Peter Hitchens has added another string to his bow. In addition to regurgitating Kremlin agitprop for the benefit of his gullible readers, he now regales them with deranged drivel on the subject of Iran and Israel.
Moreover, he has found a way of weaving the two subjects together into some sort of synthesis. If we lived in a sane world, the result would attract the attention not of a critic bearing arguments, but that of the men in white coats bearing a straitjacket and heavy sedation.
But the world we live in isn’t sane, so let’s pretend Mr Hitchens is and take his turgid musings at face value. In that spirit, let’s begin with this statement that sets the stall:
“For instance, it is pretty much agreed by everyone (except the Kremlin) [and Hitchens himself, I’d be tempted to add] that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was a wicked and blatant breach of international law. But when Israel launched huge bombing raids against Iran,… the silence from those in the West who have angrily condemned Russia for years was so dense you could have cut it into cubes.
“How can this be? There may be a technical difference between invading a country’s territory with tanks and troops, and invading its airspace with showers of high-explosive bombs and rockets, but there is not much difference if you are on the receiving end.”
And so forth, in the same vein. You tell me, is the man sane?
Just imagine an English journalist writing immediately after D-Day, that he couldn’t understand how the same people who had decried the Nazi invasion of Normandy in 1940 welcomed the Allied invasion of Normandy in 1944. “There may be a difference between invading France from the sea and invading her on land,” he would have written, but the difference is merely technical.
Someone less familiar with Hitchens’s oeuvre might think he is merely criticising Israel’s actions, not vindicating Russia’s. But someone cursed with such familiarity would easily detect familiar notes.
In case the author is not only deranged but also dumb, allow me to elucidate the difference that so baffles Hitchens. Putin’s fascist regime invaded a neighbour that presented no threat to Russia whatsoever, violating every international and moral law.
One could say that even Hitler’s grievances against France had more substance to them than Putin’s against the Ukraine. And yet his hordes of murderers, torturers, looters, kidnappers and rapists, have been terrorising the Ukraine for over three years, reducing her cities to rubble.
Even if the Ukraine weren’t our ally, anyone with a modicum of moral sense (a category that demonstrably doesn’t include Hitchens) would agree it’s our moral duty to support this victim of aggression. But the Ukraine is indeed our ally, so supporting her makes sense not only morally but also strategically – especially since Putin doesn’t even bother to conceal that he regards the Ukraine as part of his long-term war on the West.
Still, let’s read on: “Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has also openly said that he intends, by his attack, to overthrow the government of Iran. How is this his business?”
Someone who can ask that question won’t understand the answer. This, though the reply is simple: the government of Iran has been industriously working towards its self-proclaimed goal of murdering every one of the seven million Jews residing “between the river and the sea”.
As part of achieving that objective, the ayatollahs have been busily developing nuclear weapons, credibly promising to use them on Israel once they are ready. The Israelis, on the other hand, have always explained to the world, sensibly, that the size of their country leaves them no margin for error.
They can’t just sit back and wait to be incinerated by Iranian warheads. The Israelis are prepared to do whatever it takes to defend the lives of their brothers and sisters. If that involves bombing Iran into the Stone Age, the direction in which the country has anyway been moving since 1979, then so be it. And if Iran’s fascist government falls as a result, so much the better.
Of course, Russia couldn’t stay out of the narrative for much longer: “Some defenders of Israel’s behaviour respond that it was provoked by various actions by Iran…
“Russia was also provoked by years of eastward Nato expansion and the siting of new missiles in Europe by the USA. But the same sort of people who now excuse Israel’s action – because of Iranian provocation – have always idiotically claimed that Russia was not provoked, despite all the evidence that it was.
“In any case provocation… is not a justification for aggressive violence, in law or morals. Only fools react to being provoked. It just helps to explain it, and to show that morality in foreign policy is so much bunk.”
God bless him, the man can find moral equivalence everywhere he looks, not just between Russian bestial aggression and Israel’s desperate self-defence, but even between different kinds of provocation. Again, this kind of moral and intellectual numbness is borderline psychotic, at least.
Let’s put this in everyday terms.
Situation A: A man wearing a business suit walks through a bad part of town at night. The local thugs, provoked by this apparition from another world, knife him.
Situation B: The same man happens to be armed. When knife-wielding thugs come at him, he brandishes a gun and shoots them.
