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COMMENTARY
October 15, 2011
Showing contempt
Perhaps we are all getting sick of the word "terrorism." The word is misused as if it represented an ideological faction, rather than a method for getting one's way; and at that, it is used evasively, to avoid naming one's enemy, which, under current strictures, counts as a faux pas.What the Iranian apostate Shia-Muslim revolutionary regime is accused of having plotted - an atrocity in a high-class Washington restaurant, whose focus would be the murder of the Saudi Arabian ambassador - was not exactly terrorism. It may never have been meant to work; it may have been meant to be discovered. In which case, it was pure diplomatic gesture, the meaning of which takes a moment to sink in. That this plot was real, and that the details were, in the main, as supplied by the Obama administration (including the Mexican drug cartel angle), I take as given. It took me a moment, however, for on its face the plot was completely senseless. Either those attempting to perpetrate such a thing, or those alleging it would be attempted, must be out of their minds. So how to decide? We have to believe that Barack Obama's people are saner than Ali Khameini's people; or else, where would we be? That Manssor Arbabsiar, the middle-aged, naturalized American arrested (known as "Jack" for his affinity to bourbon), was at the centre of this plot, enhances the absurdity. He was compared to Mr. Bean by someone who did business with him, speaking to CNN; a man who'd be "homeless on the street" were it not for his wife's organizational skills. He was nevertheless caught red-handed shuffling at least the money, and consorting with a megastar in Iran's Revolutionary Guard. If the Iranians relied regularly on operatives like this, they wouldn't scare anybody. Yet here was an unambiguous act of war, against both the U.S. and Saudi Arabia, that traces to Iran's "supreme leader" Khameini, according to State Department sources speaking anonymously but purposefully to the media. Perhaps not, they say, to the Islamic Republic's malicious clown of a president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (leaving an opening for one of their pet "Iranian factions" theories). According to hints from the U.S. vice-president (also a clown, but much less malicious), the U.S. is now showing the FBI evidence in foreign capitals; presumably to confirm what everyone long suspected: that Iran's leaders are (as we say in Persian) "Majnun." Unhinged they may be, but even a detached wooden door should understand the consequences of an unambiguous act of war. For that would be, war. Did the Iranians think they wouldn't be caught, or did they think that, if caught, nothing would happen? The first proposition is crazier than the second; for sad to say, "bad guys" all over the world have been learning that, since the last Stateside election, they can do anything they want to the U.S. with impunity. Unless, they are not actually heads of government, in which case they must watch out for drones. In the Iranian case, the U.S. persists in threatening "sanctions" which are micro-targeted upon specific Iranian individuals, and businesses which do nothing in the U.S. market. When the ayatollahs learn that senior figures in their elite Quds force may be denied visas, I'm sure they laugh. They probably laughed harder when Susan Rice, America's UN ambassador, marched into their New York mission Wednesday to deliver a solemn letter. They know the U.S. has no leverage, short of military force, and that for the foreseeable future, force is off the table. They even know that the U.S. military is about to be asset-stripped, when the current congressional budget-cutting exercise fails: for huge defence cuts automatically kick in when the Democrats decide they don't like the Republicans' alternatives. America has been quitting its thankless old job as "world policeman," with the whole world watching. The greater risk is now being on the U.S. side, as the Saudis have been nervously discovering. The evidence is in their reaction to the plot. They acknowledged it as fact, then added an addendum of mere words. They are sitting on one of the largest remaining repositories of U.S. arms, yet find no comfort in it. They look at the American non-defence of vital Israeli interests, and the quick abandonment of Egypt's Mubarak, for clues to their own future as a U.S. ally. That Iran has international reach, through agents that can sometimes act competently, should be part of general knowledge. There is, for instance, an under-reported Argentine dimension of the plot. The Iranian-backed Hezbollah has a significant presence there, turned against Latin America's largest Jewish community. (A Jewish community centre in Buenos Aires was truck-bombed in 1994, with huge casualties, after the Israeli Embassy was hit in 1992.) But note, their primary target was the Saudi ambassador. That is the key. The fact this mission was to be carried out on U.S. soil, was meant as a gesture of contempt for American power. David Warren
© Ottawa Citizen
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