Parsi's Precedent

Backspin/Honest reporting
30 November 09

At the Huffington Post, Trita Parsi argues that the US can and should stop Israel from attacking Iranian nuclear facilities. He even cites this precedent:

On August 2, 1990, almost a year after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Iron Curtain divide, Iraq invaded Kuwait. Within months, the George H. W. Bush administration carefully assembled a coalition of states under the UN flag and defeated the Iraqi army and restored Kuwait's ruling family, the House of Sabah. The Bush senior administration saw particular value in ensuring that the international coalition contained numerous Arab states. But to get the Arab's to join a war alongside the US and against another Arab power, Israel needed to be kept out of the coalition.

This turned out to be a tricky issue, particularly when Saddam Hussein hurled thirty-four Scud missiles at Tel Aviv and other Israeli cities, in an obvious attempt to lure Israel into the war . . . .

Just as Israeli retaliation against Iraq in 1991 would have been devastating for the US, an Israeli preventive attack against Iran today would spell disaster for US national security.

The Israeli debate over deterrence vs. undermining coalition forces was as anguished as Parsi goes on to describe. There was the added uncertainty -- which Parsi doesn't acknowledge -- of Saddam's Scuds being outfitted with chemical or biological warheads. Fortunately, Saddam Hussein didn't raise the stakes with a non-conventional attack.

Parsi expresses no concern for the threat Iranian nukes pose to Israeli national security (and Palestinian national security, for that matter).

We've seen that the Israeli public is remarkably resilient in the face of Iraqi Scuds, Palestinian Qassams and Hezbollah Katyushas. But Parsi's then-and-now comparison breaks down because air strikes on Iran would be to prevent it from acquiring nuclear weapons.

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