Iran, the Paper Tiger

„I’m with Mark Fitzpatrick of the International Institute for Strategic Studies, who this year told the Washington Post: »Iran will muddle along building its stockpile but never making a nuclear bomb because it knows that crossing that line would provoke an immediate military attack«. The Islamic Republic is a study in muddle but lucid over a single goal: self-preservation.

So there’s time. Yet the foreboding industry is in overdrive, with Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic declaring that the Obama administration »knows it is a near-certainty that Israel will act against Iran soon if nothing or no one else stops the nuclear program« and setting »a better than 50 percent chance« Israel will strike by next July. Michael Oren, the Israeli ambassador to the United States, used Yom Kippur to deliver a speech of ominous prophecy in synagogues, warning of the fateful choices presented Israel by »a radical, genocidal Iran«. (Oren had less to say — and most of that dismissive — about direct Israeli-Palestinian peace talks inaugurated two weeks earlier with White House pomp and now already on hold.)

Yes, Ahmadinejad is the bogeyman from Central Casting. One of the things there’s time for, if you’re not playing games with the Iran specter, is a serious push for an Israeli-Palestinian breakthrough that would further undermine the Iranian president. I don’t expect that, however. And here are two more predictions: Obama won’t attack Iran and nor will Israel, not by next July or ever. Iran is a paper tiger, a postmodern threat: It has many uses but a third Western war against a Muslim country is a bridge too far.”