Officials and strategists the world over are trying to parse Washington Post columnist David Ignatius’s bombshell revelation that Defense Secretary Leon Panetta believes Israel will attack Iran in the coming months and is pleading with the Israelis to put off any strike. Had Panetta, who’s developed a reputation for being gaffe-prone during his short time as defense secretary, possibly been a bit too candid in the presence of a fellow old Washington hand? Or was Panetta crazy like a fox, using an influential columnist to make the threat of an Israeli strike to strengthen the U.S.’s ability to rally its partners into putting tougher sanctions on Iran?
That's an interesting idea that Panetta is trying to rally our partners to implement sanctions to preclude the need for war. It is plausible.
But for one thing. Another article from four days ago notes that Europe and Congress have been dragging America along on the tougher sanctions route:
In recent months, the toughest moves to deter Iran from pursuing its presumed nuclear ambitions have come from a bipartisan group in Congress and European allies, especially Britain and France. The White House at first resisted these steps before embracing them as inevitable.
If Panetta is trying to rally our partners for tougher sanctions, why has our administration been following along (and not "leading from behind" by any stretch of the imagination)?
The theory that Panetta is trying to drag someone along works if you change it slightly and assume that the leak was for the purpose of doing what Washington leaks usually try to do--influence policy here in America and not abroad. If you assume that Panetta is actually trying to rally the Oval Office to implement tougher sanctions, Panetta's leak makes much more sense. Consider the same article's assessment of our Obama sanctions policy:
The administration has imposed dozens of sanctions on Iran since 2009, but it has carefully calibrated their effect. Officials fear that too powerful a blow to the world's third-largest oil exporter could cause an oil price increase, damaging the global economic recovery, undermining international support for the sanctions campaign and creating political trouble in an election year.
Careful calibration is stupid when the stakes are nuclear. Careful calibration is just another way of saying gradual escalation of military means to send signals. All either does is give the target the opportunity to adjust to gradual problems rather than a big problem all at once.
So the decoding isn't that much of an issue. The address for who the coded message is more important. And I suspect that the recipient is President Obama and not distant partners in Europe. Face it, the Europeans have to be scared. For years they could drag their feet on the assumption that cowboy George W. Bush would do the job right if all else failed. Now the Europeans have to face the prospect that the only likely military option will be carried out by Israel, which lacks the ability to do a really thorough job.
Heck, the Europeans have to worry that Iran will lash out first as the crisis drags on:
"Our strategy now is that if we feel our enemies want to endanger Iran's national interests, and want to decide to do that, we will act without waiting for their actions," Mohammad Hejazi told Fars news agency.
Which is why I'm not a fan of putting our carriers in the Persian Gulf.
Have a nice day.
