An Impulse for Intrigue
Iran has really big plans. And lots of folks have really big headaches
The shift has fired up the right, which once cheered on the Bush policy. Leading neoconservative William Kristol, editor of the Weekly Standard, calls the Mideast flare-up an "Islamist-Israeli war" with Iran at its center. Last week, he recommended a military strike on Iran's nuclear sites to erase the sense that Washington has grown "weak." Slowed by State Department caution, the administration has lost the inclination for action conveyed in Bush's "axis of evil" speech, contends Richard Perle, a former Pentagon official and another outspoken neoconservative. "I call it an ignominious retreat," he says. "I think Ahmadinejad is laughing."
And yet, the Iranian president may also have reason to fret. Iran's foreign minister, visiting Damascus last week, called for a quick cease-fire and an exchange of prisoners in the Israeli-Hezbollah fight. With the unexpected scope of Israel's assault, Iran may be concerned about seeing its ally--or strategic asset--whittled down before its eyes. "Will Iran allow Hezbollah to be defeated?" asks Robert Rabil, a professor and Mideast watcher at Florida Atlantic University. "I don't think so, because Hezbollah expands the border of Iran to the border of Israel, so it's a deterrent force."
Miscalculations and missteps, along with bullets and bombs, are the stuff of war--especially when it is proxies that are fighting for survival. In Lebanon and elsewhere, the future may hold more such surprises.
With Kevin Whitelaw
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