Israel vis a vis the Arab Spring/Summer/Winter…………….
November 18, 2011
I, myself, have been in Israel - I served 2 3-week volunteer stints in the IDF - Israeli Defense Forces! 1987 and 1988. I have a son-in-law who says, "If you want to differentiate yourself from the crowd, just stand out there and ask 'Who else here present can say his mother-in-law served in the Israeli Army?????'"
Here's how it happened: I first went to Russia in 1984." I was Catholic, although I had been thrown out of Georgetown for telling them they didn't teach the Catholic faith, after which I was rather out in the cold with 7 children to raise, and I found a solution to that in the community that was at that time newly formed around Herbert Schwartz (who was quintessentially Jewish - to this day Jewish people take me for Jewish, and this was true even in Israel), where we lived 16 years.
After his repose in 1980 I went to Russia, and when I went into the churches, I was like: Hey, I haven't experienced this level of religious enthusiasm since I was growing up in our Southland, and my maid used to take me to her church - until my other found out about it! So I wanted to go back for more, but in those days there was no opportunity, but I found out that the only Russian convent was in Jerusalem, so of course I went there. I have never been one to plan ahead, so I just took things as they came. It was actually only in the airport as they were sorting us out for boarding that I realized I was among Jews! I felt right at home, and related to the fabulous lox and bagels El Al was famous for, as also how they play the national anthem as you land!
However, my time there (6 months) was definitely taken up with finding a place among the Russians (I think Gorbachev came in while I was there -- or thereabout) so I had my hands full! At the end of my stay I thought, hey, I have been here all this time, and I know nothing about the country, and I discovered you could cheapen your El Al flight (as well as get preferred treatment, I discovered), if you signed up for their IDF volunteer program. They put it in motion after whatever war they fought when Jews from all over the world (US especially, of course), were flying in to join the battle, but the Israelis had no mechanism for getting this flash flood of personnel into the military mix, so the they mostly just cluttered the airport....
The first time I served we packed the soldiers’ packages of supplies like soap, shaving cream, and also dry staples like beans - the IDF being so small and scattered, they have no huge centers to supply a regiment, etc. The second time, we worked in a geriatric hospital maintained by the government. I found it typically Israeli that they could come up with such a scheme where we were actually able to make a substantial contribution with no "special training".
The IDF volunteer program was also BIG on PR - we had very interesting lectures (some devoted to teaching us popular songs and dances!), day long sight seeing trips (of course we "swam" in the Dead Sea - it feels like silk), AND they place you with an Israeli family for a weekend if you want. That I found VERY informative! (We had plenty of free evenings also, my friends were a young crowd of French speaking Europeans who kept at me to go with them to Jerusalem to the night clubs -- which i declined, although I spent some time afterward sight-seeing with one of the guys, I showed him Bethlehem and he actually got me into what he SAID was the Yeshiva school!!! Whatever, everybody took me for a full blooded Jew, even there!
But over the 3 years I was there (several months each visit) Israel was already changing. In the IDF itself it was stressed that it is against international law for a nation at war to colonize captured territory, and although it was generally known that settlements were going up, they officially denied that such was the case -- and I felt the IDF was in good faith, as the settlements were at that time “under the wire”, and contrary to official government policy. The situation was, after all, ambiguous on various scores.
At the base where most of our group consisted of young people, there was stationed a Russian soldier, and my friends wanted me to meet him and "speak Russian" (not that that was any more of a desideratum for me than bar hopping in Jerusalem!!!) - but he avoided me like the plague!!! In time I discovered that, due to the good offices of those groups who were so hell bent on getting Jews out of Russia to "freedom" in --- well it was supposed to be Israel, but plenty stopped off in Vienna and found their way elsewhere: here in the US for instance. I met a Russian girl who was deported by the Russians for being in a peace march -- they gave her a week to get out of the country -- and her papers ended up in Tel Aviv where I picked them up for her on one of my trips as she was divorced (in Russia) and wanted to re-marry here. The situation did have its comic side: I thought it was like when Andy Young, recently the black Mayor of Atlanta and previously our UN Ambassador, was in this latter capacity sent to So Africa still under apartheid, they just declared him an honorary white man! So any Russian the Soviets at that time they wanted out, they in effect dubbed an honorary Jew. The side that was not so funny is that a lot of those prisoners the Amnesty International et al got out of the jails were - some of them genuinely Jews, some not – and not a few were common criminals of the worst sort. Some of the latter with international reputations, I'm talking about what came to be called the Russian Mafia, although many Russians call it the Jewish Mafia. Whatever, a Russian Jewish soldier in the IDF had very good reason to keep considerable distance from an American known as having spent time in Russia!
