Liberal Talk Radio

Bruno’s suspicion of the Tehran’s role (direct vs. indirect) in Hezbollah’s initial attack on Israel last month is as good a reason as any to revisit my post from last week, in which I flew off the handle on Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and fell into the classic neoconservative trap: letting my testosterone get the better of me.

See, when I saw Ahmadinejad grinning in a Reuters article on the NYTimes website detailing Iran’s call for a cease-fire, I flew off the handle. Lemme ’splain after the jump:

Ahmadinejad and his ilk really piss me off. I think I made that clear. It further pisses me off that he’s been empowered by the Bush Administration’s Middle East Policy over the last five or so years. Very frustrating.

It was so frustrating that it temporarily made me throw the entire concept of realpolitik out the window (I’m generally a supporter of a muscular but pragmatic foreign policy) and instead demand Ahmadinejad’s head, for all intents and purposes.

That I regret. However, my anger was predicated on the assumption that Ahmadinejad was responsible for Hezbollah’s attack on Israel. While Bruno is correct in saying that the evidence of Tehran’s involvement is slim, I think he slightly overstates the case here.

First, the Broder/Mazzetti piece in the NYTimes wasn’t really about evidence of Iranian connection to the Hezbollah attacks being thin. It was about the Bush Administration’s unwillingness to publicly connect the dots for fear of overstating the case and then being proven wrong, a la Iraq three and a half years ago.

While the piece does indicate that the connection is unproven, it does so in the context of the Bush Administration’s political concerns about making the case for a connection. To me, that definitely does not mean the connection isn’t there, rather it is instructive of yet another terrible lesson of the Iraq war: that Bush made a terrible mistake by pinning his Administration’s credibility on such thin evidence in 2002 and 2003, and that, had he not, he’d be more willing and able to take a chance on Iran today. That is more poignant given that everyone who is anyone in the foreign policy establishment agrees that Iran is the far greater threat.

The article also has this quote:

“It introduces a new level of ambiguity into the Iran debate,” the official said. “If we all missed the degree to which Iran has armed Hezbollah, what else have we missed in their nuclear program?”

True. We know that the rockets that are falling on Israeli cities are undoubtely made in Iran. No one disputes that.

That leads me to question what exactly our intelligence sources know about Tehran’s involvement. Sure, they can’t prove a link– but if we missed the extent to which Iran has been arming Hezbollah for the last five years (and we missed it by a lot) then why should we expect to have intercepted the “Go” order from Tehran on the provocation with Israel. That’s not hard evidence– not even close. But it fits.

At the end of the day, and Bruno notes this in his post, Iran’s direct responsibility in the attacks (or lack thereof) is bordering on irrelevant. Saying that Iran is not involved in the attack is like saying that the US is in no way involved in Israel’s response. It strains credulity to suggest such a thing when just about everything the IDF carries into battle is provided by the United States.

We may never find a direct connection between Tehran and the most recent attacks, though I suspect we will. It just makes too much sense for Iran to instigate this fight. Not just as a distraction from its nuclear program, but just as a part of its overall attempt to become region’s geopolitical powerhouse.