Fasten Your Seatbelts: Sharon, Israel, Iran, and...

The seriousness of Ariel Sharon's health crisis - including the likelihood that he will not make a full recovery - is even bigger news than it might at first appear. My first thought on hearing the news?: Oh no. Now what about the ongoing U.S. and Israeli planning to deal with the imminent Iranian nuclear threat?

As David Horowitz writes in the Jerusalem Post, Sharon has become an almost mythical figure in Israel. Not only will he be difficult to replace, but his absence will mean certain change in, and great uncertainty about Israel's strategy and policy.

In the waters Israel swims in (and which effectively Western Civilization itself swims in with the spread of global Islamofascist terror), uncertainty is definitely not a good thing. Remember Bush I and April Gillespie vs. Saddam Hussein on the issue of Kuwait? One ambiguous conversation and the fate of the Middle East changed fifteen years ago. The perception of opportunity on the part of Israel's enemies (a category which it could be argued, includes some of Israel's more radically left-leaning politicos) is simply inevitable. Some will act in the confusion and leadership vacuum that's been created.

It seems unlikely that scheduled March elections will put an end to the uncertainty that's been created literally overnight and the danger that goes with it. That scheduled Israeli elections happen to roughly coincide with the expected fulfillment of Iran's nuclear ambitions (March) should get the entire planet's attention. Whatever the rhetoric of Iran et al, and whatever the reality in actual Israeli policy changes (or lack thereof), Sharon's decline invites the wolves to circle closer. Wolves don't sit in salons and write essays and sip lattes and debate. They act. It doesn't matter whether or not we think that's civilized. It's just the way it is.

While most Arab leaders were careful to couch their true feelings in meaninglessly bland, diplomatic expressions of concern, others such as Ahmed Jibril, head of the Syrian-backed PFLP-General Command came right out and said what was on their minds: "We say it frankly that God is great and is able to exact revenge on this butcher. ... We thank God for this gift he presented to us on this new year." Nice.

Remember, Jibril is talking about a man (Sharon) who made the single biggest concession to Palestinian demands since the inception of Israel - actual withdrawal from the West Bank. And this is the thanks he gets? No wonder there's a robust right wing in Israel. From this vantage point, I'm surprised there's any opposition to it. Never underestimate the loony left, even their Israeli brethren who live daily with the threat of personal and national annihilation. The PFLP is the type of organization that the Bush-bashers like to soften by characterizing as 'freedom fighters'. Not terrorists. That would be supporting Bush. That would be bad.

Pre-dating Sharon's stroke yesterday, but now largely overlooked in its shadow is Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's offer to host a Euro/Islamic conference on human rights. Yes, you read that right. (H/T: Indigo Red) Despite two little documents and 230 years of people-centric governance both of which are unprecedented in political history, the U.S. is conspicuously not invited. Laced with what has become his trademark: unapologetically forked-tongue anti-Israeli, Holocaust-denial rhetoric, Ahmadinejad continues to masterfully play off the hand-wringing concerns of the left-wing MSM in a way that would make Josef Goebbels proud.

All of which got me thinking... in a semi-paranoid, fantastical, Spidey-sense-tingling, many pieces-starting-to-fit-together but please slap-me-if-I'm-overplaying-this kind of way, that last night's news is just another development that makes massive, violent confrontation between Iran and at least the U.S. and Israel in the very near future much more likely... and soon. The degree to which Iran's sycophantic Islamofascist brethren come or don't come to its aide, as well as what if anything Europe does as this unfolds are wild cards. Both sides are trying to win over each of them (i.e., Europe and the rest of the Arab world). I suspect we will not be as successful as we'd like to think in that regard. That's unfortunate, even as it is inevitable.

Whether that conflict starts with nuclear or conventional weapons almost doesn't matter at this point. (OK, it does matter, but not in the strategic sense - only in terms of pacing and shock value.) Whether they or we are first to strike also doesn't matter all that much at this point. I'm sure there will be those who will seek to chalk this up to a Bush family plot laid out in a Skull and Bones meeting at Yale to which John Kerry wasn't invited (because he was in Cambodia... or not... or he can't really remember). That's shortsighted. The conflict itself is inevitable.

