Nuclear Tuesday

August 22nd (Tuesday) is the day on which Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad announced that he will deliver a formal statement defining Iran's nuclear intentions to the UN Security Council.  Considering the insane character of both his administration and the current crowd of deciders in Washington, playing the devil's advocate seems about as reasonable as any other method of divination, so here below are some of the exciting possibilities I come up with as I consider what might happen on that day:

1. Nothing
2. Iran launches a missile attack on Israel and surges across the Iraqi border to attack American forces
3. US attacks Iran's nuclear facilities with tactical nuke "bunker-busters"
4. Israel's airforce attacks Iran

(Other attractive options include the detonation of NK-provided nuclear devices in American cities.)

With all of the glaring policy failures, the Bush (Cheney) administration is deep in a hole and needs to pull off a turnaround before the congressional elections, some Rovian August to October surprise that will realign the electorate behind his war policy.  The recent scare over binary liquids on commercial planes didn't go over well, so something more spectacular is required.

Judging from what we know of Bush (Cheney) and the past behavior of his administration, including the recent collusion with Israel in the destruction of Lebanon (which Bush (Cheney) regards as Iran's western border), there isn't much justification for optimism.  In contrast to recent predecessors, Dubya is not a president who "grows into his job" and learns to govern more wisely in his second term or after the failure of favored projects.  To the contrary, he tends to repeat and even amplify his mistakes.  The inability to change, to correct his wayward policies and adapt to real circumstances, is the proof of his limitations.  Bush is overmatched by the great challenges of office and is dragging the country and the entire world deeper and deeper into chaos and darkness.

Before committing hari-kari, imagine for a moment that you are George Bush.  On the whole, you'd rather be out on your mountain bike or ripping apart small trees with your chainsaw, but there you are in that dreary office with the walls curving in on you, considering your narrowing policy options for dealing with those pesky towel heads in—damn, what's the name of that evil 'n' godless country?  Where the hell is Condi?  She's supposed to keep track of these details, goddammit, and which one of these bastards stole your daily executive briefing book—oh never mind, you found it, and it says that the name of the country is "Iran."  Now, sharpen your pencil and answer a very important question:

Which of the following would be the worst outcome?

1. A failed presidency
2. Nuclear war

(Ok, you can stop now.)

Is this the binary choice Bush (Cheney) believes he is facing?  One insistent fear is that this adminisration is not beyond going nuclear as a desperate move to save its own political hide.

Even so, the nuclear threshold is extremely high, even for Bush (Cheney), and therefore my instinctive first estimation of the relative likelihood of the four possiblities above is 1 first, followed by 3, 2, and then 4—though 3 and 4 might be the same—but then maybe Teheran is more realistic than Washington currently.  Even though Ahmadinejad is not less apocalyptic and may be Bush's equivalent in the nutball arena, he would have to be pretty crazy to launch a missile attack considering the risk of annihilation, so I'll climb out on a limb and change my estimation to 1 first, then 3 & 4 together, with 2 as least likely.

In my view of the world, a nuclear-armed Iran is not all that dangerous, since Iran would essentially be targeting itself with American ICBMs that would erase Persian civilization from the planet if Teheran launched nuclear-tipped missiles bound for Tel Aviv.  The terror logic of nuclear detente was proven effective in the cold war, but with Bush's (Cheney's) trigger-happy finger hovering over the red button, the absence of a nuclear deterrent is less stable and more dangerous.  That is why I think we are more likely to see nukes used by the US in the current situation, assuming some rationality on the part of the Iranians.

Ahh, but I was forgetting the holier-than-thou religious nature of the Ahmadinejad group.  It turns out that Tuesday is an Islamic holy date, commemorated as the day on which Mohammed rose to heaven from the al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem and reappeared in Mecca.  Ahmadinejad is a millenarian who believes in the coming of the 12th imam, the mahdi (messiah) of Shia theology, the promised one, that perfect and pure human being, the one that will fill this world with justice and peace.  For all I know, President Ahmadinejad might even imagine himself to be the earthly embodiment of this perfect mahdi character, considering which mumbo jumbo, I must admit that I really have no idea what will happen on Tuesday.

Nothing unusual, I hope.

The prevailing view around here is that Iran does not yet have nuclear weapons, but maybe it has somehow acquired North Korean warheads small enough to be fitted onto its medium-range missiles and will launch them westward into Israel.  If so, well then, we are about to witness a nuclear holocaust in the Middle East and possibly elsewhere (the container yards of Elizabeth NJ, for example?).  No reference to this possibility appears in the media that I've seen apart from this warning by Bernard Lewis—a very influential Arabist whose counsel Bush (Cheney) is known to closely heed—on the demented editorial page of the WSJ for August 8th.  Lewis warns that traditional deterrence will not work with Iran, and theorizes that Iran might be preparing an attack on Israel, but I search in vain for any corroborating or disputatious commentary about his article.  The mighty Juan Cole himself doesn't mention it, so I'm surely wandering in speculative territory, but even just the remote possiblity of such an event might explain some things I've found unfathomabale recently.  (As often happens in periods of world crisis, events are proceeding in advance of my ability to grasp their significance.)  It seems likely that Bush (Cheney) takes Bernard Lewis's warning more seriously than others do, which means that Tuesday will at least be a day of tense alertness for the US military command.

As if there weren't enough ongoing and potential cataclysms to deal with, Israel may have taken the Strangelovian insanity of nuclear strategy to new heights.  As an Israeli acquaintance recently informed me, in the event of an Iranian nuclear missile strike on Tel Aviv, Israeli ballistic missiles will be launched against targets in Europe, not Iran.  At first I didn't take this strange notion seriously, but now I'm not so sure.  It's insane, no question, but the strangeness and outrageous character of such a strategy is not inconsistent with Israel's overall posture.

Not to make light of all this apocalyptic psychosis, but I'm reminded of Tom Lehrer's old song from the early sixties:

We will all go together when we go,
every Hotten-tot and every Eskimo...

So, are you getting nervous yet?  Relax, you probably won't feel a thing.  Go about your normal business and have a nice day!  Eat, drink and use up the remaining minutes on your cel phone, for tomorrow it might be fused with your ear.