In both cases, provocation could be cited. But in Situation A, it was made up for criminal purposes, while in Situation B it was real and called for a legitimate response.
I’m sure you can see the difference. Hitchens can’t, or won’t.
He then inveighs against the very idea of a regime change brought about by external force. Essentially, he is saying be careful what you wish for. Weren’t Saddam’s regime in Iraq, Gaddafi’s in Libya and Assad’s in Syria followed by something even worse?
They were. However, that doesn’t mean that any forcible regime change is ipso facto detrimental. Back in 1944, the Allies were dead-set on forcing a regime change in Germany and Italy, and I’d suggest that worked out pretty well.
Iran is different from the countries so dear to Hitchens’s heart. She has a strong, if suppressed, opposition not only to the ayatollahs but even to Islam, which many educated Iranians see as an alien religion thrust down their throats. The older people among them still remember the reasonably civilised life under the Shah
It’s extremely unlikely that, should the present regime be overthrown, it will be followed by crazed Hezbollah types. And a certain measure of outside control over Iran’s armament programme wouldn’t go amiss either.
Yes, well, you see, Hitchens denies that the ayatollahs are trying to develop nuclear weapons. Who, Iran? Not on your nellie.
“Then there is the complaint that Iran is planning to build nuclear weapons. Well, it may be. But back in 2015, with the blessing of the then US President Barack Obama, the West made a deal with Iran to prevent this from happening, called the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA)… The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) reported that Tehran was abiding by these and other conditions.”
And anyway, “Even if the Iranians could enrich enough uranium to make warheads, it could still take another year for them to make a deliverable nuclear weapon.”
I’m sure the Israelis are heaving a sigh of relief even as we speak. They aren’t going to wonder what will happen after the year is out.
“But in [2018] Mr Netanyahu declared that Iran had been hiding a secret nuclear weapons programme, putting it in breach of the deal it had signed.
“Very soon afterwards Donald Trump, then in his first term as President, pulled out of the arrangement. He said it was ‘a horrible one-sided deal that should have never, ever been made’.”
The reason Trump did that awful thing was that Iran was blatantly cheating on that agreement. For once, I say “well-done, Mr President”.
Hitchens says something else: “Mr Trump yesterday repudiated the recent assessment, by his own hand-picked Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, that Iran has not been building a nuclear weapon. US intelligence agencies have quietly been saying this since 2007.
“It is extraordinary for a President to have such an open quarrel with the intelligence establishment. The row suggests that Mr Trump has in fact decided to join Israel’s attack on Iran.”
I certainly hope so. Only US B2 bombers carrying Massive Ordnance Penetrator bombs are capable of destroying the Fordo nuclear complex located deep under a mountain range.
As for the intelligence that inspired Israel’s action, I doubt the Israelis solely relied on the information provided by a US agency led by a silly Putin admirer with no background in either intelligence or global politics.
It’s commonly believed the Mossad is the world’s best intelligence agency. Moreover, as the past few days have proved, it runs a wide and effective spy network in Iran. Surely they had some intelligence of their own, and acted on it because they had to?
But even supposing that Iran was close to obtaining nukes, it was only fair: “But the great irony is that Israel itself has been hiding a secret nuclear weapons programme, which it began in face of strong American hostility (especially from JFK), and has done so since 1966.
“So Mr Netanyahu’s shocked outrage at Iran’s nuclear secrecy seems a little overdone, even hypocritical. So does Mr Trump’s outrage against Iran.”
It’s that moral equivalence again, this time between a country planning to use nuclear weapons for unprovoked mass murder, and one relying on such bombs as last resort to prevent or, worse comes to worst, avenge such a crime.
“And so the double standards go on,” laments Hitchens. I should hope so.
What prompted Israel’s action was hard intelligence showing that Iran’s reactors are already achieving a uranium purity of 60 per cent. Considering that peaceful uses of nuclear energy require a purity of only about 3.5 per cent (bombs take about 90 per cent), one wonders what the ayatollahs have in mind.
In fact, the very same IAEA whose old report Hitchens saw fit to cite, has recently produced another one, concluding that Iran has already stockpiled enough enriched uranium to produce 10 nuclear warheads. It would have been criminally negligent for Israel not to have taken appropriate action.
One can only wonder how The Mail is continuing to publish such blatant misinformation steeped in bad faith and insane paralysis of mind and morals. Hitchens belongs either in the Kremlin or the loony bin, and I’d magnanimously leave the choice to him.