“How to Stop Iran” is the title of a column by Olivier Debouzy that appeared in the WSJ 10 day ago. Debouzy is apparently a very well-connected French defense intellectual. It’s worth reading his entire article to absorb his reasoning, but I’ll cut to the chase for our purposes.
The basis of his proposal is for the U.S., France, Britain, and Israel to agree together to stop Iran, and to view the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis as a model for the initial phase:
Applying pressure on the Iranians by interdicting any imports or exports to and from Iran by sea and by air would send a message that would undoubtedly be perceived as demonstrative by Tehran. Additionally, reinforcing the Western naval presence inside or immediately outside the Gulf would make it clear to the Iranians, without infringing on their territorial waters, that they (and all states dealing with them) are entering a danger zone. In parallel to this slow strangulation, measures should be taken to deter Gulf states (such as Dubai) from engaging in any trade or financial transactions with Iran and to encourage them to freeze Iranian assets in their banks. This should not be too difficult, as the threat of disconnecting any renegade from the Swift system would be sufficiently persuasive in the current circumstances, in which Dubai sorely needs international financial assistance.
It might be necessary to go beyond that and actually resort to force to prevent the Iranians from achieving nuclear military capabilities. Planning for a massive air and missile attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities (known and suspected) should be considered seriously, and this planning made public (at least partially) to convince Iran that the West can not only talk the talk, but also walk the walk. Such planning should also, to the extent possible, involve NATO, against the territory of which there is little doubt that the majority of Iranian missiles and nuclear weapons would be targeted (if only because they cannot yet reach the U.S.). The U.S., U.K., French and Israeli intelligence services should better co-ordinate what they know, and contributions from others should also be welcome, as well as any information that could be provided by internal opposition movements in Iran.
A recent column by Caroline Glick observes Debouzy’s arguments, and asks whether Netanyahu can wait much longer for Obama to act. She wonders whether America is necessary for the operation, and whether a determined Israel might not find itself with allies regardless of America’s stance – leading her to suggest a different historical parallel:
While Debouzy invoked the Cuban Missile Crisis, given the Obama administration’s position on Iran, a more apt analogy is the 1956 Suez Crisis. Whereas in 1962 the US acted alone against the threatened Soviet deployment of nuclear missiles in Cuba, in 1956, France, Israel and Britain acted against Egypt without US permission to limit the harm that then-Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser could cause to their separate strategic interests.
Today, the Obama administration’s treatment of US allies and enemies alike bears far more resemblance to the Eisenhower administration’s policies than to those of the Kennedy administration. And in turn, the administration’s behavior presents allied governments with options reminiscent to those they faced in 1956.
She believes in the end it will come down to whether Netanyahu can measure up to Ben-Gurion:
There can be little doubt that if Ben-Gurion and Eisenhower were in charge today, Ben-Gurion wouldn’t hesitate to again defy Eisenhower and attack Iran – with or without France and Britain. Certainly, Netanyahu cannot justify placing Israel’s fate in Obama’s hands.
She believes, in short, that if Netanyahu shows leadership, he may find himself with allies. From the American perspective, however, I think we may have to consider that action without us will tend to confirm a tremendous setback for U.S. influence in the region and beyond, even if the subsequent complications involve us directly.
Comments 42
Wasn’t Glick calling for a nuclear attack by Israel, saying that it was warranted by having the oath of office administered to Obama? She was saying that a strong Israeli leader wouldn’t hesitate, that even if Netanyahu still had a friend or two in NY the danger to the settlement policy outweighed any consideration toward sparing the NYC area from Israeli bombardment.
December 26th, 2009 at 10:19 pm
Glick aside, and sticking to reasonably sane people, a total embargo against Iran is a little o’ermuch, maybe more than a little.
Iran has a middle-class. Target the government, the military, the access to international banking, and their telecommunications.
Discomfort the middle-class.
Don’t screw around with anything that allows the Iranians to re-play the crap that the Iraqis did in their anti-sanctions campaign.
