PrintMay 2, 2010
Why MAD will fail with Iran
They managed to do it. Two leading U.S. journalists from the two most important U.S. papers, Bret Stephens from The Wall Street Journal and Roger Cohen from The New York Times, succeeded in the impossible.
In The Iran Debate on Friday, April 30, they debated for an hour and a half without mentioning the very crux of the problem - that Iran may use the bomb because MAD, the Mutually Assured Destruction doctrine, does not work with the Iranian regime.
Here is Bernard Lewis' quote yet again. What is more, it comes from the Wall Street Journal, the very paper where Bret Stephens is the foreign affairs columnist and deputy editorial page editor:
"In this context, mutually assured destruction, the deterrent that worked so well during the Cold War, would have no meaning. At the end of time, there will be general destruction anyway. What will matter will be the final destination of the dead--hell for the infidels, and heaven for the believers. For people with this mindset, MAD [mutual assured destruction] is not a constraint; it is an inducement."They managed to debate for 90 minutes without mentioning the word Mahdi to whom Ahmadinejad devoted a considerable part of his address to the UN General Assembly:
"The world is in continuous change and evolution. The promised destiny for the mankind is the establishment of the humane pure life. There will come a time when justice will prevail across the globe and every single human being will enjoy respect and dignity. That will be the time when the Mankind's path to moral and spiritual perfectness will be opened and his journey to God and the manifestation of the God's Divine Names will come true. The mankind should excel to represent the God's "knowledge and wisdom", His "compassion and benevolence", His "justice and fairness", His "power and art", and His "kindness and forgiveness". These will all come true under the rule of the Perfect Man, the last Divine Source on earth, Hazrat Mahdi (Peace be upon him); an offspring of the Prophet of Islam, who will re-emerge, and Jesus Christ (Peace be upon him) and other noble men will accompany him in the accomplishment of this, grand universal mission. And this is the belief in Entezar (Awaiting patiently for the Imam to return). Waiting with patience for the rule of goodness and the governance of the Best which is a universal human notion and which is a source of nations' hope for the betterment of the world.One must give credit to Bret Stephens for trying to prove a theorem without mentioning the axioms. He did pretty well. But his job would have been much easier had he begun with Bernard Lewis's MAD quote and Shia eschatology. He also could have quoted Reza Kahlili
They will come, and with the help of righteous people and true believers will materialize the man's long-standing desires for freedom, perfectness, maturity, security and tranquility, peace and beauty. They will come to put an end to war and aggression and present the entire knowledge as well as spirituality and friendship to the whole world.
Yes; Indeed, the bright future for the mankind will come."
"I can argue both sides of the coin. If you don't believe they're going to do it - and a lot of people don't - the least that's going to happen if they become a nuclear power is that they'll become more aggressive and hold the world hostage. Just look at the past thirty years of behaviour. They arm Hezbollah, Hamas. The Defence Minister is on Interpol's "Most Wanted" list. They're providing arms to the Taliban. They've gone to Venezuela, Mexico, they're spreading their forces. The least that will happen is they'll become the power in the Middle East and they'll control the energy resources of the world. This is a logical argument, based just on previous behaviour...
"The other side of the coin is the crazy talk. They believe what they say. I know they do. I know Khamenei has private prayers with the Mahdi. It's all crazy talk, but they take it seriously. Thirty years ago they were told the Mahdi wants them to proceed with the nuclear project, and that's why they're not bending. They think they're untouchable and that the Mahdi wants it."
As for Roger Cohen, I can only say that my fellow students in the USSR had a much better understanding of totalitarian regimes than Roger Cohen does with all the available information he has access to. Listening to him made it crystal clear why the Holocaust happened.
The failure to tackle the essence of the problem, i.e. to put the Iranian threat in the context of jihad, Shi'a eschatology and the ineffectiveness of MAD shows a profound malaise of our civilization. We cannot protect ourselves since we are unable to do so because political correctness prevents us from defining the problem.
The Israeli government should therefore concentrate entirely on the military aspect of the preemptive strike. With all its complexities it seems an easier task than convincing the U.S. administration or media to read a dozen books.
