Iran and Israel: The road to war

When a war of words gets out of hand an actual war usually follows. The war of words between Iran and Israel has been going on for many years and the only surprise was that Iran was caught off guard when it was attacked by Israel on Friday before last.

The Israelis attacked Iran while it was engaged in talks with the US to curtail its nuclear enrichment programme. You would think that the Americans would be furious as they were shown up as negotiating in bad faith – which they were not. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the Iranians strung President Trump along but he has not accused them of negotiating in bad faith. On the contrary he is still prepared to continue talks. Rather what appears to be happening is that Netanyahu wants to bounce Trump into a war he is reluctant to join.

After all Israel that has nuclear weapons embarked on an unprovoked attack against Iran, a power with no nuclear weapons, while it was negotiating with the US to curtail its nuclear programme and posed no imminent threat – even allowing that when it comes to weaponising nuclear weapons, imminence is an elastic concept.

The Israelis are well known for their ruthless surprise attacks, and the Iranian government has a lot of explaining to do about why they were caught napping and why they were so ill-prepared for war when they have known it was on the cards for years. Firing missiles at Israel, most of which are taken out, is no way to conduct a nation’s self-defence in modern warfare – they might as well be firing blanks. The point about self-defence is to defend one’s country, not to fire missiles at the enemy in the hope they would deter it.

The first duty of every government is the security of its people. So why for example does Iran not have an iron dome like the Israelis have and why have the Israelis control of the skies over Iran? Where is the Iranian airforce, and why are there no sirens and no air raid shelters in Iran’s big cities?

Even if one is not Iranian it was sad to watch all those cars bumper to bumper leaving Tehran the other night for want of self-defence. Was the Iranian government so naive to believe they would not be attacked while talks were ongoing? And how come the Israeli secret service Mossad has had such a free run in Iran?

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been crying wolf about Iran being close to developing nuclear weapons for so long few outside Israel believe him. As for Iran, wild pronouncements from the Iranian leadership about destroying the state of Israel while at the same time enriching uranium above prescribed limits is like a red rag to a bull in Israel.

Ayatollah Khomenei 1979-89 declared nuclear weapons to be haram (forbidden) and was not interested in nuclear power at all. His successor, Ayatollah Khamenei, the current supreme leader, also declared nuclear weapons to be haram as recently as 2003, though unlike Khomeini, he is not averse to the civilian use of nuclear power.

But why enrich uranium above the level required for civilian use? The argument that it was increased as a threat and an antidote to sanctions is plausible, but it is unrealistic to think it can alter the calculus in Israel where fear of annihilation is a very subjective emotion.

And why does an oil and gas rich country like Iran obsess about nuclear power? Lots of countries do not have it and some, like Ukraine, have so many nuclear reactors for civilian use, it wishes it did not have them after Russia invaded.

Ironically the civil nuclear programme in Iran was installed by the US in the 1950s to anchor Iran to the west and free up its oil wealth for export. It appealed to the shah of Iran as a project of great prestige that boosted his delusions of grandeur.

For many years now a hostile west in thrall to America has imposed an unfair sanctions regime on the Iranian people all because of their government’s misguided obsession with nuclear power. It was folly in the days of the shah and it is folly now – Khomeini was right to pay it little attention.

The Persians as a people are famously not Arab and take great pride in their rich history culture and civilisation both before and after the evolution of Islam in Persia between the 7th and 16th centuries.

Islam in Iran is very Persian. Like the Greeks are proud of their Classical Greek and Christian Byzantine heritage, the Persians feel the same about their classical and religious background.

But their problem with the Anglo Americans and by extension the Israelis is more recent. There were elections in Iran in 1951, and the Iranian people voted for the aristocratic Mohammad Mosaddegh with a mandate to set up a constitutional monarchy like the UK and to look after the interests of Iranians rather than those of the Anglo Persian Oil Company which he nationalised – and quite right too.

Britain’s MI6 and the American Central Intelligence (CIA) then used dirty tricks to overthrow Mosaddegh whom they falsely branded a communist and a homosexual. They then reactivated Shah Mohammed Pahlavi as autocratic ruler to serve Anglo American interests and poor old Mosaddegh was imprisoned for three years and died unfulfilled in 1967.

As the historian AJP Taylor would have put it, it is fascinating to speculate what Mosaddegh would have done for Iran and the region had he not been illegally removed from office by the avaricious Anglo Americans.

My guess is that under his guidance Iran would have developed into a very Persian democratic country with a sophisticated blend of classical Persian human rights inspired by the rights charter of Cyrus the Great 539 BC and enlightened Persian Islam that would have set an example in the Middle East.

All I can do for the good people of Iran and Israel to ease the pain of war is to quote excerpts from the poetry of the great Persian poet Omar Khayam in his Rubaiyat that my late father taught me to deal with life in difficult times:

Here with a loaf of bread beneath the bough

A flask of wine, a book of verse and you –

Beside me singing in the wilderness –

And wilderness is paradise enough.

How sweet is mortal sovereignty! – think some

Others – how blessed the Paradise to come!

Ah, take the cash in hand and waive the rest;

Oh, the brave music of a distant drum.