The much rumored Michael Oren / Yossi Klein Halevi New Republic article on the Iranian nuclear program is out. Their analysis of most aspects of the issue is covered by things I’ve written elsewhere, but the very end of the article waxes philosophical in an interesting way:

If [the international community] fails, then Israel will have no choice but to uphold its role as refuge of the Jewish people. A Jewish state that allows itself to be threatened with nuclear weapons–by a country that denies the genocide against Europe’s six million Jews while threatening Israel’s six million Jews–will forfeit its right to speak in the name of Jewish history. Fortunately, even the government of Ehud Olmert, widely criticized as incompetent and corrupt, seems to understand that, on this issue at least, it cannot fail.

The irony here is that, as Oren and Halevi concede, it would be impossible for Israel to wage this war without American support. This means, however, that on the Oren/Halevi analysis, the Zionist project has already failed. Far from a “refuge of the Jewish people” Israel has become, on their view, a menace — a prison, a trap — where Jews are held hostage to the onrushing Persian hordes. And not only are Israeli Jews threatened (not a new historical development) but they’re incapable of defending themselves. They need the United States of America to bail them out. But, of course, the whole point of Israel-as-Jewish-refuge was precisely that you can’t count on the goyim, even the nice liberal goyim of the United States, to do what it takes to protect the Jews when the chips are on the table.

This is the fairly demented logic of the binational hawk movement in Tel Aviv and Washington. The United States and Israel will, side-by-side, engage in a series of endless military confrontations with the Muslim population of the region. This will allow Israel to avoid making unpalatable concessions on the Palestinian front, but carries the price of putting Israel in a situation that’s only tenable with continuous American backing. This serves the interests of “pro-Israel” institutions in the United States along with the psychological needs of diaspora Zionists who can’t be bothered to actually learn Hebrew and move to Israel since it gives them something to do. After all, an Israel that found security through peace with its neighbors wouldn’t need all these foreign advocates.It’s far from clear, however, that it serves the interests of actual Israelis who, after all, don’t have the luxury of just retreating to another continent when these schemes blow up catastrophically.

One tragic consequence of the Peretz/MLK post yesterday was that it put me in the awkward position of defending Tom Friedman. Fortunately, in today’s offering America’s most influential foreign affairs journalist is still playing what Greg Sargent has dubbed the “conditional shuffle” responding to Bush’s proposals by listing scenarios under which he could support them rather than facing the reality that Bush isn’t going to do any of these things. The trouble, obviously, is that were Friedman to acknowledge that Bush won’t, say, hold a regional peace conference, he’d have to admit that the right thing to do in Iraq is withdraw.

And, of course, once you don the Moustache of Understanding you’ll realize that in order to be a Serious Person it’s important that you never agree with liberals.

One of several things that’s gone wrong with this debate already is that to the extent that you care about the possibility of Iran acquiring a nuclear bomb you should become more inclined to favor bombing Iran. The presupposition there is that bombing Iran will prevent Iran from building a nuclear bomb.

There is, however, no reason to believe this. The correct calculation is that you need to consider how much the damage done will set the Iranian nuclear program back — X. Then you need to subtract from X how much the program will be speeded-up by the political empowerment of Iranian hawks likely to increase funding for the program. Then you need to further subtract from X how much the program will be speeded-up by decreased levels of international cooperation in preventing Iran from getting a nuclear bomb. This second point is crucial. The reason Iran doesn’t have a bomb today is that it’s hard to buy or make the stuff you need to get the job done. How hard this is has everything to do with how seriously a whole bunch of countries — basically all the nuclear countries (Russia, China, India, Pakistan) plus all the right countries (Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, Australia, Canada, Western Europe) — take the job of preventing Iran from acquiring the relevant material.

Right now, these countries are taking that job quite seriously. In the past, they’ve taken it less seriously. In the future, they may take it even less seriously. At the moment, one of the main reasons the world is doing a very good job on this front is precisely because they don’t want to see anything crazy happen. Something crazy like the United States or Israel with US support, launching a clearly illegal, unprovoked war against Iran. Launch the war, and part of the incentive to clamp down on Iran goes the other way. And what’s more, sponsoring acts of unchecked aggression are just the kind of thing that makes other states and foreign populations disinclined to police their own commerce in support of your security agenda.

In short, bombing Iran and the following cycle of retaliation and counter-retaliation, will certainly lead to a lot of people dying. It will certainly lead to lost arms. Severed legs. Severe scarring. Bad burns. Mothers weeping for their dead children. Children weeping for their dead fathers. Houses destroyed and damaged. Permanent hearing loss induced by deafening noises. People go blind. People will be brain damaged by head trauma. That we know. The odds of a diplomatic resolution to the various issues in the US-Iranian bilateral relationship ever emerging will almost certainly plummet. And as a bonus, it might delay Iran’s acquisition of a nuclear bomb by a quantity of time that’s both unknown and unknowable, or else it might speed said acquisition up.