Where is “red line”?

Editorial

The chairman of the United States Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Martin Dempsey, last week declared that he did not want to be “complicit” in possible Israeli strikes of Iranian nuclear facilities. The military leader’s statement came at the same time as the United States scaled back a joint missile defence drill with Israel scheduled for the coming weeks.

The Obama administration took the opportunity to restate its commitment to Israel’s security, but maintains that additional sanctions and further negotiations are the route to resolving the threat.

After Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu on Sunday called for the international community to declare a “clear red line” against Iranian nuclear advancement, the United States ambassador to Israel downplayed the whole matter, calling it an “overheated narrative in the media” and insisting that his country is seeking an amicable solution while also ensuring that “the military options are available in case they are needed.”

All of this transpired concurrently with the summit of the Non-Aligned Movement in Tehran, which brought together 120 mostly developing world nations.

Originally condemned for attending the event, United Nations Sec.-Gen. Ban Ki-moon took the opportunity to slam the Iranian regime for threatening to destroy Israel and for denying the Holocaust. Ban also called on the Iranian government to release opposition leaders and activists from prison and to ease the country’s repression of free expression.

Even the revolutionary president of Egypt, Mohammed Morsi, whose decision to attend the summit was seen as a bad sign for his country’s alignment with the West, used the opportunity to condemn the Syrian regime for the mass murder of its own people and to declare the Assad regime illegitimate.

In the end, the summit was deemed to have failed as the public relations coup the Iranian regime had hoped. But should Israel take any solace from events there?

The United States is on record assuring Israel that Iran will not be permitted to become a nuclear power. Plenty of Israelis and other observers are wondering if those words, however, will ever be backed up with force, should diplomacy appear destined to fail. There is, according to military commentators, a moment when the potential for effective Israeli unilateral action will pass.

The United States military has the capability to deal with the Iranian threat after the nuclear program passes a point where the Israeli military may no longer be capable of addressing it. This means that there may be a time when Israel’s options to act unilaterally end, and American assistance is the only option for preventing Iran’s nuclear weaponization. The fear of some, apparently including the Israeli prime minister (but notably not the Israeli president) is that American hesitation will prevent Israeli action until only American firepower can deter the threat, at which point Israel will be at the mercy of the United States to defend its survival.

If the Democratic U.S. President Barack Obama and his administration seem reticent to get involved in another military conflict, the Republican convention last week suggests an apparently eager desire for battle. In his address to his nominating convention, Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney wound up his speech with what sounded like a call to arms against a half dozen Middle Eastern countries – as well as Russia. One wonders, under the circumstances of America’s stretched-thin military, whether Romney’s apparent enthusiasm for war has the potential to engage his country in so many conflicts that it is incapable of succeeding in any of them.

Of course, even with an American-Israeli alliance, there is no certainty of a clean strike or guaranteed success of any attack. The outcomes are uncertain and the repercussions hugely unpredictable. In this respect, and in the interest of limiting human casualties, negotiation is of course preferable to military intervention. The impact of diplomacy joined with the force of economic sanctions may yet have an impact. An ideal scenario might see the Iranian people rise up again against their oppressors and overthrow the regime, as has happened in other regional states, but this too is something of a dream. It was attempted during the crushed “Green Revolution” of 2009-10. There is plenty of evidence that the Iranian theocrats will defend their power as unreservedly as their surrogate Bashar al-Assad and his bloody regime in Syria have responded to threats to their power.

The Israeli leadership and the population in general are divided on the immediacy of the threat and the wisdom of relying on American help. There are no simple answers to this horrific threat. The sane approach is to employ peaceful means for the longest time possible, which requires a clear understanding of where truly is the “clear red line.” The danger is that no one seems to agree on when is the last possible moment for peaceful resolution.

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