Nothing that allows them to get the geeks in the UN talking about starving mothers and dead babies.
December 26th, 2009 at 10:26 pm
As for your first comment, I don’t recall Glick calling for use of nuclear weapons, and would like to see you point to evidence for that claim.
December 26th, 2009 at 10:31 pm
She retracted the column soon afterward when there was a message put out by the State Dept that any Israeli bombing of the US, not only nuclear, would work to undermine the solid, bi-partisan congressional majority that funds the IDF with a snappy three bills/year.
Further anything other than pinpoint precision targeting in NYC might further depress fundraising efforts already depressed through the machinations of the Madoffs.
December 26th, 2009 at 10:40 pm
@ fuster:
Can you point to a single instance where sanctions of that sort have either a) prevented a national leadership bent on achieving a nuclear breakout or any other central goal from doing so or b) led to an overthrow of a regime?
In addition to being successful, the program has to be successful within a relatively limited time frame.
December 26th, 2009 at 10:42 pm
@ fuster:
Foolish. I skimmed over the last part of your first comment on first reading, and missed the pointless absurdity.
December 26th, 2009 at 10:46 pm
@ CK MacLeod:
Now wasn’t that a mistake?
Skip it the first time and you end up with seconds.
December 26th, 2009 at 10:49 pm
“outweighed any consideration toward sparing the NYC area from Israeli bombardment.”
Was that garbled or are you actually claiming the Glick suggested Israeli bombardment of New York?
December 26th, 2009 at 10:58 pm
@ CK MacLeod:
Instances of prevention of nuclear weapons development seem to be less than abundant.
I doubt if either of us could point to much of anything that’s been proven to work.
The last instance of prevention that springs to mind was Germany.
Overthrowing regimes are something with which we’re more experienced and with which we’ve a better success rate.
We’ve got five years to fubar the Iranians.
Three years should be enough to know whether we’re succeeding. I don’t know why we shouldn’t given the amount of effort that the Iranians are putting into failing.
December 26th, 2009 at 10:58 pm
Sully wrote:
She made it a non-negotiable demand of any strong Israeli government.
Anything less, she was claiming, was a betrayal of Jabotinsky.
December 26th, 2009 at 11:00 pm
@ Sully:
He was making a joke. Very entertaining.
December 26th, 2009 at 11:02 pm
That’s three helping and I’m not ladling out any more!!!!
These have been jokes, disgusting jokes and I’m ashamed.
It was Chicago, was what she really said.
She hates Chicago.
The musical, the movie, all of it.
December 26th, 2009 at 11:03 pm
@ fuster:
Unfortunately, the time frames you enunciate are highly dubious. I wonder whose information you are depending on now, since as far as I know there neither is nor reasonably can be an international consensus. I’m not sure that anyone would be terribly surprised to learn tomorrow that Iran had a capacity, though they might wonder why they had revealed it, since their plan seems to be to leap frog from to a significant capacity or threat rather than inch forward like N Korea.
Iraq was prevented from going nuclear, two or three times. Libya was persuaded. Others have persuaded themselves, and have divested themselves of advanced nuclear programs.
If you believe that Iran going nuclear would be intolerable, then there’s no margin for error.
December 26th, 2009 at 11:14 pm
CK MacLeod wrote:
You put up a post with two people suggesting acts of war that are quarter-assed (Glick) or half-assed.
Either one is going to result in thousands of casualties in Europe, hundreds in Israel, and an unknowable number for us.
Bad jokes for bad jokes.
MABJ is my policy.
December 26th, 2009 at 11:16 pm
@ fuster:
I didn’t mean it when I said I found it entertaining. Your calling Glick insane rather than coping with her arguments is actually quite boring.
December 26th, 2009 at 11:18 pm
@ CK MacLeod:
The time frame is DoD best-estimate for the earliest that Iran can put a nuke on a missile that goes where it’s aimed.
