Seen At The Corner: "Storm Warning"

Seen at The Corner:

Storm Warning [Stanley Kurtz]

In an interview with Paul Gigot at FOX News, Middle East expert Martin Kramer says the Lebanon war was more likely a mistake than a deliberately planned diversion from international efforts to stop Iran’s nuclear program. (I don’t have a link, but Ralph Peters also argued early on that the war was not a planned diversion but a mistake.) Basically, Kramer argues, Iran gave Hezbollah a wide array of rocket technology (far more of it than Israel realized) for use against Israel in the event of an American and/or Israeli strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities. But Iran’s orders were vague, and Hezbollah jumped the gun, thereby degrading the value of one of the key modes of (proxy) retaliation Iran had planned to use in the event of a move against its nuclear program.

Let’s think about this. How would this work in a world where Iran had given Hezbollah, or some other terrorist group, a weapon of mass destruction, to be used as a form of difficult-to-trace proxy retaliation in case of a serious attack? No doubt, in the case of chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons, Iran’s instructions to a terrorist client might be far clearer and more restrictive: “Absolutely do not use this (dirty bomb, suitcase nuclear devise, anthrax, etc.) unless and until we (Iran) are directly and forcefully attacked by the United States, or Israel, or both. In fact, wait for word from us before planting this device in Tel Aviv or New York.” Would Hezbollah go along? Would a nuclear, chemical, or biologically armed Hezbollah even realize when their conventional provocations might be going too far? After all, in this case, Hezbollah likely didn’t realize that by kidnaping Israeli soldiers it was starting a war. In other words, we’re witnessing a dry run of the sort of miscalculations we face in a world of nuclear armed, terrorist-friendly states.

Iran gives Hezbollah rocket technology, only meaning it to be used in case Israel and/or the United States launch a preemptive strike on Iran’s nuclear program. Hezbollah miscalculates by kidnaping Israeli soldiers, thereby creating a war in which the Iranian rockets are “prematurely” used. After all, once at war Hezbollah feels it necessary to defend itself with everything it’s got. In fact, you’ve got to believe Hezbollah’s very possession of so much Iranian supplied rocketry made it overconfident about provoking Israel in the first place.

So the very receipt of powerful weaponry from allied nation-states makes terrorist groups more likely to take destabilizing risks–especially because they don’t have countries to defend, or a public to whom they are accountable. Terrorist groups are simply organizations composed of people who live to die. Now substitute weapons of mass destruction for rockets and you see how quickly a rogue state in league with a terrorist organization could plunge the world into a nuclear conflict, even when it doesn’t intend to do so.

Posted at 10:11 AM