Did Chuck Hagel let Obama's Iran policy cat out of the bag yesterday when he said he agreed with the president's embrace of containment over prevention viz Persia's nuke ambitions? He later corrected himself and people are treating it as a misspeaking - but what if it was a slip that revealed substance of actual conversation with Obama regarding Mideast policy? I've always believed Obama is telling a bold faced lie when he asserts the military option is on the table when it comes to Iran - he has no intention of bombing Iran - his goal in pretending he does is trying to hold Israel back long enough so that an attack is no longer an option for them either - I don't think Bibi's falling for that one, but whatever - point is I'd say Hagel just let the truth slip out here [not an intellectual powerhouse, is he] - Obama's ultimate goal is containment and somehow tricking or bullying Israel into accepting that reality.
Remember, Hagel promotes Ike's approach to the Suez Crisis as the way to deal with Israel - get tough with them, insist they comply and they will back down. Problem is Israel backing down on Suez did nothing to heal or simply ameliorate the dysfunction roiling Muslim polities then and still nor did it do much for Israel, a fact which Israel is painfully aware of since you can probably trace the beginnings of the wars of '67 and '73 to dynamics set in motion or emboldened by the way Suez was resolved. Now, yes, war with the Soviets was avoided and one can make cogent arguments either way regarding whether Ike and Dulles deserve credit for that or the likelihood of such a thing anyway - but the Mideast stayed a festering bog spewing out miasmic clouds and sundry other ills to this day. Is Hagel arguing that if we don't press Israel to backdown, force them into an unpopular [not to mention unworkable] peace they will drag us into a big war we want no part of and that a 'Suez' approach is the only way to avoid that war? I don't see it - there's no Soviet-like power to worry about - China's not getting involved - all the Sunni Arab states would welcome an attack on the feared/reviled Persian apostates - and the Gulf Wars have changed everything: the first made clear to all aggressor parties that you don't want to give the US an excuse to be dropping bombs on you and the second made clear to us that invasion and subsequent occupation, especially when it comes to Muslim polities, is kinda hard so you wanna try and avoid such if it ain't necessary to the goal - point being, there's no 'big' war Israel can drag us into [or, at least, not one that likely wasn't gonna happen anyway] - Iran wants no part of a war with the US - sure, Israel bombs their nuke sites there'll indeed be retaliation but I'm pretty confident it will be calibrated to avoid provoking a reciprocating onslaught of American JDAMs and cruise missiles that Iran lacks the ability to get out of the way of.
No, all the Ike/Obama/Hagel approach to Israel gets you is what we got now - emboldened Islamists and Israel feeling increasingly threatened so that chances for compromise fall while chances for conflict rise.