December 26th, 2009 at 11:19 pm
@ fuster:
Right, and I suppose you think that there’s some magic sanctions policy that’s just exactly tough enough to induce the collapse of the regime, but not so tough that it provokes conflict. You think that the regime and its proxies are just going to disband quietly after a few years of not too hot not too cold opposition?
December 26th, 2009 at 11:22 pm
@ fuster:
“deliverable nuke on a missile” is a fairly advanced stage. “On a nearly irreversible course” to attaining nuke on a missile – not to mention nuke by aircraft, ship, or unconventional means – appears much earlier.
December 26th, 2009 at 11:24 pm
@ CK MacLeod:
I think that when enough of the Iranian people swing against them we’ll avoid much of the unpleasantness of having things blow up here and there.
December 26th, 2009 at 11:27 pm
CK MacLeod wrote:
Where do you think that we now are?
They’ve got about everything they need in stock and they got it all in while we were happily refusing to do anything other than say that we were snubbing them and they should do all their talking to the Europeans.
December 26th, 2009 at 11:32 pm
I’m sure that’s very comforting for you, and that we’d all be very gratified if an Iranian people power revolution saved our bacon, but hope is not a plan.
December 26th, 2009 at 11:34 pm
@ fuster:
we’ve been talking with them at various levels and making it obvious we’d entertain a grand bargain for years – even while they were killing our soldiers and sponsoring war and subversion against our allies. Obama comes in and observes a weak policy that he and his coalition wrongly described as bellicose, and has been experimenting with “even weaker.”
Your preferred policy seems to be the ultimate in wishful thinking – cross our fingers and hope for spontaneous regime change, our only contribution being to refrain from jinxing it by speaking of it aloud. We do nothing that could be interpreted as provocative, take no stand of any significance, and just hope that the people of Iran, with no support from us or anyone else, take it upon themselves to bring down the regime in a clean and timely manner.
December 26th, 2009 at 11:41 pm
@ CK MacLeod:
Sanctions (and subversion) or acts of war (and subversion) which do you choose to use now?
They’re five years away from a bomb or two or three that they can attempt to deliver.
What’s on your menu now?
December 26th, 2009 at 11:43 pm
@ CK MacLeod:
22- You’re just flat wrong about what we’ve been doing.
Those years were spent doing the dumbest sht vis-a-vis Iran that we could have done.
We publicly threatened them and projected not only weakness, but stupidity.
We weakened ourselves and subverted our own bargaining position.
You tell me if Iran was stronger in 2000 or in 2008.
December 26th, 2009 at 11:51 pm
@ fuster:
Now they’re five years from “two or three” bombs? A few comments ago they were three years from an accurate nuclear missile. You need to tell your intelligence team to settle on their estimate, or we’re going to start suspecting that they’re just guessing.
Generally, before I compose my “menu,” I accept that diplomatic pressure is an oxymoron if the other side isn’t convinced of your will to achieve your goal by any means necessary.
December 26th, 2009 at 11:54 pm
@ fuster:
I just told you that we had a weak and inconsistent policy over most of 2000 to 2008, and you respond as though I just said the opposite. We’ve had a weak and inconsistent policy toward Iran since 1979 or so. To the extent we’ve ever had any policy towards Iran, we’ve almost always had a pretty bad one.
December 26th, 2009 at 11:59 pm
In the meantime, you’ve been telling us at every opportunity that Iran is on the verge of collapse – a condition that came about magically on January 20, 2009, just through the sheer wonderfulness of Obama’s emanations, apparently. The experiment in removal of tyranny and expansion of freedom next door couldn’t of course have had even the slightest influence on Iranian civil aspirations or the belief that things might be changing in the region…
One gets the impression from the smattering of reports that Mr. Obama isn’t such a popular figure among the protesters anymore.
December 27th, 2009 at 12:05 am
CK,,Right – on! There is news on Israel right now
http://christopher-conservativeperspective.blogspot.com/
December 27th, 2009 at 12:28 am
@ CK MacLeod:
@ 25-
I said five years to missile/bomb, three years to see if non-military means are succeeding.
(Sorry I fell out on you. It was three o’clock here.)
