the President wants to prevent nuclear bombs from falling into the hands of Iran’s death-glorifying mullahs. Whether he acts will depend in part on how free he is to do so. That makes the coming Congressional elections especially important. A House of Representatives controlled by the Democrats will not only tie the President’s hands on further foreign policy initiatives but is likely to pursue impeachment efforts that at the very least will absorb and deflect the President’s energies from the crucial issue of Iran.

The perils are overwhelming, the prospects bleak.