The Ayatollahs were not inherently hostile to Israel. The main feature of their foreign policy was practicality. The overwhelming objective was for the clerical regime to survive, and to that end any alliance would do. Khomeini partnered with socialist terrorists to come to power, and Jews, in theory, were no worse adversaries. So the Iranians twice tried to establish working relations with Israel for arms supply. Once Israel abandoned the arranged deal because of internal politicking, the other time she supplied Iran expired American rockets. Enough was enough, and the ayatollahs switched from tacit cooperation to outright hatred of the treacherous Jews.

Five years ago we could have established excellent relations with Iran by welcoming its nuclear capability. Egypt and Saudi Arabia are crumbling under the increasingly high welfare payments to their burgeoning populations; a nuclear race with Iran would bankrupt our perennial enemies. But we have lost that chance.

The lesson is that foreign relations are a highly personal matter. In 1973, Nixon banned Israeli preemption only because that was Kissinger’s position, and Kissinger opposed the strike only because he was suppressing a Jew inside himself, and thus he bent toward Arabs. A personal quarrel between Rabin and Carter, and the great affection Reagan had for Begin and Clinton had for Rabin and Barak were the real moving factors of their respective foreign policies. Leaders are surprisingly removed from reality; they rely on intelligence digests, State Department memos, and advisors’ opinions. Foreign policy is not a science in which facts are processed according to rules; rather, it is open to whims and impulsive decisions by policy-makers. Israel is not alone—every other country similarly ignores subjective factors, but for small Israel such mistakes are fatal. Ignore Ahmadinejad, a clown with no political power. Both his superiors are highly pragmatic individuals: Rafsanjani created Iran’s nuclear program by hook and by crook despite Khomeini’s objections, and Khamenei refused to give the go-ahead for the program for years despite Rafsanjani’s pressure. Yes, they want the bomb, and yes, they will get it eventually regardless of Israel’s efforts to stop them; but certainly we can find common ground with them. Yet, astonishingly, Israel has attempted no direct talks, which could be easily arranged through Rafsanjani.

A similar attitude precluded an early settlement with the PLO. Back in 1972, Sadat offered us better terms than Israel is accepting now: we would have kept the Western Wall and signed peace treaties with all Arab countries. France talked to the FLN, and America to the Vietcong. By stubbornly refusing to talk to terrorists, Israel waited for them to become respected politicians—and as such they are able to demand and receive more than terrorists. In 1981, the United States pressured Saudi Arabia to arrange for a ceasefire in Lebanon. The Saudis simply paid $20 million to Arafat, and a close approximation of ceasefire ensued, punctured by violence from both sides in a cycle where no one could tell attack from retaliation. Israel could sign a peace treaty with Arafat with sufficient bribes and concessions similar to what we’re offering the Palestinians now.

And so comes Turkey. Despite its rapid Islamization, the state remains remarkably secular. Turks do not care about ethnically different Arabs, especially since the Turks dominated the Arabs for centuries into the rule of the Ottoman Empire. But there must be some politeness on the Israeli side. What was the point of hijacking Turkish vessels, including the Mavi Marmara, which we knew for certain did not carry weapons? A smart policy must be flexible. We can intercept some ships, but not others. The Turkish government would most certainly have cooperated with Israel in inspecting vessels before departure for the absence of weapons. Erdogan is not a big fan of Hamas and Hezbollah, whose officials he meets only grudgingly, and would not risk compromising his international reputation by covertly shipping arms to terrorists. And on the contrary, Erdogan is well predisposed toward Jews; his relations with Olmert were excellent. He needs Israel to bolster his own stance on the international scene. What could be greater PR for the Turkish prime minister than mediating the Israeli-Syrian talks, like the United States did? Turkey needs Israel’s help on many other matters, not the least of which are controlling the flow of weapons to the Kurds and forestalling Armenian genocide resolutions in the US Congress. And all those pros went south because of that silly incident with the Gaza flotilla; even worse, obnoxious Israeli leaders refused to save Erdogan’s face with a nominal apology.

We can maintain decent relations with our nominal enemies, but not if the Israeli government plans to talk to them in such an amateurish fashion.

