A well-known newspaper columnist lauds the Iranian regime in his latest offering and criticizes Israel for, as he puts it, “crying wolf” with regard that regime’s ambition to acquire nuclear weapons.

He starts by saying that Israeli leaders have been warning about Iran’s attempts to acquire nuclear weapons for years, that they have overestimated the speed at which these attempts have been progressing and that Iran still hasn’t got its hands on such weapons.

For the sake of argument, let’s grant him all this. At best it shows that Israel has given too much credit to the ability of an authoritarian regime run by clerics to carry forward a very complex scientific, engineering and military project. It doesn’t show that it’s wrong now. After all, the whole point of Aesop’s fable is that boy who cried wolf wasn’t believed when a real one appeared because he had previously issued false warnings, it doesn’t hold that there is no wolf to worry about.

The distinguished columnist goes on to say that,

This “messianic apocalyptic cult” in Tehran is, of course, the very same one with which Israel did business during the 1980’s, when its interest was in weakening Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. That business - including sales of weapons and technology - was an extension of Israeli policy toward Iran under the shah.

I don’t understand what this is supposed to prove. Israel was practicing realpolitik, using the means at its disposal to keep two of its deadliest enemies fighting against each other.  Indeed the fact that Israel was prepared to sell weapons and technology   to the ayatollahs is further evidence of the asymmetric nature of the goals of each side in the Iran-Israel war; while the former regards the latter as a uniquely evil and illegitimate state, supported by a global conspiracy and destined to perish from the earth, the latter has no particular view of how, or by whom Iran should be governed and has shown itself ready to do business with it  when the occasion has presented itself.

The paladin of contemporary liberal thought now throws wide open the sluice gates of his regard for the ayatollahs.

It’s also the same “messianic apocalyptic cult” that has survived 30 years, ushered the country from the penury of the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war, shrewdly extended its power and influence, cooperated with America on Afghanistan before being consigned to “the axis of evil,” and kept its country at peace in the 21st century while bloody mayhem engulfed neighbors to east and west and Israel fought two wars.

It’s not obvious to me that any particular conclusions can be drawn about the merits of a particular regime from the number of decades it has survived or that fact that it has expanded its power and influence. After all, North Korea has existed for more than twice as long as the current Iranian regime and it may still be accurately described as a “neo-Stalinist, neo-Chosun dynasty hell-on-earth for its inhabitants and a general menace to peace and security in its region and the world.”

It’s also noteworthy how the writer ascribes the expansion of Iranian power exclusively to shrewdness. I’m certain that shrewdness played a part but there’s also the crushing of dissidents at home, the liberal use of the death penalty and the arming of foreign proxies to take into account too.   And while it’s true that Iran itself has not gone to war in the 21^st century it gave every aid and encouragement to its proxies when they did so with Israel.

Referring to comments by Israel’s new prime minister, the writer has the following to say:

On that ocular theme again, Netanyahu says Iran’s “composite leadership” has “elements of wide-eyed fanaticism that do not exist in any other would-be nuclear power in the world.” No, they exist in an actual nuclear power, Pakistan. Netanyahu also makes the grotesque claim that the terrible loss of life in the Iran-Iraq war (started by Iraq) “didn’t sear a terrible wound into the Iranian consciousness.” It did just that, which is why Iran’s younger generation seeks reform but not upheaval; and why the country as a whole prizes stability over military adventure.

Now I have no idea as what extent whack job Islamists have penetrated the higher strata of Pakistan’s armed forces but it’s difficult to imagine that their influence can be very great considering the number of Pakistani soldiers killed in recent times in the struggle against extremists in the tribal areas and the degree to which those forces are cooperating with the United States in its policy of ceaseless UAV strikes on the Taliban and Al Qaeda.

Even if such influence could be shown to exist, there would be an important difference between Pakistan and Iran. Pakistan developed nuclear weapons because it feared for its survival after being badly beaten in the 1971 Indo-Pakistan War and it only conducted weapons tests in 1998 in response to tests carried out by India’s rightist BJP government.  Iran, by contrast,  is not an excision from a much larger neighbor, did reasonably well in its war against Iraq and, thanks to the United States, that very troublesome neighbor  no longer poses any conceivable threat to it.

Then there’s the question of what young Iranians and “the country as a whole” want. The writer seems very sure about his conclusions but I really don’t know how he can be. People in Iran are jailed, tortured and murdered for saying things that the regime doesn’t like and when it comes to election time they get to choose from a list of candidates handpicked by the ayatollahs themselves.   Bearing these facts in mind, I wouldn’t be at all sure that young Iranians would be against a good dose of upheaval if it was of  a sort likely to lead to them being able  to say what they want, have sex with who they want and  wear what they want.

Having established the fundamentally pragmatic, not to say benevolent nature of the Iranian regime,the writer goes on to identify the true villain of the piece:

Israel, as it has for nearly two decades, is trying to lock in American support and avoid any disadvantageous change in the Middle Eastern balance of power…

A small country seeks to retain the favor of the most powerful nation on the planet and avoid any weakening of its strategic situation. I don’t know about you but I’m simply shocked.  Yet another case of Jews being chided for behaving normally.

Our man isn’t finished yet.  He says that,

Iran was left out of the Madrid and Oslo processes, with disastrous results. But that’s a discussion for another day.

I’m really looking forward to that day because it would really interest me to know what positive contribution Iran could have made to Madrid or Oslo given that it has repeatedly stated that one of the parties to the Israel-Palestine conflict is by its very nature evil and illegitimate, that a catastrophic event in the history of its people did not in fact occur and that no compromise with the mere fact of its existence is possible.

The writer goes on to encourage President  Obama to resist what he describes as the “intense-eyed” (!) pressure of Israel to “suck” the United States into a continuation of what he regards as  failed policies in the Middle East. He also affirms that the only way to stop Iran from going nuclear is through negotiation but doesn’t say how this might occur and it’s not hard to see why. He doesn’t have a credible suggestion as to what the United States, or anybody else,  might be able to offer Iran to make it desist from its nuclear ambitions and neither does anyone else.