a troubling question

Wherever you come down on the endlessly intriguing question of what the hell is going on with Iran and the NIE, there’s a much more fundamental point about Iran that we shouldn’t overlook.

Jeffrey Herf addresses this question. Writing in Germany, Herf asks: “Where Are the Anti-Fascists?”

Occasionally one hears reassuring voices on both sides of the Atlantic. They say that Ahmadinejad is not the real seat of power in Tehran, or that he is simply making such threats to mobilize his supporters at home against domestic opponents, or that if he did possess nuclear weapons, he would certainly not be so crazy at to use them against a state such as Israel with its own nuclear deterrent. While I have heard such arguments from political scientists in the United States, many of whom tend to dismiss the causal significance of ideological fanaticism in international affairs, such reassuring tones sound particularly peculiar when voiced in this country. To put it mildly, German politics and intellectual life is not famous for sunny optimism.  …

Why do those who live in a country that was destroyed by the actions of a fanatic in power assume that Germany was unique, and that another country outside Europe could not produce a fanatic of a very different sort, and that Ahmadinejad does not really mean what he says?

[e.a.]

Indeed, Benjamin Netanyahu (who’s been awfully quiet, by the way—have you noticed? what’s up with that?) made exactly this point about Iran a year ago:

“Believe [Ahmadinejad] and stop him,”

No one believed bin Laden either back in the early 1990s, when he was making all kinds of threats against the United States.

Given what we know now—that bin Laden meant every word he said—why would anyone rational choose not to believe Iran’s malign intentions, which it boasts about?