Iraq won’t develop a strong army in the near future precisely because it is leaning toward Iran, which doesn’t want its former nemesis well-armed. For Egypt and the Saudis, the choice is less straightforward. Egypt cannot afford a large modern army because the government is using every spare piaster to subsidize its forty million paupers, to ease their discontent and prevent them from embracing the Muslim Brotherhood, which they are doing anyway, albeit more slowly than they otherwise would. Saudi Arabia, with its smaller population and larger oil revenues, can afford an expensive military, and indeed runs the most expensive army in the Middle East. But the Saudis innate inability to progress beyond watching camel races precludes them from developing a viable army. The bottom line is the same for both countries: they have to rely on nuclear weapons. The Saudis already have nuclear bombs, which they received from Pakistan in return for financing its nuclear program, and Egypt is slowly enriching uranium to weapons-grade on its small research reactors.

Nuclearization is their only option against Iran, which not only subverts governments around the region, but actively encourages Shiite activities in Egypt and Saudi Arabia. Their problem is that Shiites are loyal to the Grand Ayatollah in Iran rather than to the local government. The problem does not loom large in Egypt—though it is certainly bigger now than a decade ago—but it is tremendous for Saudi Arabia, whose oil fields are settled by Shiites. Any Shiite unrest in Saudi Arabia would immediately raise the possibility of the Wahhabite Sunni monarchy losing its oil fields, the country’s only significant source of income. With stakes that high, brandishing and using nuclear weapons is not too drastic a step to take.

With Egypt and Saudi Arabia about to officially nuclearize, Syria cannot allow itself to fall behind. Oman will have to maintain its regional superpower status, so it will also go nuclear. Morocco, a perpetual peacemaker in the Middle East and colonizer of the Sahara, won’t let its king down, and will also go nuclear.

In a region seething with nuclear weapons, a country which has failed to preserve its onetime nuclear monopoly won’t get much respect.

The strike won’t hurt. For all its posturing, Hezbollah is unlikely to launch its 50,000 rockets on Israel after we attack Iran. The Hezbollah of fifteen years ago would have chosen the spectacular military show of launching tens of thousands of rockets at Israel, and to hell with the consequences. Hezbollah today is more a political organization than a guerrilla group. It won’t jeopardize the goodwill of Lebanese voters—goodwill it labored to rebuild after the devastation of the 2006 war—by starting a new war. If IAF were to bomb Hezbollah’s bases and launching pads simultaneously with a raid on Iran, Hezbollah would only welcome this excuse to abstain from launching a missile attack on Israel. Hezbollah failed to avenge the Mughniye assassination, and wouldn’t confront Israel over the Iranian issue.

And neither would Syria. Assad remembers that the ayatollahs did not help him when IAF flattened his nuclear reactor, and wouldn’t be eager to help them. He understands that launching SCUDs at Israel would cost him Damascus, and perhaps something more important—his throne. As the Arab saying goes, “Syria is ready to fight Israel to the last Egyptian soldier.” No way would Assad rise to defend Iran.

Turkey would love to see Iran humbled; one less rival in the Ottoman quest for regional dominance.

There may be an Israeli operation against Gaza concurrent with the strike on Iran. Ousting Hamas is the only way for Israeli peaceniks to continue the dialogue with Fatah. Since Fatah has a considerable police force by now, displacing Hamas does not appear impossible: after Israeli initial victory, Fatah police will move in to do away with Hamas remnants. Before Hamas resurges, Israel can sign some sort of accommodation with Fatah government. So we do not expect a major unrest in the West Bank or Gaza following the strike on Iran.

Iran would do nothing. Its ballistic missiles are still too primitive for a meaningful attack on Israel. Like Assad, the ayatollahs would fear military escalation because large-scale devastation might cause riots and bring about regime change. There might be terrorism, but nothing big; the ayatollahs seek international respectability and the Revolutionary Guards have evolved into mere businessmen.

The strike won’t accomplish much. Iran will be able import all the necessary parts of its nuclear program from North Korea and continue supporting Shiite and terrorist movements in the Middle East and Africa. Iran will both maintain its traditional sources of regional influence and reestablish its nuclear program. Though the US, Israeli, French, and German attackers will put boots on the ground in an effort to thoroughly demolish Iran’s nuclear installations, they will shrink from a full-scale invasion to remove the ayatollahs. It is even possible they would even approach them after the strike with political offers in order to mitigate any Iranian response. Saddam’s political standing did not suffer much after the Osiraq bombing, and neither would the ayatollah’s position.

