Senior Editor for world coverage at TIME.com Tony Karon proposes on his personal blog, Rootless Cosmopolitan, that Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei does not grasp the potential of the Bush administration to execute an attack against Iran. He states further, “that if Bush and company were to properly understand the anxieties and ambitions of the Iranian leadership, the world would be a lot less dangerous than it is right now.”
At least two developments lead Karon to wonder if the Iranian regime is in a state of denial.
The resignation of Iran’s nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani, described as moderate for advocating that Iran do whatever the U.S. demands in order to avert an attack – because that strategy worked so well for Saddam? – and the opinion of Iranian analyst Saeed Leylaz who told the LA Times, according to Karon, that “Iran’s leadership, watching oil hover near $90 a barrel, thought it had little to lose by taking a tough stance, convinced that the U.S. wouldn’t dare launch a military attack against Iran and risk sending the world economy into a recession. ‘Whether that is right or wrong it does not matter,’ Leylaz said. ‘That is how the Islamic Republic of Iran perceives the situation.’ ”
No one will be shocked if the U.S. pre-emptively wages war against another sovereign country that poses no imminent threat to the U.S. and its dubious allies, not the people of Lebanon, least of all the Iranians. And if the U.S. government, including Congress and its Democratic members, was fully aware of Iraq’s impotency prior to executing a shock and awe campaign against it, why would it be defanged by a “proper” understanding of Iran’s ambitions?
Who is dreaming?
Karon’s opinion that Daniel Levy is an “ever-excellent analyst” is even more puzzling if one judges the veracity of such praise by the article he links.
Levy begins this “ever-excellent” analysis by cautiously, fearfully addressing supporters of Israel who are either religious fundamentalists or secular manipulators who brandish religion against opponents in the public square.
It may sound counterintuitive, even heretical, but it could just be that Israel is overlooking – or worse, helping to block – what is possibly the best option available for avoiding a nuclear Iran.
Levy’s mollification of pro-Israel war criminals includes gratuitous slandering of Ahmadinejad.
Direct American-led negotiations are not in play, and Israel is complicit in this omission. The United States looms largest in Iranian threat perceptions and only the U.S. – not the EU, UN, or the International Atomic Energy Agency – can deliver a deal for verifiable re-suspension of an Iranian nuclear weapons program.
In Jerusalem there is a perhaps understandable tendency to imagine that Tehran has an Israel obsession. Indeed, the Iranian president does have a particularly vile reverse infatuation with the Jewish state.
Levy is playing, buying time for his employers, ensuring any foundation for constructive dialogue remains in the muck.