President George W. Bush evoked Pearl Harbor to justify invading Iraq, though there was no link between Saddam Hussein's regime and the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Apologists painted the Iraq war, like World War II, as a struggle by democracy against dictatorship, even though the United States and Britain waged World War II not to export democracy, but to defend it. Similar analogies are now applied to Iran. The specter of the Holocaust has been raised; the bellicose rhetoric of Iranian President Ahmadinejad is taken to foreshadow a nuclear attack on Israel. Neoconservatives compare those seeking negotiations with Iran to those who appeased Hitler. But the real parallel with World War II lies not in the nature of our antagonists, but in our attitude to them.

Historian John Dower has shown that, while the Allies viewed German fascism as culturally anomalous, they thought militarism representative of Japanese culture. The Japanese were seen as inherently fanatical, the kamikaze spirit as typical. It was reported that civilians would fight to the death against an Allied invasion. Assuming all-out resistance, strategists projected a million American deaths in a land invasion. The mass bombings of Japanese cities, which killed hundreds of thousands, were motivated by such expectations. Were they accurate? Japan's leaders feared by 1945 that a war-weary population would revolt. Moral choices are always difficult in war, but victory could possibly have been achieved with fewer civilian casualties, had Allied assumptions been different.

The conflict with Iran is still a war of words. But there is a dangerous assumption that the Islamic Republic is irrational. Iran asserts that its nuclear program is peaceful. But many in the West believe that the country not only wants nuclear weapons, but intends to use them. Iranian leaders are seen as religious fanatics, indifferent to death, prepared to launch a nuclear attack on Israel even at the risk of a return strike. Neoconservative historian Bernard Lewis has asserted that the doctrine of mutually assured destruction would not apply to Iran.

The corollary of this argument is that Iran must be prevented at all costs from acquiring nuclear weapons. But if one assumes that Iran is a rational political actor, the situation is different. The Iranian regime opposes the existence of a Middle Eastern Jewish state. But Ahmadinejad did not say that Israel should be wiped off the map, with its intimations of apocalypse. Rather, he stated that "the Zionist occupation of Jerusalem must be erased from the page of time." The goal of returning Palestinian Arabs to their historic home could not be fulfilled if it were rendered uninhabitable. Nor is it likely that Iran's devout leaders would destroy Muslim holy sites in Jerusalem.

I do not want to sentimentalize the situation. It is obvious that the Iranian goal -- a single state covering the territory of historical Palestine -- is unacceptable to most Israelis, hence achievable only through war, albeit with conventional weapons. If attacked, Israel would defend itself, and the United States would support the Jewish state.

But this is not to suggest postponing the inevitable. There are still peace initiatives, some from the Muslim side. The Saudi ruling house has offered to recognize Israel within its 1948 borders, allowing a viable Palestinian state with its capital at East Jerusalem. Loose single-state federations, guaranteeing rights to each community, have also been considered. If one of these options were implemented, Iran might relax its hostile stance toward Israel.

Perhaps; I am not optimistic. The situation may be intractable because the different parties have incompatible aims. Peace has always been a faint hope. But if we start from an assumption that Iran is impervious to negotiation, we should not be surprised when negotiation fails. To paraphrase British writer G.K. Chesterton, the trouble with diplomacy in the Middle East is not that it has been tried and found wanting, but that it has hardly been tried at all.

The Japan Times Weekly: March 24, 2007
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