It will be different with Israel. This will be the first time since 1956 that Israel has failed to solve her problems on her own. This will not be Israel’s victory, but a case of the United States doing its client’s bidding. Israel’s regional position will continue to deteriorate.

Saudi Arabia might suffer the consequences. Striving for regional dominance and gearing up for new confrontations, Iran cannot accept an American collaborationist regime in its soft underbelly. Iran will accordingly promote Shiite unrest in Saudi Arabia’s most sensitive spot—its oilfield region.

Iran will also take on Azerbaijan, another collaborationist country. Azerbaijan is dangerous to Iran in two ways: as an American and Israeli base and as a potential contender for Iran’s own Azeri region. Changing the autocratic regime in Azerbaijan would be a simple feat, especially considering that Iran enjoys Russian cooperation in acting against the Western-oriented dictator Aliyev.

Saddam quickly recovered after the Osiraq bombing, and in ten years had an advanced nuclear program. The ayatollahs are certainly no less persistent. Having surrounded themselves with a belt of anti-American states, having dug deeper into the mountains, having outsourced more development stages to North Korea, the ayatollahs will try again—and then they will certainly get the bomb.

The problem with the Iranians is that they saw the Iraqis. The Ayatollahs took the lesson and structured their nuclear program around centrifuges instead of a reactor. Their method is more provocative: reactors can be used, in theory, for power generation or research, but the presence of centrifuges clearly shows their desire to master the full nuclear cycle. No one would run centrifuges when uranium rods for reactors are available on the world market for competitive prices, usually from the same companies that built the reactor. The world went crazy over the Iranian nuclear program because it did not even attempt to politely hide its aims. Iran has it both ways: it enriches uranium on centrifuges with military goals in mind, but has also built a reactor, which serves two purposes: it somewhat legitimizes the centrifuges, which ostensibly produce peaceful fuel, and it provides the backup option of a plutonium bomb. Every part of Iran’s nuclear program is multipurpose, and every part is redundant: the centrifuges and reactor serve both military and civil purposes, and military goals can be achieved with either centrifuges or the reactor. To beef up the redundancy, the Iranians introduced a small enrichment facility in Qom. Again, it was multipurpose: secretly enriching the Natanz uranium to weapons-grade and providing a backup enrichment facility if Natanz is bombed. No wonder Qom is protected better than Natanz: Iran is more jealous over lightly enriched uranium stocked in Qom than uranium ore stocked at Natanz.

Logically, if Israel bombed a reactor in Iraq, then all the more we should bomb the one in Iran. Israel lost a good chance to bomb the Bushehr reactor before the Russians loaded it with fuel. Even Menahem Begin was concerned about radioactive fallout from the Osiraq reactor, and hurried the attack before it was loaded. The fallout in Bushehr won’t be great: a tactical nuclear weapon would make the cleanest strike, but the implosive effect can also be achieved with bunker-busting bombs or collateral use of vacuum bombs. Rather, radioactive fallout is a convenient pretext to avoid bombing a Russian installation.

Qom presents another challenge to aerial attack, and IDF wouldn’t be happy about having to launch such a large commando operation, except against SAM batteries. The problem is not only that the site is buried deep in a mountain, but that it is small. If Israel strikes this one, Iran will build another one in apartment buildings. It has already experimented with the plasma method of enriching, which has the smallest footprint.

Bombing Natanz cannot produce long-term results. Once Iran has mastered centrifuge technology, it can replenish the bombed stocks of them in no time. A hall of centrifuges cannot be compared to a reactor in its simplicity.

Crucial pieces of nuclear know-how are indestructible. Israel cannot make the Iranians forget how to metallize the enriched uranium and form it into hemispheres or warheads.

It wouldn’t take Iran more than three years to fully recover its nuclear program from an Israeli strike. This time, Iran will do things faster, in more remote locations, with far fewer people involved—and possibly succeed in maintaining secrecy until the test explosion.

Striking Iran is not the best option. It would be far preferable for Israel to align with Iran against Egypt, a country which started three wars with us recently, and will start more wars eventually. But if the decision is made to attack Iran, Israel must not limit herself to destroying nuclear infrastructure. Rather, the strike must be sufficiently painful to discourage any attempts at repeating the nuclear cycle.

Israel is wrong to bomb Iran’s military installations only. Britain and Germany bombed each other’s military targets for weeks before the British air force conducted its first raid on Berlin, and that was the decisive moment: for the first time the population started questioning Nazi policies. The bombing of Tehran, rather than sanctions, can topple the mullahs’ regime. Iranians will rally behind the ayatollahs only if they hope to be protected; when protection fails, they will topple the regime.