Here’s this morning’s news…
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/8431523.stm
December 27th, 2009 at 5:58 am
@ fuster:
“Will” and “whatever means necessary” aren’t a matter of Officer John Bolton rants.
Iran will watch what we do in Balochistan and Yemen.
The Iranian proxies in Yemen are in for a bad time, I’m betting.
December 27th, 2009 at 6:04 am
I don’t know are we doing anything in Balochistan, Jundallah is, but contrary to Alex Debat, and Sy Hersh, we aren’t doing anything with them. One recalls Kansi, the Langley shooter in ’93, was Baloch. Yemen seems to be a new battlefield, picked up again since Al Harithi got plucked in 2002. But that has very little to do with the main event, which is supporting any active measures against the Pasdaran
December 27th, 2009 at 6:28 am
This sounds like one of those WWWD (What Would Winston Do?) fantasies that periodically warm the transAtlantic cockles. I’d like to believe that Britain, France and Israel would coordinate better than the Three Stooges but can already envision a pained Obama directing his UN ambassador to abstain from the ensuing lopsided condemnatory vote while A’jad runs a victory lap and the erstwhile co-conspirators recriminate amongst themselves.
December 27th, 2009 at 8:44 am
it is one of the last resort methods for the extremeist anti-Israel groups to get rid of Israel by provoking Israel into attacking which will result in Russia and/or China intervening…obama is all about peace and i respect his intentions
December 27th, 2009 at 8:47 am
I tried unsuccessfully to edit in the added point that Russia holds a probable veto over such an operation. Defying Barry and Vlad simultaneously does not strike me as typically Continental, however much it might appeal to a transplanted New Yorker.
December 27th, 2009 at 8:52 am
Susan Rice, taking a firm decision ‘splunge’ perhaps, what was Lodge’s position vis a vis
Suez, in this and only this sense, Obama might mimic Eisenhower, Stevenson might have been stronger in this regard. Now there are differences of course, those geniuses in the human resources of the CIA, Copeland and Eichelberger, had actually cultivated Nasser(and less than a decade, would repeat the tactics with an exiled law student, Saddam Hussein)
Now the parallel is probably closer to what happened after Suez, which the book the Odessa Files touched on. Nasser using some
‘veteran German intelligence’ contacts set up a chemical rocket program, against Israel
and Israel upon having discovered it, set about on a campaign of sabotage against it,
through various means, which were very active
December 27th, 2009 at 8:54 am
No Obama is not about peace, he is about acquiescing to our foes, and threatening our allies (Honduras, Afghanistan) to cite just two examples. MI-5 reportedly tipped us off to the Zazi plot, yet the agencies were sleepwalking in reaction seemingly
December 27th, 2009 at 9:05 am
@ narciso:
Neither Honduras nor Afghanistan is our ally.
December 27th, 2009 at 9:23 am
@ fuster:
Sure they are. Afghanistan is just short of our protectorate – even closer than “ally.”
December 27th, 2009 at 9:40 am
ilona@israel wrote:
What makes you think that Russia and/or China are in any position to intervene, or would have any inclination to do so? What, indeed, would “intervene” mean? What both would likely do is what they have been doing: play for influence, spoil, look for opportunities, including any opportunities to dislodge and eventually supplant the US.
December 27th, 2009 at 9:47 am
@ Christopher:
hmmm is right.
Could be nothing, then again…
December 27th, 2009 at 9:49 am
Closer to say they are our dependent, and you don’t ‘throw them’ under the bus
December 27th, 2009 at 9:50 am
@ Seth Halpern:
It’s consistent with Glick’s general position that, in the Age of Obama, Israel and other countries increasingly need to look to each other rather than to the U.S. to secure their interests.
If the objective was a expeditionary military adventure involving combined arms and territorial objectives, I’d share you skepticism. If the point is that GB and France could conceivably help Israel in other ways achieve a mutually desired objective, I don’t think it’s quite as far-fetched.
December 27th, 2009 at 9:56 am