The involvement of the U.S. also seems inevitable. Our actions in Iraq seem almost tangential to it at this point. I.e., finally calling Saddam's bluff and fulfilling umpteen UN resolutions may have helped to accelerate something that was already brewing. But so did 9-11. And Khobar Towers. And the USS Cole. And WTC bombing #1 in 1993. And Bali. And London. And Saddam's original aggression and sabre-rattling in 1990. And April Gillespie's mealy-mouthed diplomacy. And Clinton's on-again, off-again less-than-strategic approach to all things non-domestic...

And on and on and on...

Back to 1979 and our good friend Mr. Ahmadinejad in Iran, who as a young radical helped orchestrate (or at least helped carry out, depending on whom you believe) the unprecedented taking of American hostages for 444 days. Yes, this has been brewing for a very long time. The "Israel off the map" stuff is merely the brutally honest Tourette's-syndrome ravings writ large of the same radical Islamofascist 27 years older, this time with vastly more power.

(Thought exercise for the reader: if the U.S. had acted aggressively to rescue the hostages in 1979 and punish the perpetrators, would Ahmadinejad and his buddies have gained as much power as they did? Should Jimmy Carter be let off the hook for that, much less lionized?)

To bring this already too-long post to a close, let me share something that may seem a little over the top for this day-to-day secular world that we live in. You don't have to believe it. I frequently question how much I do. Just read it, let it sink in and continue to watch the news over the next few months. Ron Graff and Lambert Dolphin write of Armageddon in the appropriately designated Chapter 13 of their book 'Thy Kingdom Come, Thy Will Be Done...':

...it might be better to speak of the "campaign" of Armageddon, since it is not one single battle but a series of events in which all the nations of the world are drawn in as participants...

[Armageddon, aka Megiddo] is actually a series of inter-related disasters...

[Satan], realizing that his power is waning, manages to unite all the forces of earth together against their common enemy...
[emphasis and links added]

For those who prefer a more secular source, try this from today's FrontPage magazine:

The massive stroke that cut down Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon late on Wednesday night (Jan. 4) not only throws Israeli politics into turmoil. It also marks the likely starting point of the coming nuclear showdown that will pit the Jewish state and the free world against the Islamic Republic of Iran. Vice President Dick Cheney noted the inevitable nearly one year ago... Read it.

UPDATE: Atlas Shrugs has excellent coverage noting especially this ill-timed, ominous and probably not unrelated development:

An Iranian delegation expected in Vienna to explain to the International Atomic Energy Agency Iran's decision to resume nuclear fuel research did not show up for a meeting on Thursday, the IAEA said.

Is anybody really surprised? Who's "unilateral" now? As I said: fasten your seatbelts... you might also think about replenishing the canned goods and bottled water in your basement...

UPDATE II: Welcome LGF readers! Nothing like an unexpected overnight traffic spike to uncover the flaws in my admittedly amateur attempt at Middle-East analysis:

• Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, (not the West Bank),
• April Glaspie, (not Gillespie), and
• I especially like the FDR-Sharon analogy re. health. As Churchill noted in his 'Finland' speech: "This is not the end of the tale..."
  

Thank you. Keep it comin'. This is why blogs work better than the MSM.

UPDATE III: The Only Story That Matters (further reflections on Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, evil and the will to identify and confront them)

UPDATE IV: Paul Mirengoff over at Powerline gets specific about the relationship between succession, strategy and plans already (possibly) in motion:

If the threat of an Israeli attack on Iran's nuclear facilities is a card in a larger plan to deal with the problem, how credible will that threat be absent Sharon? If an Israeli attack is the plan to deal with the problem, how likely is Sharon's successor to launch the attack? My guess is that Israel has its strategy in place and, barring a victory by the left, will carry it through.

Or to put it another way (as one commenter here noted), how good of an historical analogy is FDR-Truman in helping us anticipate what Sharon-???? may mean for Israel and the world?