In the long run, the regime of the ayatollahs is as doomed as any religious authority in an enlightened society which has been opened to new ideas. How long that run will be is unclear: it may be months or it may be decades. What kind of government will replace it is still more uncertain, as several opposing factors are in play. The atheistic middle class want economic security rather than Ahmadinejad-style religious zealotry. However, most of the Iranian population is rural and poor, so they expect no immediate economic progress and would welcome somewhat renewed nationalist ideals. Opposition leaders and students rally behind the ultra-fundamentalist cleric Montazeri, but so did Gorbachev argue for “socialism with a human face,” appealing to Lenin’s quotations for authority. The Revolutionary Guard and Basij militia appear ready to suppress any rebellion, but the army proved useless in the USSR in 1991. Politicians in power may chicken out of firing at crowds, or a few generals may switch over to the opposition. Ayatollah Khamenei, a very old man, won’t live much longer, and Rafsanjani will install a puppet grand ayatollah—but that puppet, like Khamenei before him, could grow into a standalone player. Rafsanjani himself is torn between gross corruption, which ostensibly brings him closer to the West, and his lifelong desire to develop the bomb, which brings him into the camp of radicals and hardcore Revolutionary Guards. The Guards’ commanders are torn between militancy and corruption, just as the Soviet generals were.

Like any country, Iran’s long-term trend will undoubtedly be toward moderation, but in the meantime it has plenty of time to develop nuclear weapons. So far, Ayatollah Khamenei looks like the only check on the Iranian nuclear program, as he adheres steadfastly to Ayatollah Khomeini’s fatwa forbidding weapons of mass destruction. Supporting the Iranian opposition means in the short term destroying that only hurdle, as any likely successor to Khamenei will be at first more amenable to Rafsanjani’s pressure and agree to issue a fatwa circumventing Khomeini’s prohibition.

It is futile to imagine that the opposition will appeal to the West for recognition and economic aid just after the putsch, and will agree to a reciprocal demand to curtail the nuclear program. That did not happen in Russia or Pakistan, and it won’t happen in Iran. The victorious opposition first needs to prove itself to the population, and will at first strenuously uphold its nationalist credentials, which it would be able to betray only much later, when firmly entrenched in power. Mousawi isn’t stupid and must understand a simple rule: he can wrest more concessions from the West as a nuclear power than as a broken country. Mousawi’s government is unlikely to abandon the imperialist policy that he actually jump-started long ago by establishing contacts with Hezbollah. Nor would it make sense for Iran to abandon the African axis, which was arduously developed by Khatami. Unlike Uncle Sam, who wastes trillions of dollars in lost wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Iran wins with extreme economic efficiency: all its footprints in Lebanon, Syria, the Palestinian territories, Iraq, and various other African and Muslim countries cost the ayatollahs less than two billion dollars a year. Again, Iran’s imperialist policy might change as Russia’s did, but just like Russia, Iran may eventually rethink its abandonment of imperial ambitions. Tehran is the natural center of the world’s Shia movement, and that centralization is especially provoked by rival Saudi attempts at centralizing Sunni Islam–—an attempt which Egypt fights ferociously, seeing itself as a seat of Sunni Islam scholarship. With Turkey’s likely entrance into the battle for Sunni leadership, Iran cannot ignore the need for a similar process in the Shia world. So far, Iran’s long-term imperial ambitions seem fairly certain—and nuclear fission is an important step toward cementing those ambitions.

Israel must disperse its communities and economic infrastructure, and legislate the immediate destruction of all Muslim targets if attacked.

MAD deterrence would generally work even with Muslims, but there is a possibility of some Islamic nut ordering a nuclear attack on Tel Aviv, especially a terrorist nut who fears no reprisal—and indeed would welcome an Israeli reprisal against infidel governments in Arab countries.

Uprooting the ayatollahs’ regime is the most significant task because they operate a worldwide network of terror. Assassinating Rafsanjani is important—he worked on nukes even in Khomeini’s time, despite his fatwa. Instead of banning travel to Iranians connected with its nuclear program, assassinate every traveling Iranian official, notably Ahmadinejad. Instigate terrorist attacks in Qom to disrupt the intellectual framework of militant fundamentalism. Crack down on Iranian proxies abroad, and on the companies which work with Iran. The efforts must not proceed slowly because fear of losing power would drive the ayatollahs to mad actions. The ayatollahs’ regime is hated and weak, and the West must exert on it the kind of pressure Reagan exerted on the crumbling USSR, particularly by provoking an arms race by arming Saudi Arabia.

