Has the Western world, and has the American government in particular, gone mad? Does it not see, with Pakistan, the hideous situation created when a Muslim state acquires nuclear weapons? The Americans now are in the position of having to protect the corrupt and hopeless government of Zardari, a crooked zamindar (whose wife, Benazir Bhutto, by the way, though no saint herself, could not stand him). The Americans must do this because they are terrified of what may happen with those nuclear weapons — and they should be — if the government were to fall to the Pakistani “militants” or “extremists.”
And so a country that is hopeless will now become some kind of political and economic ward of the Americans, because they haven’t any idea how to deal with those nuclear weapons. Just Sunday the New York Times reported that “more than 70 United States military advisers and technical specialists are secretly working in Pakistan to help its armed forces battle Al Qaeda and the Taliban in the country”s lawless tribal areas, American military officials said.”
Iran’s nuclear project can be set back, or perhaps destroyed altogether. It requires the nerve to attack. Not the nerve to invade, but the nerve to attack, from the air. And not to attack for years or months, but quickly. And not to attack Iran in general, but only the nuclear sites in Iran. Such an attack would be far less onerous, and far less expensive, than the mad quandering going on in Iraq, and Afghanistan, and Pakistan. All the Americans have to think of is this: what happens if Iran, if the Islamic Republic of Iran, if the Islamic Republic of Iran that is ruled by people such as those epigones of Khomeini, the deep believers in the Hidden Imam and the imminent return of the Mahdi, manages to acquire nuclear weapons? Can Americans imagine that? Can they imagine that, in all of its aspects? Do they understand that the kind of chiliasm embraced by such people means that those who hold to it are not, as the Soviet rulers were, rational Western men, inhabiting the same universe of logic, and calculation of interest and of earthly consequences? Do they understand that instead, they are True Believers in Islam, and in Shi’a Islam, and in hastening the return of the Mahdi, and that as such they are indifferent to earthly consequences? How do the Americans think things will turn out in light of those realities?
Whether or not Iran’s nuclear project can be stopped is of much greater consequence than anything, anything at all, that could possibly happen, among all kinds of outcomes, in Iraq or in Afghanistan. This should not be hard to understand. But apparently it is.
What are the Americans afraid of? Getting “bogged down” in Iran? But there is no getting “bogged down” if there is no large-scale land invasion, and there shouldn’t be. What are all those planes, all those missiles, for? Should they be kept in warehouses forever while one of the most implacable enemies of Infidels everywhere — and one that has a great many people in positions of power who, from our point of view, cannot be deterred, but only deprived of the means to cause hideous harm — manages to acquire nuclear weapons? What then would the Iranians demand of the British, or the Americans, in Iraq, or in Afghanistan, or in Pakistan, or anywhere they chose? What is keeping this understanding from being widespread in Washington? What are they afraid of if they attack Iran? Are they afraid of the reaction of the Sunni Arabs? Why?
There will only be quiet satisfaction underneath whatever pretense of outrage there might be. Are they afraid of what the Iranians might do that they are not already doing? And what might the Iranians do that they are not already doing? Has there been any attempt to imagine the inhibitions on American and other Infidel governments in the region — there goes Iraq, poof! — if Iran can threaten to use nuclear weapons, teeny-tiny tactical nuclear weapons in some cases, perhaps by handing them over to groups or groupuscules, including Hizballah? No understanding of this? Just to be dismissed? How many centrifuges is it now? 5,000? 8,000? Who’s minding the store?