WarSclerotic

Too many American politicians, whose reservations on Israel have been “misunderstood,” are being appointed to key positions in U.S. President Barack Obama’s administration.

First it was Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel. Now it is the slated ambassador to the U.N., Samantha Power, who, 10 years ago, voiced her opinion that the U.S. would be best served if it would establish a Palestinian army to fight Israel rather than funding Israel’s army. All in the name of protecting human rights, of course.

The great American concern for human rights and support for every shred of democracy are worthy qualities, and should be commended. The problem arises when protecting so-called “human rights” comes at the expense of common sense in foreign policy, and then the Americans lose more than they gain.

Iran is a clear-cut case of this, but it is not the only example. The rule of the shah collapsed in 1979. In his place, the Iranian people got a terrible regime. Recently, an Israeli official who was in the loop in Tehran at the time revealed that the Iranian military commanders were willing to assume the leadership themselves, but only if they had the support of then-U.S. President Jimmy Carter.

An authorized American representative was supposed to meet with them, but at the last minute, the human rights people in the failing Carter administration got the upper hand, and they opposed the shah. Carter sent someone from that school of thought to the meeting in Tehran. The next day, the generals fell into line with the ayatollahs’ regime. And what has become of human rights in Iran since then?

At every junction, Obama’s U.S. has supported whatever looked prettiest on paper but in reality ended up hurting not only the U.S. but also the people left to suffer under unworthy regimes. The U.S. contributed to the ousting of bad tyrants only to replace them with even worse ones. Carter’s conduct in Iran appears to have served as a model for Obama in Egypt, and everything we expected him to do in Syria does not appear to be materializing.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry’s failures, despite shuttling back and forth between Jerusalem and Ramallah in efforts to rekindle the stalled peace process, are a line being drawn from Cairo and Tehran. The line will keep getting stretching the more American politicians, whose reservations on Israel have been “misunderstood,” are appointed to key positions in Washington.

In an interview on Al-Jazeera this past May, the commander of the Free Syrian Army, Brig. Gen. Salim Idris, explained that the diversion of Hezbollah forces from Lebanon to Syria to take part in the civil war was part of a “Safavid” plan for the Middle East region.

This past January, an article in the influential Lebanese daily As-Safir accused Iraq’s Shiite Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki of receiving assistance from his “Safavid allies.” After the powerful Sunni Muslim leader, Sheikh Yousuf al-Qaradawi, condemned Iran for its actions in Syria, the Muslim Scholars Association of Lebanon warned that the Sunni Arabs were facing “the spreading Safawi project.”

Indeed, over the last decade, the term “Safavid” has become a commonly used derogatory word among Arab leaders for the Iranians. American journalist Bob Woodward describes a harsh diplomatic exchange in one of his books between King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia and a high-level U.S. official about the 2003 Iraq War, in which the Saudi leader states: “You have allowed the Persians, the Safavids, to take over Iraq.” By using the term Safavid, Arab leaders were making reference to the Safavid Empire and imputing hegemonic motivations to the current Iranian government, suggesting that Iran is seeking to re-establish their country’s former imperial borders.

Who were the Safavids and over what territories did they rule? The Safavid Empire was based in Iran and existed between 1501 and 1722. Its founder, Shah Ismail, made Shiite Islam the state religion of Iran and he waged wars against the leading Sunni state at the time, the Ottoman Empire. At its height, the Safavid Empire extended its rule well beyond Iran’s present borders into large parts of Afghanistan, Pakistan and Turkemanistan, in the east and covering half of Iraq, including Baghdad and the Shiite holy cities of Najaf and Kerbala, along with the easternmost part of Syria in the west.

The early Safavid leaders imported Shiite leaders from southern Lebanon to help with the propagation of Shiite Islam across Persia. Thus the ties between Iran and Lebanon can be traced back at least to the 16th century. In the south, the Safavid Empire reached the Arabian coastline of the Persian Gulf, while in the north it included what is today Azerbaijan and Armenia. The Iranian leadership today has not formally claimed the borders of the Safavid Empire, but it certainly made statements suggesting they reflected part of their national aspirations.