Don’t take me wrong, I’m all for bombing Iran, nuking its underground and mountain labs, and slapping the mullahs. That is important if we are to reinstate Israeli deterrence, our regional hegemony, and most importantly, Jewish self-confidence. Like after the 1981 Osiraq bombing, a squall of international condemnations would ensue and recede to nil after a month.

Strategically, however, Iran is not the problem. Like the USSR in its last days, Iran seems monstrously dangerous, but it is really an earthen colossus. Mounting domestic demands for welfare eat into the declining oil profits. The Iranian drive to export natural gas to Europe puts it on a collision course with Russia.

Being hardly able to bear its domestic economic troubles, Iran provides only a small amount of aid to foreign proxies: a few Shiite schools and hospitals in Africa pale in comparison with Saudi Sunni expansion, and mere tens of millions of dollars in aid to Hamas and Hezbollah is negligible compared to Israeli investment in the SLA or the American investment in Fatah. Iran is still on the offensive for a single reason, namely that no country has mounted a determined opposition to its expansion. Giving Fatah a bit more weaponry, higher salaries, and a green light for summary executions would wipe out Hamas in a matter of weeks. Massive military aid to Lebanese Druze rather than the army, coupled with the promise of autonomy, would do away with Hezbollah’s dominance of Lebanon, incidentally doing away with the Shiites.

Just like the Soviets, Iran can only be understood by emphasizing its cowardice, which in the case of Iran is rooted in the national mentality, internal instability, and the ayatollahs’ old age. Iran has not started a single offensive war in recent history. Too cowardly to fight openly, Iran resorts to proxy conflicts—thus its support for Hamas and Hezbollah—and cooperation with Syria. But winning on the cheap is impossible; it’s only cheap to fan the conflicts. That was a trademark Soviet policy, and now Iran bullies the region rather than threatens it.

Unable to fund an offensive army, Iran purchases defense systems to continue bugging its neighbors without fear. It resorts to notorious but practically useless nuclear weapons. In strategic terms, Iran represents no threat whatsoever.

Empires are costly, and Iran cannot fund its ambitions. The mullahs are overextended, and the populace hates the unpopular regime. Iran amounts to a dog which barks loudly lest it be forced to bite.

In a curious parallel, the United States made a political u-turn and now supports Iranian regional dominance—just as it did with the Soviet Union during its last days. Afraid of changes, American diplomats pleaded with the Soviet republics to stay in the union rather than declare independence. Then the United States accepted Russia’s “natural” hegemony in the region and watched as it effectively converted the former Soviet republics into satellites. The same fear of change underlies Obama’s current policy: he would rather accept a nuclear Iran which promises to hold the Middle East in check than continue the incessant struggle between Israel and the Sunni regimes, Israel and Hamas, and the Sunnis and Shiites.

The resurgence of Iran’s fundamentalists is the remission in their death pangs. Ahmadinejad is the Revolutionary Guards’ only political asset, and too many Iranians are fed up with him—though not to the point of electing his rival. Likewise, the KGB’s fundamentalism resurged in the Soviet Union a few years before its demise when the KGB’s head, Andropov, was appointed the Communist Party’s Secretary General. Speaking of Ahmadinejad, Israel’s best bet would be to shoot down his plane during one of his numerous state visits.

Traditional sanctions are worthless against poor states. They worked against the affluent South African and Rhodesian whites, but failed against North Korea and Iraq. The latter even exported its oil illegally while besieged by foreign troops. The sanctions against Iran deliberately leave a loophole: the United Arab Emirates serves as a shipping and financial hub for Iran. Despite the massive presence of the American Navy in the Persian Gulf, the transshipment of Iranian goods to and from UAE continues unabated. UAE is an American ally so important that, uniquely, it received friend-or-foe codes for its American fighter jets; the only conceivable reason for obtaining the codes is the ability to target similar Israeli planes. The UAE can only continue its role as the Iranian financial clearing house with America’s explicit approval. Closing the UAE loophole would cripple Iran, and the simple move of closing the Persian Gulf to Iranian oil shipments would bring the regime to its knees in a matter of weeks. Israel does not even need the UN for that job; drones and Navy commandos can bring the Iranian oil trade to a halt, given some courage on the part of Israeli decision-makers.

