Layers of Iranian Thinking

Wars often begin because leaders misread the situation. For example, the First Gulf War, prompted by Iraq’s 1990 invasion of Kuwait, and the Second Lebanon War, sparked by Hezbollah attacks against northern Israel, were launched by authoritarian leaders who miscalculated the response to their aggression, with results that were even more disastrous for their own people than for their enemies.

That is one reason we ought to worry about the bizarre way Iranian President Ahmadinejad speaks of Israel. We, locked into our own Western paradigms, have difficulty attaching realistic weight to the thinking of leaders of an ancient and very different culture, and therefore underestimate their capability to wreak havoc—just as they underestimate ours. Several Israeli defense intellectuals suggest that Ahmadinejad should be taken at his word when he speaks of mounting an overwhelming military response to an Israeli self-defensive action against his country or its Hezbollah proxies. Like Hezbollah’s Sheik Nasrallah in 2006, who proclaimed Israeli society fragile as a “spider’s web” only to discover that spider’s thread is one of the strongest fibers in the world, Ahmadinejad may genuinely believe his own propaganda. If so, the eventual results might be devastating.

Ahmadinejad’s approach rests on a foundation of attitudes and strategic evaluations deeply embedded in the mindset of the ruling circles in Iran. First, there is a strategic evaluation—not necessarily without foundation—that Israel is vulnerable to a long conflict. Iran, accordingly, should it resort to war, would do its best to carry out a long and bloody struggle with the goal of bringing Israel to its knees through attrition. If nuclear weapons were not used, the conflict would be waged directly from Iran via surface-to-surface missiles, attacks by proxies such as Hamas, Hezbollah and Syria, and expeditionary forces of Iranian troops.

Moshe Vered of Bar Ilan University’s Begin-Sadat (BESA) Center for Strategic Studies adds a conceptual layer to this concern, illustrated by Iran’s long war against Iraq in the 1980s. He notes a deeply rooted Shi’ite theological tenet that values the acceptance of suffering in the cause of perceived justice. In the Iran-Iraq War, Vered writes [I translate from Hebrew]: “Iran… paid an inconceivable price (eight years of war, about a half-million dead, a million wounded and economic damage higher than the value of all Iranian oil production in the Twentieth Century)….” Much of this could have been avoided had pragmatic rather than religious considerations prevailed. Similarly, this Iranian leadership will be very reluctant to bring a war with Israel to a close for any reason short of victory or a major threat to the Khomeinist regime.

Another BESA scholar, Ze’ev Maghen, points out how deeply anti-Israel prejudice is embedded in the culture developed by Khomeinist Iran. He notes a speech by Iranian Supreme Leader Khamene’i, delivered at Teheran’s main mosque, proclaiming that “We Iranians … do not deny the right of any polity in any place on God’s Earth to exist and prosper….” But, Maghen continues, “Without missing a beat or evincing even a hint of irony… the congregation of worshippers, some seven thousand in number, expressed their unanimous support for the Supreme Leader’s words by repeatedly chanting … ‘Death to America, Death to Israel!’” Maghen takes issue with those who consider such chants unimportant because they are habitual. He explains that “…ritual is not a phenomenon to be belittled…and the older and more ‘tired’ it is, the more permanently rooted and powerful it often becomes… The analysts…are correct…that the Iranians do not really ‘mean it’; what they fail to realize is that is the very reason why they may well do it.”

Dr. Harold Rhode, a prominent American Iran expert adds yet another level of complexity. He notes that the current top leadership of the Iranian regime is drawn from a theological circle with a particularly messianic emphasis. This group is bent upon “hastening the return of the 12th imam.” A conflagration for them would actually be an incentive, because they believe this will force their messiah-like imam to return and save his community. “If, as seems likely, the Khamene’i/Ahmadinejad clique seriously looks forward to an apocalypse, any attempt to argue how awful a war might be would not dissuade the Iranian regime from pursuing one. A war would, in fact, be an incentive for this regime.”

If we are to avoid war, much hinges on developments within Iran, particularly the capacity of saner voices to take control. Much also depends on the capacity of the U.S Administration and the international community to contain the Iranian threat — as Washington and its allies continue to prepare for significant economic and political sanctions, while a number of major trading partners of Iran (notably China, as well as Brazil) pursue business-as-usual, and Tehran’s march toward nuclear-weapons capability progresses.

The feeling grows in Israel that once again we need to prepare, with grim determination and in greater isolation than we had hoped, to meet what may well be an existential threat.

first published at http://bit.ly/1lp3OXF