Krauthammer: Signs show Iran starts feeling the heat

“They [the United States and Israel] have decided to attack at least two countries in the region in the next three months.” - Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, July 26

By Charles Krauthammer

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has a penchant for the somewhat loony.

But for all his clownishness, Ahmadinejad is nonetheless calculating and dangerous. What “two countries” was he talking about? They seem logically to be Lebanon and Syria.

Hezbollah in Lebanon has armed itself with 50,000 rockets and made clear it is in a position to start a war at any time. Fighting on this scale would bring in Syria, which would in turn invite Iranian intervention in defense of its major Arab clients.

The idea that Israel, let alone the United States, has the slightest interest in starting a war on Israel's north is crazy. But claims about imminent attacks are serious business in that region. In May 1967, the Soviet Union falsely told its client, Egypt, that Israel was preparing to attack Syria. These rumors set off a train of events - the mobilization of Arab armies, the southern blockade of Israel, the hasty signing of an inter-Arab military pact - that led to the Six-Day War.

Ahmadinejad's claim is not supported by a shred of evidence. So what is he up to?

It is a sign that he is under serious pressure. Passage of weak U.N. sanctions was followed by unilateral sanctions by the United States, Canada, Australia and the European Union. Already, Reuters reports, Iran is experiencing a sharp drop in gasoline imports as Lloyd's of London and other players refuse to insure the ships delivering them.

Second, the Arab states are no longer just whispering their desire for the United States to militarily take out Iranian nuclear facilities. The United Arab Emirates' ambassador to Washington said so openly at a conference three weeks ago.

It is scurrilous to suggest that the only ones who want the United States to attack Iran's nuclear facilities are Israel and its American supporters. The UAE ambassador is, as far as ascertainable, neither Israeli nor American nor Jewish. His publicly expressed desire for an attack on Iran's nuclear facilities speaks for the intense Arab fear, approaching panic, of Iran's nuclear program and the urgent hope that the United States will take it out.

Third, and perhaps even more troubling from Tehran's point of view, are developments in the United States. Former CIA Director Michael Hayden suggested last Sunday that over time, a military strike is looking increasingly favorable compared with the alternatives. Hayden is no Obama insider, but Time reported July 15 that top administration officials are once again considering the military option. This may reflect a new sense of urgency or merely be a bluff to make Tehran more pliable. But in either case, it suggests that after 18 months of failed engagement, the administration is hardening its line.

The Iranian regime is beginning to realize President Barack Obama's patience is limited - and that Iran may face a reckoning for its nuclear defiance.

All this pressure would be enough to rattle a regime already unsteady and shorn of domestic legitimacy. Hence Ahmadinejad's otherwise inscrutable warning about an Israeli attack on two countries. It is a pointed reminder to the world of Iran's capacity to trigger, through Hezbollah and Syria, a regional conflagration.

The only hope to get them to reverse course is to relentlessly increase their feeling that, if they don't, the Arab states, Israel, the Europeans and America will, one way or another, ensure that ruin is visited upon them.

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