It is remarkable that many of those who swore never to repeat the mistakes of the Iraq invasion have now embarked on another ill-advised adventure.
Once again, we are told that a Middle Eastern nation must be bombed before it can taste the fruits of freedom. Once again, the propaganda machine is in full swing. Once again, it is said that the regime is days away from attacking not only Israel but all of its Western allies with weapons of mass destruction. This is a claim that, in the case of Iran, has been made since 1975, before the rise of Supreme Leader Ruhollah Khomeini and the establishment of his Islamic Republic. Once again, we are told that Tehran will hand over its nuclear weapons—nuclear weapons it does not have—to terrorist groups.
The initial claim that Israel attacked Iran on June 13 to dismantle its nuclear program did not last long. Two days later, Benjamin Netanyahu gave an interview to Fox News in which he said that his real goal was regime change. He added that he was considering assassinating Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei (Trump later said he was safe—for now). This is the same Netanyahu who in 2002 promised the American public that the invasion of Iraq would create a new Middle East. The invasion, he claimed at the time, “will have, I guarantee you, a huge positive impact on the region.” You might think the results were disastrous, but from Netanyahu’s perspective, the 2003 invasion was a resounding success. Iraq became a failed state, incapable of anything more than day-to-day survival. Israel is now able to exert considerable influence in the Kurdish state in the north of the country.
In 2003, we would have called this neoconservatism. But neoconservatism has evolved. It has lost the thin veneer of idealism it once had and has become a thoroughly nihilistic ideology that openly advocates brute force. Why be so shy as to carry out secret assassinations? If two decades ago neoconservatives imagined a world of safety through the spread of Western democracy, today they opt for the multiplication of failed states and collapsed regimes. Bashar al-Assad’s Syria, Lebanon, Pakistan, Egypt – they all form a geography of devastation. The impact that Israel and the Western democracies have had on the Middle East in recent decades can only be compared to the devastation caused by the Soviet Union in Central Europe. The region recovered after 1989, but its glorious civilization never recovered.
The old threat - "We'll take you back to the Stone Age" is a cliché dating back to the Vietnam War - has become a program that must be interpreted literally. Israel's Channel 14 now reports that Netanyahu intends to implement the Dahiya doctrine in Tehran: the destruction of civilian infrastructure as a means of forcing the Iranians to turn against the regime.
Before Israel's attack, Donald Trump had increased the demands on the regime to conclude a deal that would prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. (After the attack, those demands turned into threats.) Weakened by decades of sanctions, unpopular at home, and unable to recover from the setbacks suffered during its imperial adventures in Lebanon and Syria, Iran had no choice. Sensing a deal looming, Netanyahu convinced himself that his window to strike Iran was closing. “When [Netanyahu] talked about a preemptive strike, I actually think he was preempting our agreed-upon solution as much as anything the Iranians were doing,” Beth Sanner, Trump’s former deputy director of national intelligence, told CNN.
The subsequent Israeli attack is hardly surprising. As early as last September, Netanyahu said that Iran would be “liberated sooner than people think.” That same month, Jared Kushner noted, “Moments like this happen once in a generation, if at all. The Middle East has too often been a frozen zone where little changes. Today, it is fluid and the opportunity for reshaping is limitless. Don’t waste this moment.” But Trump had not yet won the election. Netanyahu had been forced to wait, but after Israel weakened Hezbollah in Lebanon, he became fixated on how favorable a final confrontation with Iran looked. His priority then became how to draw America into a war it had refused to get involved in from the start. It will take American bunker-busting bombs to destroy Iran’s nuclear program, and it may take American troops to topple Khamenei’s regime. Trump is a little harder to manage than his clumsy predecessor—he built much of his political appeal on criticizing foreign interference, after all—but how long will even Trump be able to resist the call for a final battle between good and evil? I don’t think for long. Trump knows how to capitalize on prevailing myths. He is not known for fighting them.
The most surprising reaction since the initial Israeli attack was Europe’s. Europe stands to lose the most from the return of neoconservatism. If the regime in Iran collapses and the region descends into chaos, energy prices will soar, and a large wave of refugees will soon head for Turkey, and then Europe. International terrorism will once again become a threat. Under current conditions, renewed inflation, a deep economic crisis and an influx of refugees – potentially millions – would propel the far right to power across Europe. How have European leaders reacted to these very real possibilities? Some were muted, others applauded wildly.
Public opinion in Western democracies seems more cautious. No one sympathizes with the Iranian regime, but writing a blank check to Israel now seems risky. There is no point in supporting the policies that a putative Israel might choose, because the existing Israel has shown that it is capable of destroying, not building. It has shown this in Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon and even the new Syria. The only option it will accept is to create a desert and call it peace.
Bruno Masaes - New Statesman
translation: Nick Iliev