by Lev Tsitrin

The title reacts to a CBS headline “Top Trump counterterrorism official Joe Kent resigns over Iran, saying it “posed no imminent threat to our nation.”” To my mind, asking this should be one’s natural first reaction — yet I do not hear it discussed at all. pundits merely talking of “was the threat of Iran indeed imminent, or not?”

Well, a historical perspective should help. After all, what Iran tried to do was to emulate North Korea’s strategy of successfully building a nuclear arsenal. First, North Korea put Seoul — the capital of South Korea and its most populous city — within the range of its artillery. When it started going after nukes, the policymakers were faced with a dilemma: nuclear proliferation is unacceptable, yet trying to stop the North militarily would entail destruction of Seoul. So, may be, the unacceptable should after all be accepted? And that, indeed, was the US policymakers’ decision in the Clinton administration — thanks to which North Korea now has a large nuclear arsenal, and delivery systems capable of reaching the US. The regime has become untouchable.

Iran tried to replicate this, building a missile force that would make the removal of its nuclear program so costly that no one would dare do it for fear of wholesale destruction in the Middle East — not to mention that a planned arsenal of 20,000 mid-range missiles capable of reaching Israel, armed with a one-ton warhead was in itself equivalent to a nuclear warhead (the yield of the Hiroshima bomb was estimated at 15 kilotons) — apart of its ability to quickly overwhelm any air-defense system, no matter how deeply-layered and capable.

Would that missile arsenal be an “imminent” threat to the US? Not at all — none of those missiles would be able to reach America. All they would be able to do is wipe out Tel Aviv — which,  by Joe Kent’s logic, is perfectly fine.

This may be fine by Joe Kent, but not by the Israelis. To them, preventing that threat from materializing is an “imminent” task. Else, Israel would be as vulnerable to Iran as Seoul was to north Korea. Hence, Israel had no choice but to act.

And the US had no choice either, knowing how Iran would react. The often-repeated and much-maligned Marco Rubio comment that America had to preempt Iranian attack on its forces concentrated in the Gulf because Israel was bound to attack Iran’s missile capabilities not only made perfect sense, but was true in the practical manner too. After all, it was largely American intelligence passed to Israelis that allowed for the first decapitation strike which killed Khamenei and many of his top henchmen.

And, needless to say, modern war cannot be run on a whim — it requires long planning that includes target selection, and sequencing the strikes. When military leaders talk of a “five-week campaign” they know exactly what they are talking about. So no, there is nothing conspiratorial at all about the way this developed: Iran regime made itself intolerable both internally, by butchering tens of thousands of protesting Iranians, and externally, by building a missile arsenal behind which it could build the bomb, just as North Korea did. The simple difference was that Trump was no Clinton — and is certainly no Obama who was perfectly willing to let Iran have the bomb — after all, his much-touted JCPOA gave legitimacy to Iran’s nuclear project in exchange for a mere 15-year hiatus in Iran getting a bomb.

And another bit of history comes to mind when thinking of Iran: remilitarisation of the Rhineland ninety years ago. Wikipedia article say is all, right in the summary:  “The remilitarisation of the Rhineland began on 7 March 1936, when military forces of Nazi Germany entered the Rhineland, which directly contravened the Treaty of Versailles and the Locarno Treaties. Neither France nor Britain was prepared for a military response, so they did not act. After 1939, commentators often said that a strong military move in 1936 might have ruined the expansionist plans of Adolf Hitler, the dictator of Germany. However, recent historiography agrees that both public and elite opinion in Britain and France strongly opposed a military intervention, and neither had an army prepared to move in.”

“Both public and elite opinion” opposes Iran war too, as per pollsters and pundits. Which does not mean that Trump is in the wrong. It means only that he understands what they don’t — that threats should not be allowed to become “imminent.”