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Drums are beating for a pre-emptive war to take out such nuclear facilities as Iran might have. But considerable caution is in order, because this is basically the same story Americans heard not so long ago, in 2003, to promote the pre-emptive war against Iraq. Although the United States “won” that war, intelligence about Iraq’s alleged weapons of mass destruction turned out to be wrong, the killing has gone on for nearly a decade, Sunni and Shiite factions appear to be going at each other again, and with Saddam Hussein gone, there’s a political/military vacuum that Iraq’s larger neighbor Iran is undoubtedly eager to exploit.
The calls for another pre-emptive war are particularly ironic considering that Iran used to be a friend of the United States. Our CIA helped the Shah secure his power in 1953, because he helped prevent Soviet penetration of the Mideast. But the Shah went on to establish a secular, authoritarian regime that made plenty of enemies. Ayatollah Khomeini became one of the Shah’s most formidable enemies as early as the 1960s. Because the U.S. backed the Shah, his enemies became our enemies, and they unexpectedly seized power in 1979. The U.S. affirmed its status as an enemy by backing Saddam Hussein after he attacked Iran the following year, in what became an eight-year blood bath.
Iranian leaders have done just about everything to convince the world that they are a bunch of dangerous fanatics, so the prospect of a nuclear Iran is scary. But by now we ought to have learned that a pre-emptive war can multiply the complications.
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