The Iranian regime cannot be changed democratically because the ayatollahs pre-approve presidential candidates, who at any rate wield very little power compared to the chief ayatollah and the head of Iran’s religious council. The West can refuse recognition to the Iranian president on the grounds that he was not elected democratically, as non-compliant candidates were weeded out. In the end, the ayatollahs can be removed only in the way they came to power: through popular unrest. Given the fact that the Iranians are notoriously nice and not prone to street violence, the amount of propaganda and opposition financing must be very significant. The best platform for tearing down the regime is welfare: while politically correct under Islamic law, it would increase budgetary expenses already strained by sanctions. Economic troubles offer the best chance for grassroots opposition to the ayatollahs.

The US-backed Iranian dominance pushes Israel into an alliance with Egypt. We have tried that before—and Babylon has won and ruined our country. Geographically, Iran cannot conduct a major war with Israel, but only with Egypt and Israel. Strategically, our ally is not really the country of Egypt, but its secular leadership. Even the Egyptian middle class dislikes Israel, and the Islamic Brotherhood, the dominant opposition group, is aligned with Iran. A political change in Egypt, which is highly probable, would tear Egypt from Israel and align it with Iran.

While there is no need to be hysterical over Iran, there is every reason to lose sleep over Pakistan and North Korea. Their rogue population and rogue government, respectively, constitute an existential threat to Israel. Unless North Korean nuclear facilities are bombed immediately, and Pakistan is partitioned into a secular nuclear state and a backward Taliban state, nuclear bombs will soon come into the hands of Islamic terrorists. At that point, we will only be able to soothe ourselves with the assumption that a ground-level nuclear explosion in Haifa port won’t kill more than twenty thousand people, and many Arabs among them.

First, we had a carbon copy of Exodus: the Promised Land lay open and European Jews refused to leave for it. Just as 4/5 refused to leave Egypt and perished, a similar proportion died in Europe. Only the Hebrews hardened by decades of roaming the Sinai desert entered the land; the Israeli pioneers were likewise different from the Exile type of Jews. Like in Egypt, our murderers and oppressors were ultimately ravaged. Both times, we were a step from total annihilation: The first time it was the Pharaoh’s order to kill male babies, and later the standoff between the Egyptian army and the Jewish crowd at the Reed Sea shore; the next time it was the Holocaust.

Two years after the slaughter, Jews still refused to build a Jewish state, relying rather on socialist idolatry; and they were slapped with the 1947–1948 war of survival. In 1967, the entire nation again appeared in danger of annihilation: it had been conveniently gathered from all corners of the earth so that Syrians and Egyptians could easily eliminate it. In both wars, Jews won only after they lost hope in any earthly friends: the US arms embargo in 1947 and arm-twisting in 1967 assured their annihilation.

Now here comes Ahmadinejad, eerily similar to his German counterpart: a clown, a charismatic leader, a gifted speaker, completely irrational, and openly professing his genocidal aims. The world wonders what he has in mind, refusing to listen to his clear words. Iran strives for regional dominance, perhaps world dominance, as it builds Shiite beachheads even in the Far East and Africa. Iran symbolically picked up where the Germans left off: at creating a nuclear bomb. Again, Jews are on the brink of annihilation with the whole world against us: no one supports our strike on Iran. We can win this round by losing all hope in our earthly friends.

The extent to which Ahmadinejad is ignored can be seen from the fact that Ayatollah Khamenei supports him despite what would be seen as a vicious affront if it were staged by any sensible person. Ahmadinejad is increasingly adopting a messianic persona, claiming direct revelations from the lost imam and even hinting that he is the imam. Such an allusion was reserved for the Aytollah Khomeini, and even Khamenei is very careful about such things, allowing others to make messianic claims about himself but claiming none on his own. He only can tolerate Ahmadinejad’s messianic posture by taking him for a clown.

