Jacques Chirac the Frenchman, on Iran this Time

"There will be no war against Iran," Chirac is reported in the article below to have told a special emissary of the Islamic Republic who visited him in Paris last week. "Anything other than negotiations would be resolutely opposed by France."

If Chirac, who may currently be the least popular president of the Fifth Republic, holds to this position more stridently, expect the Russians and Chinese to happily follow in line. By taking this position, Chirac could undermine any attempt to use diplomacy to resolve the Iranian nuclear crisis, by whittling down Bush's "stick" of economic sanctions and military action. As most followers of diplomacy understand, you must have a carrot and a stick to effectively conduct diplomacy -- carrots alone rarely do it, especially against an Islamo-Fascist madman.

Chirac makes President Bush's job harder, further isolating Mr. Bush on this subject. Mr. Bush, a good man with strong values and beliefs and a strong backbone, who has tended to suffer from lousy execution, is now faced with one hell of a dilemma -- if the die is already cast among our "allies" and others to allow the Iranians to obtain nuclear weapons and "learn to live with it" after diplomacy is permitted to ultimately fail (a natural result of Chirac's statement), what does President Bush do in late 2007-early 2008, when many feel the Iranian nuclear clock can be at 5 minutes to midnite? (No one really knows how close the Iranians are or will be by then -- but do you want to be the one to wait too long?) Does Mr. Bush go it alone militarily (with no assurance of success) and risk further international isolation and unpopularity, particularly as we enter an election year, as well as other repurcussions, especially if our troops are still in Iraq (as they will most likely be)? If he doesn't pursue a military option, does he risk watching the Israelis attacking the Iranians, potentially turning the Middle East into a firestorm? It is important to note several things with regard to the Israelis at this point:

1. Israeli leaders, following the existential wake-up call of the Summer War with Iran/Hezbullah, seem to be fairly united, from the Right to the Left, in viewing the Iranian nuclear threat as presenting a serious threat of a second holocaust, and if they have to "go it alone", seem to be preparing to do so. I have heard several politicians and generals, including prominent Laborites, declare most convincingly recently that Israel would do ANYTHING necessary to stop the Iranians from acquiring nuclear weaponry. Shimon Peres, the great dove, Nobel Peace Prize winner -- and father of the Israeli nuclear program -- has recently declared matter-of-factly that, just as the Iranians warn that they can destroy Israel, the Iranians should be mindful that Israel can destroy Iran. The Israelis have never come as close as they are today to threatening to use their nuclear arsenal, but the body language is there. Looking into the eyes of some of these guys, you can see the fear, determination, and sense of history that perhaps only a fellow Jew can understand.

2. The Israelis have a less capable military than ours to cause the necessary level of damage to the Iranians' capabilities, and therefore, the inclination to use overpowering and extreme measures -- ultimately their nuclear force -- to attack the Iranians, is a distinct and greater possiblity. This is especially so following the Summer War, when Israel was shocked by the ineffectiveness of its air force's ability to take out Katyusha rockets from the air.

So the bottom line is that things were just made worse, not better, by Chirac's malevalent statement (he is too smart a guy to call it just a "boneheaded" statement). Diplomacy must succeed, but the right environment must exist to permit it to succeed, and that is to create a credible and significant cost to the Iranians if they continue to pursue their course to armageddon (with Iran's president threatening every other week to destroy Israel, it is not hyperbole to use the word "armageddon"). We can try to force Israel to "make peace" with the Palestinians who want no such thing (or at least that is the platform of Hamas, which is the party that the Palestinian people democratically elected into office -- when are we going to start taking people at their word, rather than wishing alternate realities?). But that is not going to stop the Iranians or, apparently, bring the French back in line on sanctions or, G-d for bid, military action. As I heard a senior German foreign policy official say quite candidly last weekend, the two issues of Iranian nuclearization and resolution of the Palestinian problem are unrelated -- the Iranians want to be a regional superpower and rule the Islamic world globally no matter what happens with the Palestinians, and nuclear weapons are their ultimate tool to achieve those ends.

Thanks Jacques.


Eye of the Storm: The house that Jacques unbuilt | Jerusalem Post