David Owen is a former foreign minister of the UK and there is an article of quite astonishing stupidity by him in today’s Times. It’s about the possibility that Israel might choose to deal with Iran’s nuclear ambitions by means of an air attack.  What follows is just a sample of the delights it contains.

1.

If Israel were to attack Iran, one Iranian response would be to block the Strait of Hormuz. On September 16 Iran said its Revolutionary Guards would defend the Gulf waters. In the narrow strait just one oil tanker sunk would halt shipping for months. Insurance cover would be refused and owners would fear the risks of sailing even if the US navy cleared mines.

Of course they would try to block the Strait of Hormuz but nobody can be sure that they’d be able to block it or keep it blocked. Also, does Owen imagine that the United States Navy is going to sit and twiddle its thumbs while the Revolutionary Guards do what they please to international shipping?

2.

The Revolutionary Guards are committed to a war against Israel and prepared, in the process, to take on the rest of the world. They have good equipment and operate from the land, sea and air. They will be suicide soldiers, seamen and airmen. If Iran is attacked, Russia and China will supply it with arms.

The Revolutionary Guards, it would appear, are some kind of corps of supermen against whom no measures can be taken and whose will cannot be resisted.  This is a kind of reverse orientalism; instead of being lazy, feckless and incompetent this particular Other is seen as being invincibly efficient. There are echoes here of views that were expressed about the armed forces of imperial Japan when they were sweeping all before them  in the early stages of World II

3.

Following an Israeli attack and Iranian countermeasures, the American military would be bound to follow Bush’s orders.

Well, yes they would. They take an oath which obliges them to follow all legal orders from their Commander-In-Chief and until Bush leaves office in January that is exactly what he is going to be. Would Owen prefer it if the Joint Chiefs of Staff ran United States foreign policy and decided on questions of war and peace without any interference from pesky elected representatives of the people?

4.

Bush’s legacy would be best served by taking dramatic diplomatic action to prevent a war with Iran. He should publicly warn Israel that the United States will use its air power to prevent it bombing Iran, while announcing that he is sending Rice to Tehran to start negotiating a grand bargain whereby all sanctions would be lifted if Iran forgoes the nuclear weapons option. He could indicate that the negotiations would not continue indefinitely, but they would give his successor, as president, time to consider all the options, military and economic. It would also allow time for Israel either to negotiate a coalition to last until 2010 or to hold elections. It would replace the present multilateral negotiations, which are stalled with Russia and China unwilling to move on strong economic sanctions. Above all, it would be a last act of real statesmanship from Bush who is otherwise destined to end his term a miserable failure.

I suppose that the remark about the US using its airpower to prevent Israel from attacking Iran might be charitably interpreted as meaning  that the US should deny the Israelis access to the IFF codes they’d need to fly through US controlled airspace without the risk of getting shot down.  Charity can be taken too far though and the fact that the IAF would not necessarily have to fly through US controlled airspace to attack Iran has long been public knowledge.

I’d say that it was more likely that he is advocating that the United States impose some sort of aerial blockade on one of its principle allies in the Middle East so as to protect the nuclear ambitions of its principle enemy. It took the mind of a real statesman to come up with a suggestion like this.

He then suggests that that the Secretary of State be sent to Iran to negotiate some sort of grand bargain with the mullahs. Well, there’s no harm hoping and trying but suppose the mullahs just carry on what they have been doing so far; talk and talk and talk and all the while continue on their merry way to developing nuclear weapons. What then? He says the negotiations couldn’t go on indefinitely but what if they show every sign of doing just that? What if the negotiations seem to be getting nowhere? At some point might we not have to return to a threat of the use of force to get some change out of the mullahs? And if that’s the case, what’s so terrible about the idea of the use of force now?

In situations such as that faced by those countries alarmed by the idea of the mullahs getting their hands on nuclear weapons, it’s never a question of a choice between the use of diplomacy and the use of force or the threat of its use.  You need both. Nations don’t do things because they are asked nicely to do them. They do things because it’s in their interest to do them; to achieve objectives that they value or to avoid events which they believe would be harmful to them.  This is a rule that applies in all cases and there’s nothing anti-Iranian in believing that it applies in this case too.

So, those that hope for a non-violent solution to the present impasse with Iran had better hope that the likes of Owen are not listened to and that no decision maker in Iran can go to sleep at night happy that he is not going to be awoken by the crash of exploding ordnance.