Khamenei keeps Ahmadinejad afloat to divert the world’s attention from the clerical regime. Though little is known for certain about Iran’s internal power struggle, it seems that Khamenei uses Ahmadinejad to discredit the Revolutionary Guards who back him. The Guards followed the familiar path of the Russian KGB, from a volunteer organization to power elite, becoming an organization of ideologically motivated conscripts to an economic empire. In the last decade, the Revolutionary Guards have looted the Iranian economy, winning government orders for billions of dollars without tenders. The combination of strong ideology, a huge demographic base due to conscription, extensive parliamentary representation, and wealth has transformed the Guards into possibly the major power in Iran. Unable to confront them directly, the clerical establishment plays along by welcoming Ahmadinejad and allowing him to discredit both himself and the Guards.

The most puzzling thing about Iran’s elections was Khamenei’s early welcome to Ahmadinejad as the reelected president. The ayatollah was expected to wait until the Council of Guardians had approved the election results. Khamenei’s action was scandalous, and it deeply offended many Iranians, permanently undermining his authority and almost making him appear to be the Revolutionary Guards’ puppet. It might be that Khamenei expected a pro-Mousawi statement from the council headed by Rafsanjani, and sought to establish facts on the ground by pronouncing Ahmadinejad the winner.

Neither Ahmadinejad nor Mousawi has anything to do with Iran’s nuclear program. Those decisions are made by Khamenei and Rafsanjani, who as head of the Council of Guardians has the authority to impeach the supreme leader. The fact that Mousawi oversaw the creation of Hezbollah two decades ago is irrelevant; Gorbachev too had been a hard line communist before dismantling the Soviet empire. Today Mousawi is a typical middle-class politician who presumes to know the answer to Iran’s economic problems, which surely are unrelated to Ahmadinejad. Neighboring Arab countries abandoned massive subsidies twenty to thirty years ago, but Iran still clings to up to 80 percent subsidies on gasoline, electricity, and foodstuffs. The Iranian situation is not so much a crisis as an inability to financially support a socialist paradise.

As usually happens with nice guys, Mousawi lost the election. Though Tehran’s middle class cannot reconcile itself to Mousawi’s loss, no amount of rigging can explain the 34 percent vote difference between him and Ahmadinejad. The throngs love Mahmoud both for the massive giveaways and simply because he is one of them.

It is unlikely that Ahmadinejad will arrogate power to himself, developing into a typically Western populist autocrat. During his last presidential term he showed himself domestically to be a hapless official, and showed no signs whatsoever of readiness to engage in a power struggle. His forays into the international arena probably compensate for his lack of domestic authority.

Popular support for Ahmadinejad is conditioned on his powerlessness. The population can afford to vote for a demagogue because it knows he matters not. Fiery words are the best you can get from a president. If the balance of power changes and the presidency becomes functional, Iranians will have the good sense to vote for a more responsible candidate.

The real power struggle is between Khamenei and Rafsanjani. Years ago, Rafsanjani made Khamenei the supreme leader by claiming, probably falsely, that Ayatollah Khomeini had appointed him as his successor. Khomeini actually left no heir, and Khamenei was appointed on Rafsanjani’s word. Rafsanajani’s importance subsequently faded, and now he again wants to play the kingmaker. The idea is to limit the supreme leader’s term, thus allowing Khatami to succeed Khamenei.

Khamenei is not very authoritative; Rafsanjani likely envisaged him as a puppet. That weakness must be an important motive behind Khamenei’s quest for an Iranian nuclear weapon. Trying to maneuver between the Council of Guardians and the Revolutionary Guards, Khamenei will go down. If he is elected the supreme leader, Khatami will reach an understanding with the Revolutionary Guards’ bosses, who are now in business and parliament. The situation is reminiscent of the last days of the Soviet Union, when the generals became big-mouthed, money-hungry, and concerned about military issues least of all. Even a decade ago, the Guards refused to confront the crowds during massive riots. Their unquestioning obedience to the ayatollahs is gone. Basij and similar militias are too small to influence domestic politics.

The Council of Guardians is itself under clerical assault. After Rafsanjani betrayed him and accepted the election results, Mousawi arranged for ayatollahs from Qom to denounce the council.

The ayatollahs today are religious functionaries rather than zealots. Even Khomeini was a calculating, cynical politician, and his successors struggle for power in this world rather than bliss in the next one. Whatever some orientalists-turned-journalists have to say, assured mutual destruction remains a huge deterrent to the ayatollahs rather than an incentive. They were eager to end the Iran-Iraq war, waged cowardly proxy wars through Hamas and Hezbollah rather than open conflicts, and are certainly not inclined to be fried by Israel, whose nuclear deterrence they misinterpret as credible.

