Iran, antisemites, and the new denialism

Some like Bernie Sanders are trying to shift the debate from what to do about Iran’s nuclear weapons program to whether the program actually exists at all.

The crush of events and the fluidity of war have made it extremely challenging to write much of anything on the current state of the Israel-Iran conflict. I have no interest in engaging in armchair generalship, making premature declarations of victory, or issuing defeatist prophecies of gloom and doom. So, I will only offer a few brief observations:

Rampant idiocy

It seems that, on the whole, many people are extremely ill-informed and, to be blunt, stupid about the war.

I recently saw an American tabloid news broadcast in which the hosts fretted for a half-hour about possibly being nuked by Iran. I don’t mean in the future; I mean that they clearly thought Iran already had nuclear weapons and the ability to deliver them via ICBMs. They appeared utterly unaware of the fact that the entire point of this war is to prevent precisely that.

Obviously, not all Americans are this ignorant, but the general idiocy does seem extremely prevalent, which makes the task of dealing with what we must lamentably call the real world all the more difficult.

Regime change agonistes

This is particularly evident on the issue of “regime change.”

Obviously, some people are seriously considering regime change in Iran. Personally, I believe it would be a positive development, as the overthrow of any Nazi regime, whether Islamo-Nazi or otherwise, is always a good thing.

However, I concur with those like Nikki Haley who argue that regime change must come from the Iranian people and not from external forces. Furthermore, concerns about a potential repeat of the Iraq or Libya fiascos are completely understandable.

The problem arises when the concept of regime change is confused with the broader issue of American involvement in the war. For example, the possibility of President Trump ordering an American bombing of the Fordow nuclear site is being discussed in the context of regime change, which is irrelevant to the matter.

Even if Fordow is destroyed, the Iranian regime will persist, albeit as a severely weakened and largely castrated tyranny. In a way, ironically, this would be the ideal scenario: anarchy and civil war would be avoided, but a genocidal terrorist state would be effectively contained.

‘Finish the job’

That being said, some in Israel are doing themselves no favors in this regard.

In my opinion, the signs that have gone up proclaiming, “Mr. President, finish the job,” are very ill-advised. These signs clearly refer to the destruction of Iran’s nuclear program, but they can easily be misinterpreted as a call for an Iraq-style regime change invasion.

This interpretation only emboldens antisemitic isolationist forces within the United States and instills fear among non-antisemitic Americans who are concerned about getting entangled in another Middle East conflict.

Moreover, such calls for American involvement implicitly suggest that Israel can’t finish the job on its own, which is a fundamental violation of one of Israel’s most fundamental security doctrines: that Israel should always be able to defend itself by itself.

Historically, one of Israel’s greatest advantages has been that, unlike many other US allies, it has never needed or asked for American boots on the ground to defend itself. Consequently, asking the US to “finish the job” could potentially negate this advantage without any guarantee of a positive outcome.

Now, it is certainly possible that Israel cannot “finish the job”—that is, destroy Fordow—without the US. If that is the case, then we are dealing with a serious strategic error on the part of the Israeli political and security establishments that will need to be addressed after the war ends.

The new denialists

One of the more remarkable phenomena currently at work among the more extreme American opponents of US involvement is a growing tendency toward outright conspiracy theories. Instead of simply opposing Israeli (or American) action against Iran’s nuclear weapons program, they have begun to deny that the program exists at all.

The derangement has reached as high as antisemitic progressives’ favorite useful Jew, Bernie Sanders, who recently released a statement saying: “In 2002, in testimony to Congress urging the United States to go to war in Iraq, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu stated: ‘There is no question whatsoever that Saddam is seeking… nuclear weapons.’ … Netanyahu was wrong. Very wrong. … He is wrong now. We must not get involved in Netanyahu’s war against Iran.”

In other words, because Netanyahu believed Saddam wanted nuclear weapons then—which more or less everyone at the time believed—then Netanyahu must be lying about Iran having a nuclear weapons program now.

This is somewhat effective rhetorically, but it is nothing more than cheap demagoguery at best. It overlooks the fact that it is entirely possible for Netanyahu to have been wrong in 2002 and perfectly correct now. However, assessing that would require much more effort than emitting the random grunts Sanders spews out whenever his Free Palestine masters demand it.

The entire thing reminds me of Noam Chomsky’s denial of the Cambodian genocide. That is, Sanders’ rant is not merely a baseless conspiracy theory; it is also a deliberate lie aimed at altering the public discourse. Back in the 1970s, Chomsky successfully shifted the discourse from discussing how to address the Cambodian genocide to questioning whether it was happening at all. By the time this “question” was resolved, three million Cambodians were dead.

In the same way, Sanders and the many others who will soon echo his arguments are attempting to redirect the discussion from addressing Iran’s nuclear weapons program to questioning its existence.

This is not only asinine; it is monstrously dangerous because it implies that Netanyahu, and by extension, Israel and the Jewish people, are intentionally lying to drag the US into a war to their own selfish benefit.

Sadly, this is fire that antisemites both left and right are increasingly going to play with as things come to a head. Those of goodwill who both support and oppose American involvement should be prepared to treat them with the contempt they deserve.