Foreign policy types have gone into overdrive dissecting the musings of Jeffrey Goldberg’s article in the Atlantic Monthly on Israel’s likely future attack on Iran as if they were passages from the Mishna. Goldberg’s career has been notable as a shill for the IDF (he was also a former solder) and he was also a notorious proponent of the Iraq war, so his conclusions on the inevitability of such an attack are not surprising, but neither is the fact that so many of his sources are anonymous. His article is a major piece of Israeli propaganda, but the U.S. has its own reasons for becoming embroiled in another war.

I have a print subscription to the Atlantic Monthly, and it’s again no surprise that on page 63 of the magazine there’s an obligatory picture of IDF jets flying above Auschwitz as if to highlight the “reasons” for Israel’s posture. The Israeli term “hasbara,” meaning “explanation” or “spin,” can be understood completely by reading Goldberg’s article. Bring on the violins.

But this 4th American war – and that is precisely what we would have if we became involved – is not about an existential threat to Israel. It is not about Ahmedinijad-as-Haman destroying the Jews of Shushan or Ahmedinijad-as-Hitler sending every Jew to a nuclear crematorium.

It’s all about the U.S. interest in Israel’s nuclear hegemony.

Otherwise, why would we play along with Israel’s policy of nuclear “ambiguity” and not press for a more consistent approach to nonproliferation in the Middle East?

If the fear really were that the Iranians were going to nuke Israel, well, they’d be nuking several million Palestinians and sending radioactive clouds over Lebanon, Egypt, and Syria, too, wouldn’t they? The Iranians may be unfriendly, but they’re not stupid – and they’re not reckless, either. Persians, like Israeli Jews, still have to live in an Arab neighborhood. That’s why the Israeli protestations about a second Holocaust ring so hollow in my ears.

Yes, Iranian nukes have nothing to do with an existential threat to Israel and very little to do with the often-reported Iranian “national pride.” Iranians, from the Ayatollahs to the Green Movement, are sick of the West intervening in regional affairs, threatened in part with the Israeli attack poodle. Having nukes of their own would neutralize the West’s advantage in the Middle East. And that’s precisely the reason for Iran’s nuclear program.

Here’s Ayatollah Rafsanjani in his 2001 Al Quds speech:

“Because colonialism and imperialism will not easily leave the people of the world alone. Therefore, you can see that they have arranged it in a way that the balance of power favors Israel.  Well, from a numerical point of view, it cannot have as many troops as Muslims and Arabs do. So they have improved the quality of what they have. Classical weaponry has its own limitations. They have limited use. They have a limited range as well. They have supplied vast quantities of weapons of mass destruction and unconventional weapons to Israel. They have permitted it to have them and they have shut their eyes to what is going on. They have nuclear, chemical and biological weapons and long-range missiles and suchlike.

If one day … Of course, that is very important. If one day, the Islamic world is also equipped with weapons like those that Israel possesses now, then the imperialists’ strategy will reach a standstill because the use of even one nuclear bomb inside Israel will destroy everything. However, it will only harm the Islamic world. It is not irrational to contemplate such an eventuality. Of course, you can see that the Americans have kept their eyes peeled and they are carefully looking for even the slightest hint that technological advances are being made by an independent Islamic country. If an independent Islamic country is thinking about acquiring other kinds of weaponry, then they will do their utmost to prevent it from acquiring them. Well, that is something that almost the entire world is discussing right now.”

Of course it is possible to interpret this as an Iranian threat toward Israel, but I think the emphasis must be on the strategic neutralization of the West’s nuclear proxy.

One question not frequently asked is: what was the U.S. involvement in Israel’s 1981 bombing of Iraq’s Osirak reactor and Israel’s 2007 bombing of Syria’s al-Kibar reactor? If past is prologue, then it might be useful to examine the history. A “senior US intelligence officer” testified to Congress in 2008 on American participation of the al-Kibar bombing:

“One of the things that I’m sure also people are wondering is whether there was any discussion between us and the Israelis about policy options and how to respond to these facts. We did discuss policy options with Israel. Israel considered a Syrian nuclear capability to be an existential threat to the state of Israel. After these discussions, at the end of the day Israel made its own decision to take action. It did so without any green light from us – so-called ‘green light’ from us; none was asked for, none was given. […] We understand the Israeli action. We believe this clandestine reactor was a threat to regional peace and security, and we have stated before that we cannot allow the world’s most dangerous regimes to acquire the world’s most dangerous weapons.”

Wink, wink, nudge, nudge.

The facility had been under watch by the United States since 2003. Without having to read between the lines too much, it is clear that the bombing of the al-Kibar reactor was done with the assistance, permission, advance knowledge, and blessings of the Bush administration, which saw the reactor as an effort by two of Bush’s “axes of evil” to threaten “regional peace and security.”

Goldberg is correct only in his conclusion that the US will assist Israel with the attack – not for all the Israeli propaganda reasons he enumerates.

Israel’s reason is not to protect itself from an “existential threat” but to continue to amass armaments to delay the inevitable end of its Occupation of Palestine and create more “facts on the ground.”

The U.S. reason is not to preserve regional peace and security but to simply ensure continued nuclear hegemony by its proxy, Israel.

If and when the US becomes involved in the bombing of Iran – even if only by logistical support, looking the other way while Israeli F16s fly over Iraq, or providing the bunker-buster bombs Israel will use – it will not be an unwilling participant in the next war, its fourth and possibly a World War.

While foreign policy junkies were busy parsing Jeffrey Goldberg’s overhyped article in the Atlantic on Israel’s likely future attack on Iran, another article in the same issue of the Atlantic by Robert D. Kaplan attempted to repurpose one of Henry Kissinger’s old Cold War theories for use with Iran – specifically, that the only way to deal with upstart revolutionary nations like Iran is to be willing to engage with them in limited nuclear war. Kaplan writes:

We must be more willing, not only to accept the prospect of limited war but, as Kissinger does in his book of a half century ago, to accept the prospect of a limited nuclear war between states.

What is he saying? That, should Goldberg’s wet dream not come true and that Iran does get the bomb, the United States should be willing to use its own against it – regardless of preemptive use or massive civilian casualties. Kaplan reflects a little on the implications, but seems pretty happy with the war criminal’s approach anyway:

At the time of his writing Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy, some analysts took Kissinger to task for what one reviewer called “wishful thinking”- in particular, his insufficient consideration of civilian casualties in a limited nuclear exchange. Moreover, Kissinger himself later moved away from his advocacy of a NATO strategy that relied on short-range, tactical nuclear weapons to counterbalance the might of the Soviet Union’s conventional forces. (The doctrinal willingness to suffer millions of West German civilian casualties to repel a Soviet attack seemed a poor way to demonstrate the American commitment to the security and freedom of its allies.) But that does not diminish the utility of Kissinger’s thinking the unthinkable.

This analysis is typical of Kaplan. In 2005 he tried to sell the same stinking Kissinger fish, this time for war with China.

Couldn’t the Atlantic have hired two writers with different views for these bookended articles? More to the point: couldn’t the Atlantic have hired a couple of real Iran experts? And couldn’t the Atlantic have hired a couple of writers who personally had NOT served in the Israeli army?

Kaplan, a stealth neocon armed with only a BA from UConn, seems to have the ear of ostensible Liberals. Unfortunately, his influence is all out of proportion to his scholarship or the quality of the goods he’s selling. Tom Bissell’s blistering review of Kaplan’s career and work shines light not only Kaplan’s errors of judgment – but that shown by those who peddle Kaplan’s work.