Dissatisfied with the clerics, international sanctions, and the slumping economy, Iranians seem to be heading toward moderation.

After an Israeli strike, Natanz will again be famous only for its pears.

The attack would be wrong on all counts.

Iran has already removed enough of its enriched uranium to a location safe from Israeli strikes. The labs deep in the mountains are not vulnerable to attacks by conventional weapons. An Israeli strike cannot stop Iran’s nuclear program completely.

Unlike the Arabs, Iran is a civilized and responsible country. It has started no wars in modern history, and there is no chance it would nuke Israel. Nor would Iran transfer nukes to Hezbollah, as that might embroil the Shia empire in an apocalyptic war with the Jews. Moreover, Hezbollah itself is a responsible militia which, unlike Al Qaeda, would never use nuclear weapons. Hezbollah firmly entered the political process in Lebanon and has substantially kept its promise to leave Israel alone since her withdrawal from Lebanon. Neither would Iran transfer nuclear weapons to the despised Syrians, who are only good at taking Iranian money.

Israel has a target much easier and more urgent than Iran: North Korea. The entire world would applaud if Israel launched a Jericho III missile at Yongbyon. No sanctions, no repercussions, plenty of positive publicity. It is North Korea, rather than Iran, which is likely to sell nuclear weapons to terrorists and the technology to everyone. The feasibility of a similar strike against Pakistan depends on the reliability of our intelligence on that country’s nuclear storage. In any case, under its current leadership Pakistan wouldn’t retaliate against Israel for destroying its reactors even if we failed to destroy their allegedly disassembled nuclear weapons as well.

Israel had already agreed once to a nuclear Iran: during the Shah’s regime, we helped Iran to develop the bomb. Nuclear Iran poses no practical threat and offers plenty of advantages. The extension of Iranian influence into the Saudi oilfields (which are populated by Shiites) could cause major unrest there, possibly even secession, and strip the Wahhabite kingdom of the revenues it uses to promote militant Islam worldwide. A nuclear exchange between Iran and the Saudis, in which the latter would use Pakistani nuclear bombs, would bleed the Muslim world.

Likewise with Egypt. The IAEA found traces of weapons-grade uranium near the Egyptian reactors, confirming our long-standing suspicion that Egypt is runing a low-profile military nuclear program, slowly accumulating weapons-grade uranium with its research reactors. The Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt’s only untainted political organization, will come to power the moment the government is weakened. Mubarak violated an old agreement with the Brotherhood which allowed it to run in municipal elections but not for the parliament. After the government grossly rigged the elections, the Muslim Brotherhood vowed to sweep into parliament. No doubt the Brotherhood will use nuclear weapons to deter Israel from repressing Hamas, its subsidiary organization. A nuclear Iran would keep Egypt preoccupied with more urgent concerns than Israel, especially since the Sunni Muslim Brotherhood won’t get along with Shiite Iran.

Iran was not very aggressive even under Khomeini. Both Iran and Iraq dragged each other into the war rather than started it deliberately. Hezbollah was created to help Lebanese Shia against hostile Arabs rather than to extinguish the Jewish state. Iran only developed very close relations with Hamas in recent years, after the group became moderate by terrorists’ standards. Iran’s strong relationship with Syria is religiously motivated to allow Shiites unhindered pilgrimage to the tombs of the imams, which are located in Syria. If weaning Syria away from Iran is of any importance, that can be easily achieved by offering Syria a bit more than is currently provided by Iran; an amount in the range of $1.5 billion a year would do.

Unlike the Arabs, Iranians are nice and smart, not prone to violence. Though Western media reported a million people taking part in post-election riots, not even a hundred thousand people could fit into the streets of Tehran. Iran was the only Muslim country whose population demonstrated spontaneously in support of the United States after 9/11. Unlike the Arabs, Iranians overwhelmingly reject Islamic terrorism; they despise Arabs, especially Palestinians. Unlike Sunni Muslims, Iranians attach very little importance to Jerusalem. A lack of agreement with Iran renders any Saudi peace offer empty of content, while an agreement with Iran makes peace with the Saudis and Syria unimportant.

For the last three thousand years we have periodically joined the Persians against other enemies, and joined Egypt against the Persians. A Kenyan president of the United States might imagine lasting peace, but we know better: in this region, only hatreds last. Actually, that is true of any region.

The Persians helped us to capture Jerusalem fifteen centuries ago, and might be no less useful today.