For example, Hossein Shariatmadari served as an unofficial spokesman for Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei as well as the editor of the conservative Iranian daily, Kayhan. In July 2007, he wrote an op-ed stating that the Arab states of the Gulf were established as a result of the intervention of the West. He insisted that the Arab peoples in the Arabian peninsula were not involved in the appointment of their governments. He then claimed specifically that Bahrain was part of Iranian territory. In 2009, Ali Akbar Nateq Nouri, who was Khamenei’s candidate for president in 1997, bluntly called Bahrain Iran’s “14th province.”

A member of the Iranian Parliament’s Committee for National Security and Foreign Policy backed Shariatmadari’s statement and reminded the Arab states that “most of them were once part of Iranian soil.” More recently another Khamenei associate called Syria Iran’s “35th province.” It was not surprising when Internet whistle-blower site WikiLeaks uncovered a senior Omani officer, who worked for Sultan Qaboos, telling a visiting American counterpart in 2008 that the regime in Tehran was motivated by an “Iranian expansionist ideology.”

After taking office, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei provided justification for the Iranian activism that was threatening the Arab states. As he explained to the Iranian daily Ressalat in 1991, Iran’s National Security Strategy was not just based on preservation of the integrity of the Iranian state, but rather on its “expansion” — he used the term “bast,” in Arabic. This worldview was evident in the statements of some of Iran’s most important senior officers. Gen. Qassem Suleimani, the commander of the Quds Force of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps stated in 2012 with respect to Lebanon and Iraq: “These regions are one way or another subject to the control of the Islamic Republic of Iran and its ideas.” Suleimani reports directly to Khamenei and was just appointed to coordinate all Iranian military activities in Syria against Israel.

In diplomacy, a fundamental distinction is often drawn between status quo states that are satisfied with the extent of their territory and do not seek to alter their borders and anti-status quo states that aspire to exercise influence over their neighbors and ultimately take over their territories. By calling the Iranians “Safavids,” the Arab side is expressing its view that Iran is an anti-status quo state which wants those parts of Iraq where the Safavids once ruled as well as the territories of many of the Arab Gulf states.

This discussion is relevant for the debate in the West over the consequences of a nuclear Iran. Last month an Iranian-American analyst from the RAND Corporation, Alireza Nader, wrote in the prestigious American journal Foreign Policy his view that Iran is only seeking nuclear weapons for deterrence. The purpose of an Iranian bomb is thus defensive; all Iran is seeking is to prevent the West from carrying out regime change against its Islamist leadership. He clearly portrays Iran as a status-quo state that will not overthrow the regimes of its Arab neighbors. This work fits in well with the new trend in Washington of recommending that the Obama administration reconsider the policy of containment, which it dropped in 2012 in favor of the policy of prevention.

There are other views that negate these suggestions. Saudi Maj. Feisal Abukshiem wrote an outstanding study last year for the U.S. Army’s Command and Staff College that reached the completely opposite conclusions about the implications of a nuclear Iran on the Middle East. He detailed how Iran used Shiite movements, some of whose leaders studied in the Iranian city of Qom, in order to promote assassinations, sectarian rebellions and terror in Bahrain, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. He pointed out the cases of past Iranian military intervention in the United Arab Emirates, Lebanon, Yemen and most recently in Syria. He then concluded that “the possession of nuclear weapons will encourage Iran to expand those efforts without deterrence.”

A nuclear weapon in the hands of a status-quo state with a defensive orientation is a very different story than nuclear weapons in the hands of a state that wants to totally change the international status quo. This could have offensive implications. If Iran really views itself as a truncated state that deserves to recover the territories it once controlled in the days of the Safavid Empire, then deterrence of a nuclear Iran in the future will be far more difficult than many in the West currently realize.

The Syrian civil war reached Israel’s gates on Thursday and now poses a sharp and immediate dilemma. What is better for Israel? The old and familiar Bashar Assad, with Iran and Hezbollah at his side, or a new regime that rids the world of the tyrant in Damascus but itself is unknown.

