The Sharia Bomb

Michael L.

{Cross-posted at Jews Down Under and the Times of Israel.}

The tidbit below was written by Ron Ben-Yishai and published at Y-Net:

The way things look from Israel now, the assumption is that Obama has fortified himself behind a small and closed ideological circle. This circle believes in partial non-interventionism and has an aversion to international conflicts – not only in the Middle East but also in South East Asia. In regards to Iran, this circle believes in pursuing a permanent deal that allows Iran to reach the nuclear threshold, while containing the nuclear program in such a way that will bar Iran from ever crossing the threshold or attaining a nuclear weapon without the West noticing.

In Israel, officials say that if this outline becomes a reality, then it would be nothing short of a disaster for Israel. It would mean Iran will be three months away from creating the material it needs for a first nuclear bomb.

I never believed that Barack Obama had any real intention of preventing an Iranian nuke or what I am calling a Sharia Bomb.  It's a Sharia Bomb because ultimately it shores up the security of the Sharia-based regime in Tehran and will be very useful in spreading political Islam as the rest of the countries in the region, even Iran's Sunni competitors, look to that country as the strong horse.  The balance of power will shift away from the Sunnis toward the Shias and away from secular dictatorships toward the Islam-based theocratic dictatorships favored by Barack Obama.

The only real winners here are the Iranian regime and the Democratic party in the United States.   For Iran it's a huge win for obvious reasons.  It puts that country within sprinting distance of developing nuclear weaponry.  For the Democrats it means that they can claim that Obama kept the United States out of war and therefore we should support his successor candidate who, I suppose, is likely to be Hillary Clinton.

The wild card, of course, is Israel.

Will Israel go it alone?  Can Israel go it alone?  Or, has Obama sufficiently subdued Netanyahu and the Israelis so that they do not have the political capital or will to do whatever is necessary to upend the Iranian nuclear program?  One thing is certain, as I wrote in a previous piece, when Obama told Jeffrey Goldberg of the Atlantic that he doesn't bluff... he was bluffing.

My guess is that Obama's real goal viz-a-viz Iranian nukes is to simply hold it off until he can dump the problem into the lap of his Democratic successor.  If he can keep the Iranians from going nuclear until sometime after the next election he will have done his job for the Democratic party, although betraying the country in the process.

Ultimately, history will look upon Obama as a weak president - perhaps the weakest in over a century - who eroded America's leadership role throughout the world for ideological reasons.  As someone who comes out of the political left I can tell you that what most "progressives" want is for the United States to be something akin to, say, Norway or France.  They want the US to become a social democratic state, which it basically is, already - and speaking strictly for myself, I do not necessarily have a problem with that.  What I do have a problem with, however, is that they also want the US to be just one country among 192 other countries, which is why Obama insists on "leading from behind."

No Cowboy Diplomacy for this guy, that much is certain.

What it means for Americans is that the US influence over its own destiny is undermined and what it means for Israel is that they can no longer depend upon either the good will of the United States, nor US ability to get things done.  If the US is incapable, or unwilling, to prevent Iranian nukes it tells Jerusalem that Washington, D.C. is not to be trusted.  Of course, they know that in Jerusalem anyway due to Obama's bungling of the latest attempted round at "peace talks" and his eagerness to twist Netanyahu's arm to do things like release the murderers of Jews into the loving embrace of Mahmoud Abbas and the Palestinian Authority.

This is an exceedingly perilous moment in human history.  Since the United States is proving itself to be, under the current leadership, both weak and undependable, Israel will be forced to take matters into its own hands.  If Israel fails to act, and Iran goes nuclear, it essentially means that the Zionist project is finished.

If Zionism means anything it means that no longer will Jews live or die according to the whims of a non-Jewish despot.  But if Iran gets the bomb the Jews of the Middle East will, in fact, live or die according to the whims of whatever ayatollah happens to be in power in Tehran.  And for that we will owe a big smooch to Israel's Best Friend Forever, Barack Obama.

If, however, Israel does the world's dirty work for it by taking out Iranian nukes, the international community, including the Egyptians and the Saudis, will scream from the hilltops about Jewish-Zionist aggression and the "illegal" nature of Israeli methods of self-defense.  Progressive-left ideologues, of the sort that publish at Daily Kos or the Huffington Post or the UK Guardian, will flood their journals with veiled hatred toward Jews in the guise of hatred toward Zionism and the Jewish State of Israel.

At that point most western-left Jews will retreat into the fetal position, which is convenient considering how familiar they are with that position already.