by Alan M. Dershowitz, GATESTONE • February 8, 2024 at 5:00 am
- There are, of course, alternatives less than all-out war, and more than attacks on proxies. They involve the bombing of military targets inside Iran. These include sites used for Iran’s nuclear program, its naval bases and ships, its military drone production, its oil and gas facilities and its command centers. All of these could be accomplished from the air and sea without a ground invasion, and without the loss of American lives an invasion would risk.
- One conclusion is clear: in the short term, a US attack on Iran itself would contribute to destabilization in the region. But in the longer term, it might well contribute to stability by reducing the power and influence of the most destabilizing entity in the Middle East, namely Iran.
- Israel, too, is at war with Iran. Iranian operatives have targeted Israeli civilians and Jews around the world. Iran has effectively called Israel a “one bomb state” and has threatened to destroy it with nuclear weapons. Israel, too, has a perfect right to respond to these acts of war. Indeed, it may have no choice but to do so, to prevent Iran from carrying out its threats of nuclear annihilation.
- The Middle East and the world would be a safer place without the current Iranian regime. It would be a far more dangerous place with a nuclear-weaponized Iran that could protect its surrogates under a nuclear umbrella.
- So, Biden’s strategy should be given a chance to work. But if it fails — as history suggests it may— all options must be kept on the table. These include attacks within Iran, even if that means war. That may be the least worst among the many available options.
Every discussion about the current Middle East conflict begins with the mandatory mantra, “We don’t want war with Iran.” Why not? That question is rarely asked.
Iran has declared war on the United States — militarily, legally, diplomatically, morally and politically. They have engaged in repeated casus belli (legal causes for war) since the mullahs took Americans hostage in 1979. Since that time, they have used their surrogates to attack American targets. We are entitled to respond militarily, as we are doing. But we are also entitled to go much further and treat them as aggressors who have effectively declared war on us. We are entitled to destroy their capacity to continue to wage war against us and our allies. The policy question in not whether we have a right to wage war against Iran. It is whether it is in our interest to do so.
Case in point:
“A couple was sent by the Iranian government to Sweden as undercover agents with the goal of murdering Jewish citizens, Radio Sweden reported.
According to the investigation, the man and woman, who have been identified as Mahdi Ramezani and Fereshteh Sanaeifarid, were dispatched by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). They were tasked with murdering three Jews in Sweden, including Aron Verständig, Chair of the Official Council of Swedish Jewish communities. Another target for murder was a dual Swedish-American citizen.
The couple were arrested in 2021 after the assassination plot was uncovered. They had been living in Sweden for five years under fake identities as a sleeper cell before being activated to carry out the murders.
Verständig told Radio Sweden that he was reluctant to speak out on the Iranian plot to assassinate him, but decided to do so because he has “a very strong conviction that one cannot hide. I was born a Jew I will remain a Jew for the rest of my life and I can choose to sort of hide under a rock or I can choose to be the person who I am and that’s what I’ve chosen.”
“I think that what Iran wants to do is to harm Israel and I think it’s very difficult for them to do these kind of things in Israel. So instead they are I mean randomly choosing people who have some kind of official position in the Jewish diaspora and trying to create fear,” he said.
Related articles:
PA policeman who plotted to assassinate Samaria leader arrested
Jerusalem Arab arrested for plot to assassinate Itamar Ben-Gvir
Iranian assassin also targeted Pompeo
Iranian agent charged in plot to assassinate John Bolton
Iran and the IRGC have been implicated in numerous plots to attack Jewish targets around the world over many years. In December, a German court ruling implicated the Islamic Republic in a plan to attack a synagogue in 2022.
In 2022, an attempted assassination of an Israeli businessman in the Republic of Georgia by an Iranian-backed terrorist cell was uncovered. Iran was also behind an attempt to target Israeli tourists in Istanbul in the summer of 2022 and an attempt to target Israeli businessmen in Cyprus in October 2021.
In February 2023, British Security Minister Tom Tugendhat confirmed that Iran had been “mapping” Jewish diaspora communities to be attacked by kill squads, stating that the Iranian regime has gathered intelligence on British Jews and targeted them for assassination.”
https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/384779
I agree as far as he goes but he omits the obvious, which is to train, coordinate, incitet and arm revolutionary groups inside Iran both ideological and ethnic. There’s the Balochis, the Azeris, the Kurds. Inside Iranian occupied Iraq, you have the Yazidis, the Assyrians, the Chaldeans, the Kurds, again, etc.
Let’s make a civil war happen in Greater Iran. Heaven knows we have enough experience from doing it in all the wrong places.
And bomb the hell out of them.
Problem is our open border. Who are the Iranian or Hezbollah sleeper agents who could perpetrate the next 9/11.
And the sorry state of our military thanks to Biden after all the work Trump did bringing it up to par.
But, I don’t know how much longer it’s safe to wait.
Seriously!?
Give Biden’s Iran policy a chance?
US military strikes against Iran’s proxies are not working because the proxies are expendable to Iran. Iran need feel economic pain which means attacking their economy – take out oilfields, weapon factories. That is not an all out war but a real proportionate response that Iran will listen to.