Israeli Strike On Iran Could Shake Up Regime

The one possible consequence of an attack on Iran's nuclear facilities that nobody ever seems to mention (via Newsmax Insider):

Many pundits and observers have argued that an Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities could actually play into the hands of the hardcore Iranian regime by destroying the pro-democracy movement that threatens it.

That’s one of the possible negative repercussions of an Israeli strike on the autocratic regime led by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.

Those observers believe an Israeli strike “could fatally compromise the pro-democracy Green Movement in Iran, which is the only hope the West has for an end to the nuclear menace by means of regime change,” former CIA agent Reuel Marc Gerecht writes in the Weekly Standard.

“This concern was expressed halfheartedly before the tumultuous Iranian elections of June 12, 2009, but it is now voiced with urgency by those who truly care about the Green Movement spawned by those elections and don’t want any American or Israeli action to harm it.”

Gerecht for one does not agree with that view, writing that an Israeli strike is more likely to “shake” the regime. “If anything can jolt the pro-democracy movement forward, contrary to the now passionately accepted conventional wisdom, an Israeli strike against the nuclear sites is it.”

Gerecht does acknowledge, however, that the Khamenei-Ahmadinejad regime is becoming increasingly fragile, facing opposition not only from the democracy movement but also from senior members of Iran’s clergy who are appalled by Khamenei’s abuses — including the use of rape to “pacify the political opposition.”

The regime “lives in fear of a ‘velvet revolution,’” according to Gerecht, and Khamenei’s decision to throw the disputed June 2009 election to Ahmadinejad has “compromised all future elections. He has permanently destabilized the country . . . We have a supreme leader whom millions loathe and even more distrust.”

So those who maintain that a strike by Israel would strengthen the regime’s grip on power, Gerecht states, believe that “America’s pre-eminent job should therefore be to calm the Israelis down — or, failing that, arm-twist them into inaction."

What it comes down to is just how much the Green Revolutionaries "loathe" the mullahgarchy, how much they actually want to overthrow it and replace it with a Western-style democracy, and what they're willing to do to attain that end.  If "the enemy of my enemy is my friend," it isn't unreasonable to expect that the Iranian people would make common cause with Israel in this effort, as both share the same enemy.  Heck, if the UAE is openly rooting for it, how big a stretch can it really be?

Maybe I'm starting to sound a little Ledeenish, but in a way the mullahs have been running the biggest bluff imaginable.  It's very similar to the one Adolph Hitler ran in the '30s, when Germany was still weak and no match for the British and French.  It's established historical fact that if the Western powers had ever called Hitler's bluff on the Rhineland, Anchluss, or Sudetanland crises, he would have lost face abroad and at home, and the military would have overthrown him.  But they never did, because the Brits and French never challenged him, and by the time they did draw a line in the sand, the Germans were as eager AND READY for war as their feckless foes were not.  Thus did pacifism and weakness make global war inevitable.

The Islamic regime couldn't withstand an American invasion any better than Saddam Hussein did before them (which is what renders nonsense the notion that the Green Revolution is "the only chance the West has for regime change in Iran").  But they've blustered toward getting nukes confident that the West lacked the will to stop them, and that once they had them, that same lack of will would be an endlessly exploitable resource with which they can destroy Israel, cripple the U.S., and conquer the Middle East - and beyond.

That image is what keeps the mullahgarchy entrenched and the Iranian people hopeless, convinced they are as friendless as the Jews themselves.  But if somebody finally strikes back at the regime - the Israelis if not the Americans - that image will be shattered.

Aren't times of crisis useful precisely because they make more dramatic change possible?  Are your ears burning, Barry?  If not, then maybe you have more strategically in common with our enemies in Tehran than you'd care to let on.  And that'll be why the Jews and Persians will, at least for a while, become bedfellows not all that strange after all.

UPDATE: The tide of "conventional foolishness" is turning?:

A former CIA director says military action against Iran now seems more likely because no matter what the U.S. does diplomatically, Tehran keeps pushing ahead with its suspected nuclear program.

Michael Hayden, a CIA chief under President George W. Bush, said that during his tenure "a strike was way down the list of options." But he tells CNN's State of the Union that such action now "seems inexorable."

"In my personal thinking," Hayden said, "I have begun to consider that that may not be the worst of all possible outcomes."

Hayden said that the likelihood of a U.S. strike on Iran has risen in the face of Tehran's defiance to halt its contentions nuclear program, saying "We engage. They continue to move forward."

"We vote for sanctions. They continue to move forward. We try to deter, to dissuade. They continue to move forward," he added.

The former CIA chief predicted Iran, in defiance of the international community, planned to "get itself to that step right below a nuclear weapon, that permanent breakout stage, so the needle isn’t quite in the red for the international community."

Hayden said that reaching even that level would be "as destabilizing to the region as actually having a weapon."

Nice to see that after - how long has it been, FIFTEEN YEARS? - the pattern has finally penetrated...well, at least somebody who USED to be in the Beltway and is free to speak [ahem] intelligently now that he's on the outside.

But Red Barry, attacking an actual enemy of the United States?  Michelle Obama helming a backyard BBQ grill while wearing an apron that says, "Kiss me, I luv grease" would be more likely.

But....how willing is he REALLY to sacrifice a second term for The Cause?  If things get as dire for him as Peter Ferrara predicts, would a "wag the dog" scenario involving the mullahs be beyond his pulling?