War with Iran? Consult history.

Iran’s strategic thinkers need to hit the reset button. They have to warn their ruling councils, religious and military, that there already exists a constituency for war with Iran in conservative political quarters in the US.

Worse for Tehran, for a decade Washington’s ally Israel has been pressuring US presidents to go to war with Iran. On the eve of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, former Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres, in a private conversation with me, said, “We are pleased you [the United States] are eager for war with Iraq, but we would prefer instead you attack Iran.”

Today, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is also eager for an American assist in taking out Iran’s nuclear installations. As Frederick Kagan of the American Enterprise Institute notes, Mr. Netanyahu may soon find himself in the position where he must decide if he is to become the Israeli leader who allows Iranians to get the bomb.

But Netanyahu would do well to recall Menachem Begin’s and Ariel Sharon’s 1982 “Operation Peace for Galilee,” a war to crush the Palestinian Liberation Organization in Lebanon.

Israel’s military victory became an international black eye after Israeli troops enabled Christian Lebanese Phalangist to massacre Palestinian and Lebanese refugees in Sabra and Shatila. Ultimately, the Palestinians were the real political winners.

More recently, during Israel’s 2006 invasion of Lebanon to teach Iran’s proxy Hezbollah guerrillas a lesson, it was the Israelis who were surprised by Hezbollah’s professional soldiers equipped with the newest Russian, Chinese, and Iranian weapons. The Israeli superpower eventually won, but it was a “shaky military performance,” according to President George W. Bush.

Now, as Mr. Obama faces an escalation in tension with Iran, he would do well to recall the mistake of his predecessor. In Iraq, Mr. Bush forgot that there must be one overarching, compelling reason to go to war.

The longer the list of excuses, (possible weapons of mass destruction, phony Iraqi ties to the 9/11 terror attacks, the bestial nature of the regime, and building democracy etc.), the shakier is the casus belli.

Conservative warmongers criticize Obama for his quiet reaction to Iranian jingoism. But the president has behaved in the finest tradition of one of the best Republican presidents, Theodore Roosevelt. Obama has spoken softly but carried a big stick. His stick is the US Navy’s 5th Fleet in the Persian Gulf.
  
Walter Rodgers, a former senior international correspondent for CNN, writes a biweekly column.

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