Israel has already been weighing this question for many months, and its assessments on the matter have received headlines (sometimes contradictory) in the international press. The very politically incorrect answer is that Israel, despite everything, prefers the known evil over the new and unfamiliar (which could be better but also possibly much worse).

This could be seen in the internal Israeli dialogue on Thursday, after rebels captured the city of Quneitra next to the border in the Golan Heights. On the face of it, this was an internal Syrian issue. But in reality, it was a headache for Israel. Not only was the border crossing at Quneitra immediately closed, but also the future of U.N. observers stationed in the area was again put into doubt. Worse of all, Israel now doesn’t know who is on the other side of the fence and whether they are with us or against us.

As long as it was the Syrian military on the other side, things were clear. There was a home owner and an address, someone to complain to. If that didn’t work, there was someone to shoot at in order to send a signal.

With the rebels, the question is whom do they support? What is their policy toward us? Will they heat up the border and start sniping at farmers or do they want peace? Are there al-Qaida members among them who will try to start a war of jihad here?

Late Thursday morning, those questions were swept aside when the Syrian military recaptured the Quneitra area. But Thursday’s events should accelerate debate in Israel over what to do if the rebels capture the border area for days, weeks or even longer. With whom will we manage affairs? Who will we complain to and how will we send signals? And is there a partner with whom we can reach agreements?

These questions will remain unanswered in the foreseeable future, due to the general uncertainty that envelops the conflict in Syria. While Israel is focused on the Golan Heights, Assad notched a major achievement on the main front in the heart of Syria with the recapture of Qusair by his forces. That victory definitely bolstered Assad’s efforts to subdue the rebels. But Hezbollah’s growing involvement in the fighting in Syria, particularly in Qusair, has prompted unprecedented criticism from the Arab world.

Israel is monitoring the turmoil in Syria and hopes that the sides will continue to fight each other without drawing Israel in. Right now, surveillance and operational alertness are enough, but the pace of developments in the north and their threatening potential could soon force Israel to make decisions.

1. Europe is on fire. It has been for some time. Roughly half a century after World War II, it is being conquered, by degrees, with no battle. That last terrible war destroyed the national idea and made Western-style democracy vulnerable to the dangers that threaten its existence with no real ability to cope with them.

The intellectual elite that once held those societies together is now working hard to destroy them. Sophisticated ways of thinking are being employed to keep these societies from defending themselves. Europe does not know how to deal with the millions of Muslims who do not want to integrate into Western society and do not accept Western codes, and some of whom state openly that their goal is Europe’s defeat.

Sweden is perhaps the most fascinating case of all. It is there that Western liberalism reached its peak in its willingness to take in millions of immigrants (almost 2 million out of less than 10 million), most of them Muslims. The legal system, the media and the welfare system, among others, have mobilized to promote acceptance of the other, the different, the persecuted. But the blood-drenched rioting that has been going on in Stockholm in recent weeks creates the impression that all that acceptance was in vain. The situation in France, where suburban areas are described as powder kegs, is much worse.

2. In 2005, during the riots in France, the philosopher Alain Finkielkraut said in an interview with Haaretz, “In France, they would like very much to reduce these riots to their social dimension, to see them as a revolt of youths from the suburbs against their situation, against the discrimination they suffer from, against the unemployment. The problem is that most of these youths are blacks or Arabs, with a Muslim identity. Look, in France there are also other immigrants whose situation is difficult — Chinese, Vietnamese, Portuguese — and they’re not taking part in the riots. Therefore, it is clear that this is a revolt with an ethno-religious character.”

He added that to see the hatred and violence only as a reaction to French racism was “to be blind to a broader hatred: the hatred for the West, which is deemed guilty of all crimes.” France was exposed to it then. Sweden and London are being exposed to it now, or previously. Who remembers?

