the nukes of iran

in case you missed, in this week's episode of as the stomach turns, israeli PM benyamin netanyahu tells the world that the only way to stop the iran nuclear threat is for the united states to attack.

we are the only superpower stupid enough to take the bait, and insecure enough to feel it necessary to prove ourselves -- once again. having been suckered in to futile and untimately self-defeating invasions of iraq and afghanistan, the US is slowly but surely being drawn in.

a concurrent narrative is that iran is the major concern of nations around the world.

excuse me, but i haven't noticed this clamor for war coming from anywhere besides tel aviv and washington. these reports reek of media manipulation by the two preeminent purveyors of violence and aggression on the world stage today: israel, which is intimidating its neighbors while ethnically cleansing the arabs from its territory, and the US, which has long eradicated its natives, and seeks to impose itself and its vision of order on the rest of the world (or those portions which it values).

of course, the israelis show no regard for it's dim-witted, muscle-bound partner, eagerly selling its military secrets to the partner's rivals. but, since this is a cynical game, and the stakes are so high, no one faults a smaller, weaker, but smarter power from manipulating and using a bigger, stronger one.

even, i'm afraid, the iranians are viewing this with considerable amusement. any attack on their territory would at best only harden the rest of the world's antipathy towards israel and the US, and sympathy throughout the muslim world would redound to iran's benefit. where they may have only sought to know-how for a weapon now, an attack would give them an understandable justification to join the US, israel and other nuclear weapons states.

on the one hand, i think the likud government and its coalition partners are too full of themselves now. they seem to have the power, politically, to pull this off internally and in the US. washington, riven by internal divisions and driven by powerful financial interests, can hardly summon the will to say no to netanyahu. only the military, ironically enough, may be influential enough to forestall the desired conflagration.

the pentagon has learned that wars need to be both distant and painless to the US public, and that the costs must be hidden in debt. waging a major shooting war in the middle of the persian gulf will break all the rules; it will endanger the one thing the services value above all else: complacency. it will not cause the typical suffering by proxy that defines the american experience. people will fell something unpleasant where it really hurts -- in the wallet!

then you will know, iranian nukes were not that big of a deal after all.