Israel is not Our Ally . . . and Iran is not Our Enemy

 Guest Post by Eric Peters

John Adams may have been His Rotundity in the eyes of his critics. But he was no fool. He (unlike Jefferson, an admirable man in many respects but a fool in this respect) did not believe France was America’s ally. He understood that France had interests and that France’s interests temporarily jibed with those of the nascent United States (plural, then) as regards the latter’s attempt to secede from the British empire. France being at odds with the British empire at the time.

The Comte de Vergennes – who was the French King’s foreign minister – was also no fool. He – like Adams – also understood that the Franco-American alliance was one of interest rather than affection. Washington understood this too. He declined the importunings of Citizen Genet – the new French emissary to the United States (still plural, for the moment) after the French king lost his head to the Jacobins – who sought American involvement on France’s side against the British on the basis of “friendship” with France.

The state of Israel has interests, too.

The question before the United States (now singular) is whether the interests of the state of Israel are congruent with the interests of the people of the United States. Specifically, does it make America great again to involve itself in a war with Iran – a country that has not attacked the United States and only responded to an attack by the state of Israel, which openly says it will not allow other states to possess the nuclear deterrent it itself possesses?

How so?

Did it serve the interests if Americans to go to war with Iraq? It may have served the interests of the people who have operational control over the government of the United States, but that is of course something often incongruent with the interests of the people of the United States.

Is Iran the enemy of the people of the United States? How so? Has Iran attacked the United States? Can it attack the United States? Iran by all accounts does not possess the means to do so in any meaningful sense as it lacks missiles capable of reaching the United States and lacks even one crude, WWII-type nuclear weapon while the United States has, according to most estimates, something on the order of 5,000 nuclear weapons, including fusion bombs with yields in the megatons. Are the Iranians stupid? Their culture and history suggests they are not. The ululating bogeyman conjured by those who want a war with Israel is almost as silly as the “COVID”-is-going-to-get-you bogeyman except with much more serious implications.

It is reasonable to assume the Iranians would like to have a nuclear deterrent – note the italics – for the same reason the United States (and Israel) have such a deterrent. Would the state of Israel have launched its recent attack if the Iranians did have a nuclear deterrent? Almost certainly not – because the Israelis are not stupid, either. They know it serves no one’s interests to uncork the atomic genie. This would restrain them from attacking Iran unless Iran attacked them first, which Iran is not likely to do given Israel’s nuclear capability.

QED.

But Israel does have interests, like any other state. More finely, the people who have operational control over the state of Israel have interests. They wish to be able to dominate the region, which they can do so long as they are the only ones in possession of the atomic genie. They can attack at will – as they just have. And they can perpetrate atrocities – as in Gaza – with impunity because what’s anyone going to do about it? If Egypt or any other nearby state were to intervene on behalf of the Gazans, what would the state of Israel do? What would it be restrained from doing if Egypt also had the atomic genie?

Israel’s interests, then, are hegemonic control over the area around Israel. The power to bully other states, in other words. Is that congruent with the interests of Americans?

it is a question a man like Adams would have asked.