To talk or to bomb? That is the question

05/16/2006
By Patrick Seale, Special to Gulf News

How real is the danger of war between the United States and Iran? This question is of enormous importance for the whole world, and especially for the US itself and for the peoples of the Middle East who would be the first victims of an armed clash. But it it not an easy question to answer.

On the one hand, evidence is mounting that the US, in close coordination with Israel, is actively planning military operations to destroy Iran's budding nuclear industry. Leaders in both the US and Israel have repeatedly declared that they will not accept an Iranian bomb. The US sees a nuclear-armed Iran as an intolerable challenge to its regional interests while Israel sees it as an "existential threat", more severe than any it has faced since the foundation of the state in 1948.

There has even been speculation that the US or Israel for that matter would be ready to use "bunker-busting" tactical nuclear weapons to destroy Iran's underground nuclear facilities.

When Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was rash enough to say that Israel should be "wiped off the map", much of the Western world reacted with shock and horror, although well aware that Iran had neither the capability, nor the suicidal urge and, very probably, not even the wish to translate such a threat into action.

In contrast and in yet another example of Western double-standards when Shimon Peres, Israel's veteran politician, responded that Iran itself might be destroyed, no cry of outrage was heard in the West, although Israel's formidable nuclear capability is well known.

Israel's destructive power

The simple truth is that Israel can indeed wipe Iran off the map, but that Iran has no such ability regarding Israel. Peres himself, when secretary-general of Israel's defence ministry in the 1950s, played a leading role in his country's acquisition of nuclear weapons.
Be that as it may, some pessimists would argue that war between the US and Iran has already begun in that the US is said to have infiltrated teams of special forces into Iran to identify targets and prepare sabotage operations. Iran, in turn, has claimed that dozens, if not hundreds, of would-be suicide bombers are ready to go into action against American and Israeli interests if Iran is attacked.

In contrast to such sabre-rattling in the two camps, there is a mounting chorus in the US urging Washington to engage in wide-ranging negotiations with Iran covering every aspect of their relations, which have been frozen in barren hostility for the past 27 years.

In recent days, a call for dialogue with Tehran has come from widely different parts of the US establishment from Sam Berger, former President Bill Clinton's national security adviser, from Zbigniew Brzezinski, former president Jimmy Carter's national security adviser, from Patrick J Buchanon, a leading conservative columnist, from George Perkovich, a vice-president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, among many others.

To men like these, not known for their pacifist views, an American war on Iran would be an act of supreme folly. Brzezinski has even gone so far as to predict that it would put an end to America's role in the world.

This is the context in which Ahmadinejad has chosen to write his open letter to President George W. Bush, surely one of the most extraordinary initiatives in the annals of diplomacy.
The first thing to say about Ahmadinejad's letter is that it is not couched in the usual language of diplomacy or politics. It is not a confrontational letter, still less any sort of declaration of war. It is not about weapons, whether nuclear or otherwise, or political differences, although there is a brief recital of Iran's historical grievances against the US: the toppling of Mohammad Mosaddeq by an American-sponsored coup d'etat in 1953; American support for Saddam Hussain in his eight-year war against Iran; the shooting down of an Iranian passenger plane; the freezing of Iranian assets; and the current attempt to prevent Iran's scientific progress.
But Ahmadinejad's real challenge to Bush is on the level of values and political morality. He has appealed to Bush to practice the principles which, as a born-again Christian, the American president claims to believe in.

"All prophets," Ahmadinejad wrote, referring explicitly to the prophets Moses, Jesus and Mohammad (Peace Be Upon Them), "speak of peace and tranquility for man ? Do you not think that if all of us came to believe in and abide by these principles that is monothesism, worship of God, respect for the dignity of man, belief in the Last Day we could overcome the present problems of the world?? Will you not accept this invitation??"

Little wonder, that the Iranian president's letter has caused bewilderment, even alarm, among Bush's advisers and colleagues, more used to talking the language of force than of philosophy.
Patrick Seale is a commentator and author of several books on Middle East affairs