People were appalled by the beheading of the British soldier in broad daylight on a London street. But what are they going to do about it? The murderers converted to Islam several years ago and underwent a rapid transformation. That must never be mentioned; anyone who talks about it will be branded a racist. Incidentally, the French left wing attacked Finkielkraut after his interview with Haaretz, forcing him to retract his statements. He even joined the Geneva peace initiative. Maybe that is why very few intellectuals repeat his accurate observations openly. Nobody wants to get into trouble with the thought police.

So if the reason in France has nothing to do with religious, ethnic or national differences, but only issues of social justice, why was that British soldier beheaded? British commentators offered a possible motive: the British military’s intervention in Muslim states. In other words: It’s our fault.

In Western countries, any public figure who warns that the riots are not about economic issues alone, but are also an existential threat, is attacked by the gatekeepers and accused of xenophobia, extremism, racism and other high crimes deserving of the mark of Cain.

3. In the first half of the 1980s, the journalist and philosopher Jean-Francois Revel published his book, “How Democracies Perish.” While Revel was referring to the conflict between the West and the Soviet regime, his statements are also appropriate for any sort of totalitarianism, including the Islamic version.

One could paraphrase Revel’s statements by saying that the conflict between Islam and the West is like a soccer game in which one team disqualifies itself from going past the half-way line while the other plays freely inside its rival’s 18-yard box. While Islam treats its rivals (including those who pose no active danger to it) as threatening its very existence and works for their destruction, the West treats subversive elements who actively endanger its existence as mere rivals with whom it has a simple disagreement, no more.

The outcome of this essential difference between these systems is that compared with totalitarian regimes, democracies are far less capable of defending themselves against enemies from within. Islam is exploiting this to the hilt in both the spreading of global terrorism and the creeping takeover of the West.

Democracies tend to ignore and even deny threats to their existence because they are reluctant, actually unwilling, to do what is necessary to cope with those threats. In other words, democracies like to calm the situation down and not rouse the demon from his lair (even though the demon awoke long ago and has been threatening to swallow them for some time), mostly by justifying and encouraging “moderate” elements over “radical” ones. Sound familiar?

4. In September 1938, Germany, France, the United Kingdom and Italy signed the Munich agreement, giving Germany the Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia. The agreement, which was considered an act of appeasement of Nazi Germany, is considered responsible for the outbreak of World War II a year later. It also hastened the collapse of Czechoslovakia, which was dismantled six months before the war broke out.

Afterward, Chamberlain returned to London with his famous umbrella, waving the paper signed by Hitler and proclaiming “peace in our time.” Right after the agreement was signed, the French diplomatic corps described Hitler as trapped between the “radical” Goebbels and Himmler and the “moderate” Goering. The tyrant, they said, had to be supported so that he would not fall into the hands of the radicals. Recognizing the West’s feeble character, Stalin, too, demanded concessions from the Roosevelt administration, claiming that the Politburo was criticizing him for his tendency toward liberal reform.

Thus, in their pursuit of peace and quiet, the Western democracies believe — even after making countless concessions that have brought neither peace nor quiet — that if we make more gestures the situation will calm down, even if for only a few years.

Democracies have a tendency toward selective amnesia when it comes to history. “As things are now … only the West’s failures, crimes and weaknesses deserve to be recorded by history,” while totalitarian regimes are always about to experience “reform,” “change” or a “spring,” and peace is always just around the corner.

Because of that, many historians in the West deal only with documenting atrocities committed by the West. Their equanimity toward the atrocities committed by Islam creates the impression that the West has lost its survival instinct entirely.

One of the mechanisms that made the loss of this instinct possible is what Revel calls “the industry of blame.” A large system made up of intellectuals, academics and the media (among other things), it fosters one-sided ideas of historical guilt. The West’s culture of self-blame does not allow for putting any responsibility on the other side, even as the abyss opens under its feet. Any active attempt to resist the dangers that Islam places before the free world brings with it intellectual confusion bordering on paralysis.

In a situation like this, all that remains for Europe’s feeble elite to do is what it did 75 years ago — cooperate with the forces that endanger it and sacrifice one democracy on the altar of a fictitious peace. Do you understand now why the riots in Europe are not waking up the West, but rather strengthening its attacks on Israel?