The Winds of War Continue to Blow

The Winds of War Continue to Blow

By Sherwin Pomerantz

Over the last couple of weeks the winds of war vis-à-vis Israel’s approach to dealing with the Iran problem have been blowing at an increasing rate of speed.  There is hardly a day when there are not at least five articles in the local press about how we should be handling the situation.  Seemingly all of them now conclude, whether for or against an attack, that our Prime Minister (Netanyahu) and his Minister of Defense (Barak) are both looking more seriously every day at a pre-emptive strike directed at Iran’s nuclear installations given what they see as an existential threat to the survival of Israel.

Of course, the Iranian’s leadership most recent pronouncements in observance of Al Quds Day (i.e. Jerusalem Day) at the end of Ramadan simply adds to the growing concern about how best to handle the situation.  Iranian president Ahmadinejad’s statement on Friday that “the Zionist regime is a malignant cancer, an insult to humanity” and that he hopes for “a new Middle East with no memory of the American or Zionist presence” certainly does not give any of us living here a sense of comfort that everything will be ok.  Add to this General Amir Ali Hajizadeh’s remark (he is head of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards’ Aerial Corps) that he would welcome an Israeli attack because it would allow his country to “get rid of Israel forever” and one could not blame our leadership for seeing this a declaration of war to which we must respond.  Or should we?  I still think not!

The problem that faces those of us who live here is that we simply do not have the facts and we have trouble sifting what people know from what people think.  We certainly have no idea whether the Iranians are ready to commit political suicide by either launching a nuclear attack against Israel or responding to a pre-emptive attack of ours with all the armament at their disposal along with the estimated 50,000 rockets aimed at by Hezbollah on our northern border as well. 

But there are some facts that we do know.  They are:

·        * We have the capability to strike Iran but do not know what obstacles will be put in our way by the countries we need to overfly in order to reach Iran,

·       * We have the capability to strike Iran but do not know how much damage we will be able to inflict or by how much we will be able to delay their march to military nuclear capability.

·         * We have the best trained and most sophisticated military capability in the Middle East.

·        *The Iranians take every opportunity to threaten our existence, as well as that of the West, and the West seems reluctant to internalize that threat to the point of implementing an adequate response to the threat.

That is really all we know.  But what we don’t know is a much longer list:

·    *We don’t know how many Israelis will be killed and injured in a counter-attack by Iran if we engage in a pre-emptive strike.  The Home Front Command says a maximum of 500 Israelis dead and an undetermined number of injured.  My gut tells me 500 dead is too low a figure in the event of serious retaliation.

·     * We don’t know the extent of the damage to our infrastructure (power stations, water systems, transportation network, hospitals, schools, etc.) that we will sustain nor if we have the resources to rebuild them speedily enough to calm the population and avoid panic.  We also don’t know if we can house all of those who may find their homes destroyed.

·        *We don’t know how many people living here will, in the event of a serious retaliation, give up on the Zionist enterprise all together and simply opt out to live in another country.

·        * We don’t know that the Iranians, who may be religiously motivated but not politically stupid, will actually use nuclear weapons even if they have them.

·        *We also don’t know who will stand with us in the event of any military action, whether or not it is initiated by us.    

There is no question that we here in Israel must do what we determine is in our best interests.  Yet, we are not alone in this world and what worked successfully in prior years may no longer be an effective strategy.  Sadly, it has been a long time since Israel won a decisive military victory and it is not because we are not capable, but rather because the playing field has changed.  Our allies are not the same kind of allies we had 30 years ago and our enemies are not the same kind of enemies we had then either.  Our allies seem to be less supportive and our enemies seem to be a bit smarter and certainly better equipped.

So we need not rush into war.

Winston Churchill once remarked “The statesman who yields to war fever must realize that once the signal is given, he is no longer the master of policy but the slave of unforeseeable and uncontrollable events.”  For the moment we are in control of our destiny and before we let the genie out of the bottle we better be as sure as we can be that there is no other alternative.

In spite of the rhetoric of our enemies I believe that the time for war has not yet arrived and that there are yet other options in our arsenal.  We need to know that all of them have been tried and failed before we unleash our war machine in an attack against Iran as tempting as it may to do so.