http://comment.independent.co.uk/leading_articles/article2134837.ece



Leading article: Israel should give diplomacy more time to work

The Independent, 08 January 2007


As sure as night follows day, the West is being led into a military
confrontation with Iran with imponderable, but certainly terrifying,
consequences. The cycle of leak followed by denial should fool no one.
The Israelis are the source of both. We need put little store,
therefore in Ehud Olmert's denials that Israel is planning a nuclear
strike on Iran to disable Teheran's own nuclear ambitions. The denial
serves the same purpose as the leak: to orchestrate and acclimatise
Western public opinion to the likelihood of war. If, or when, the
strike comes, it will be sanctified by an aura of inevitability. As
with Iraq, the line will be: there was no alternative.

As sure as night follows day, the West is being led into a military
confrontation with Iran with imponderable, but certainly terrifying,
consequences. The cycle of leak followed by denial should fool no one.
The Israelis are the source of both. We need put little store
therefore in Ehud Olmert's denials that Israel is planning a nuclear
strike on Iran to disable Tehran's own nuclear ambitions. The denial
serves the same purpose as the leak: to orchestrate and acclimatise
Western public opinion to the likelihood of war. If, or when, the
strike comes, it will be sanctified by an aura of inevitability. As
with Iraq, the line will be: there was no alternative.

But as the war chariot rumbles slowly and purposefully on its way, it
is as well that we at least recall the facts of the Iran imbroglio.
One is that Israel does have reason to fear the government in Tehran.
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad does want to see Israel wiped off the map and does
intend to be the Iranian president who presides over the acquisition
of nuclear weapons, breaking Israel's regional monopoly.

The Iranian leader is not going to let go of his anti-Israel
obsession, either. Never the favoured candidate of Iran's clerical
establishment, he has silenced his clerical critics with
rabble-rousing talk about Jews, conveniently diverting his
working-class electors from his failure to do much to ameliorate their
poverty.

He is also not about to throw in the towel over nuclear weapons.
Hemmed in from east and west by nuclear Israel and Pakistan, with
American troops on his borders in Iraq and Afghanistan, he has happily
chanced upon an issue that rallies even Iran's liberals to his
standard. Forget talk of the " Shia arc" that supposedly threatens
Sunni Saudi Arabia and elsewhere. As most Iranians see it, their
country is surrounded and urgently needs muscle in the shape of
nuclear weapons.

This, however, Israel is determined to stop, hence the flow of leaks
about Iran's nuclear plans, designed to impress Western public opinion
with the idea that we all ­ not just Israel ­ face the same threat if
Tehran joins the nuclear club. Hence also Mr Olmert's claim that it is
up to the Americans, to stop ­ meaning bomb ­ Iran, or Israel will do
the job itself.

There may be something in all this, but we need to think carefully
before binding ourselves to Israel's agenda. It might also be wise to
at least try to dissuade Mr Olmert from escalating the conflict to the
point of no return, as he seems bent on doing.

An Israeli attack on Iran's nuclear sites would not be anything like
as strategically straightforward as Israel's earlier strikes on Iraq's
nuclear reactor were in 1981, not least because the sites are
dispersed and dug in.

But, more important than these logistical problems is the probable
fall out from an attack. Quite simply, it would inflict appalling
damage on relations with the Muslim world ­ a world that is growing
demographically, and which is no longer on our doorstep but, thanks to
immigration, a growing part of our own society.

These relations have already been strained to breaking point by the
invasion of Iraq, even though it toppled an appalling autocrat. We
must get ready for tension on an almost unimaginable scale if the West
appears implicated in what to Muslims will look like an attack on a
democratic state. The UN Security Council's recent imposition of
sanctions has not halted Iran's defiance. But it demonstrates that the
West has not exhausted its diplomatic options when dealing with
Tehran. Israel needs to give diplomacy more time before going further
down the road to a military confrontation. That would prove disastrous
for us all.