WarSclerotic

West of Eden- – Haaretz Daily Newspaper | Israel News.

Rather than leading to war with Iran, Israel’s new national unity government may have to explain why an attack is no longer an option.

World leaders attend the family photo session during the G-8 Summit at Camp David, Md., Saturday, May 19, 2012. Photo by AP

By Barak Ravid | May.21,2012 | 12:14 PM | 32

The granddaddy of all ‘October Surprises’ is the one that wasn’t: the 1980 release of 52 Americans taken hostage by Iran which, according to conspiracy theorists, didn’t take place on the eve of the presidential elections because of a secret deal made by Ronald Reagan, who was terrified of a last minute boost for his rival, President Jimmy Carter. In exchange, so the debunked theory goes, the Reagan Administration agreed to supply the new Islamic regime in Tehran with weapons via its willing accomplice, Israel, in what became known as the Iran-Contra Affair.

32 years later, the same characters are back on stage, but with a completely different cast and a script that has yet to be written. The Israeli press has been rife in recent days with reports of an imminent nuclear deal between the superpowers and the Iranian regime. Such an agreement would pose a daunting political challenge for Israel, compounded ten times over by the American presidential campaign. The “October Surprise”, if not handled correctly, could turn out to be a political time bomb, though it’s not clear in whose hands it will detonate.

The chances that Israel would endorse an agreement with Iran are slim: Iran will never accept Israel’s all-or-nothing conditions nor will it accede to Israel’s stringent demands for verification. If an agreement is reached between the P5+1 forum with Iran, it will almost by definition be one that Israel is suspicious of. One way or another, any agreement, even a temporary or limited one, would preclude, at least for the time being, any possibility of an Israeli military attack on Iran’s nuclear installations. Even if Israel is deeply dissatisfied with the provisions of an agreement with Tehran, it seems almost unthinkable that it would flout an international consensus and launch an attack that would turn the entire world against it. From this point of view, perhaps the establishment of a broad-based national unity government will serve a purpose that is the exact opposite to the one envisioned for it by several American commentators: rather than giving political backing to an Israeli attack, it will provide cover for an Israeli government that tells the country that such an option no longer exists.

Israel’s leadership, especially Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, will then have to decide on its public reaction. The Republican leaders, needless to say, will be waiting to take their lead from the Israeli prime minister before launching their pre-planned onslaught against Obama “the appeaser” who is once again “throwing Israel under the bus”, as Mitt Romney often says, in order to “kowtow to his Muslim masters”, as the President’s more fanatic detractors believe. On the other side of the political divide, the suspicion and distrust that is a permanent feature of the relations between the White House in Washington and the Prime Minister’s Office in Jerusalem may cast even the most legitimate Israeli protest criticism as an attempt to intervene in the American elections on behalf of Netanyahu’s conservative allies.

The situation among American voters is no less complex. According to the survey published last week by the Pew Research Institute, a massive majority of Americans supports tougher sanctions against Iran and a solid majority also supports a military strike, if necessary. But all of this is contingent on no diplomatic breakthrough being achieved and on an American assessment that Iran is continuing its drive for nuclear weapons. If an agreement is nonetheless reached in the nuclear talks, now or in the summer, Republican voters will most likely have a similar gut reaction to that of most Israelis and will assume that the Iranians are pulling the wool over Obama’s gullible eyes in order to gain precious time. But a majority of the American public is likely to go along with the Administration’s call on such an agreement, especially in light of Obama’s relatively high approval ratings on national security affairs. The Administration’s spin doctors, one can assume, won’t forget to remind everyone that an agreement with Iran defuses tensions in the Middle East and prevents a spike in oil prices that may have sent the American economy into a tailspin.

The effects of an agreement with Iran are unquantifiable at this point; it could, for example, put the entire issue on a back burner until the end of the year and thus not play a major role in the election campaign. And while the Iran hostage crisis undoubtedly contributed to Carter’s 1980 defeat, he was also plagued by a weak economy and by a dismal debate performance in which he cited his 12-year-old daughter Amy’s opinions on nuclear arms control and succumbed to Reagan’s folksy rendering of “there you go again” and ultimate punch line “are you better off than you were four years ago?”

History, in any case, does not repeat itself, and if it does, as Karl Marx said, it comes first as tragedy and then as farce. Given the high existential stakes for Israel of Iran’s nuclear drive, and the undeniable fact that Carter already cornered the market on farcical in 1980, the concern is that Marx’s general assessment was correct and the only thing he got wrong was the sequence.

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