Immanuel Wallerstein: "Attacking Iran on the Agenda?"

[Laughing Mirror]

Commentary No. 217, Sept. 15, 2007
...
In short, it would be a diplomatic mess and a risk of extensive further violence in the Middle East. And if there were no clear military benefits, the advantage to Israel might be very limited indeed. All this is no doubt what people are saying in the debates within the U.S. government at the moment. The only weakness of the opponents to military action within the U.S. government is that all they have to offer instead is further diplomatic efforts and perhaps further economic pressures. Cheney is surely arguing that this won't work either. And he is probably right.

Would it be "rational" therefore for the United States to bomb Iran? Almost surely not, not only from the point of view of the present U.S. government but even from the point of view of Israel. It might be "rational" if the major objective is to change the present political atmosphere within the United States, but then at a very great price.

There are many commentators from the world left who are saying that the United States in the end could get away with a bombing, since the reactions of which I have been speaking would in the end be more languid than I have been suggesting. And some say that the actions of desperate people (which is what they consider both Cheney and the Israeli government to be) is not constrained by the kind of analysis of consequences that I have put forth here. Perhaps! But in my view the likelihood of such "desperate" action to prevail is quite low, if not entirely impossible.

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