Then there was the weekend I asked to be placed with a "religious" family. And, by the way, when a Jew in Israel is "religious" that designation has little to do with being God-fearing, or with God at all. What it means is that they believe that all of the land of "Judea and Samaria" belongs rightly to the State of Israel - never mind that no maps exist de-limiting what the extent is ...... or ever was.
When I managed to spend Shabbat with the "religious" family, I thought it would be a good chance to go to the Orthodox synagogue (I went with my young IDF friends to a Conservative Synagogue) -- but the mother said it was not her habit, only the American women went. But that was my purpose for the weekend, so the 12 year old daughter who spoke “fluent” English was assigned to me, and she dutifully clung to me the whole time, constantly repeating like a mantra that "it's our land, not theirs [the Palestinians - "them" in common Israeli parlance] and we have to take it from them." No matter that the Palestinians have lived there since long before Abraham, even…
So after the evening synagogue service, the 12 year old dutifully kept repeating her mantra as we waited for a good hour or more before the father came to walk us home. He apologized to me, saying there were problems with Arabs from their nearby town (which probably dated back how many centuries???), and I said, trying to sound at least non-judgmental, if not sympathetic, "Yes, I understand, you have to talk to them...." I don't want to attempt a description of the grimace on his face as he hissed, "NO!!!! You can't TALK to them ...... " as he made like to sever a head from a body. It was chillingly frightening to me.
By my third visit galloping inflation had set in (everything was already several times as much – much more than in the US) and whereas English had been the language most overheard when I first came, already with my 2nd visit Russian was what you heard everywhere. It was during my 2nd stay there was a young Russian priest at the Mission, whom I had become very close to, as my spiritual father who was the head of the Russian Mission had to be very discreet - that's when I learned how clever Russians are about finding non-verbal ways to communicate - but the young priest was not under the same spotlight, so we became very good friends. One afternoon I phoned and asked to speak to him, and the nun made me wait -- and when my spiritual father came on the line he said, "He has died. Please pray for him." And hung up; what more was there to say?
I never at any time asked the Russians any questions. I figured they would tell me what i needed to know - and I was very wary of the possibility that I might tell something I shouldn't in a casual conversation, just because I didn't know it was sensitive information. It was 10 years or so before I learned from someone in the church in New York that my spiritual father grew up in one of the most infamous of the huge Soviet "camps" - the Russians call them "prison cities". But the morning after that phone call, I went to the mission and the large double doors had something in Hebrew written in huge letters in thick red paint that simulated dripping blood. I asked a lady passing by if she could read it, and when she glanced up, she gasped, "Kakh!!!!!" and ran off before I could ask more. In due time I learned that my friend was stabbed as he was carrying water from Jacob's Well by a Jewish - uh radical, I guess you could say. Rabbi Meyer Kahane - a NY Jew by background, I believe - founded Kakh, which at that time was honored in Israel as on of their political parties, it had its own seat in the Knesset! After this – uh “incident”, it was outlawed, but, like so much else in Israel, the settlements, for instance, it just morphed into Eiyal - and was responsible for the assassination of Prime Minister Rabin some years later.
So – to address the question you asked -- I would say that when I first went to Israel, it was not at all the case that Israeli Jews were disliked, maybe the people I knew were unlike those you have come into contact with. But every culture has its hard core fanatics, the form this took in Israel being that they tend to be convinced that they and only they, are God's Chosen People. The first year I was there, I became good friends with a Catholic priest who was Jewish, living in the rooming house I stayed in, run by a Catholic religious order. The category "sabra", those born in Israel, was just morphing into existence, but this priest was over 80, born in Jerusalem, he grew up there, and went to the Catholic school in their Latin Patriarchate in the Old City - where, he told me, he cut off his forelocks and became Catholic. And because he was Catholic, the Israelis said he was not Jewish and took away his citizenship! He fought back and because he had played an important role in the early days of the country he was for this reason re-instated -- but it took some years, and he told me of others in the same situation who were not so successful.
My own personal take on it is that the Jews are Jews because God chose them as the people from whom His Son, the Messiah, would be born. It has nothing at all to do with whether or not they were the ones who "crucified" Him - Herbert Schwartz used to say, “sure the Jews crucified Jesus, but they did it in 3 hours -- while the goyim have kept on crucifying Him for 2 thousand years!!” The point to be made about the present day Jews is that the sole reason, absolutely the ONLY reason they are God's Chosen People, is that God chose them that they might be the people from whom the Messiah would be born. So I just think it is unthinkable that God is going to let the Israeli establishment get away with -- well, just for starters, taking the land of Palestine for their own, when it was the ONLY Arab people that were predominantly Christian before the Israelis got on their present kick. Iran, for instance, was a friendly country when I was growing up, "Persian" denoted something rare, valuable, civilized. At the present moment, that liar Netanyahu -- as Obama and Sarkozy agree! -- well, for one thing, has been spreading lies about Iran, and then, having furrowed the fields, plays a nuclear double-dee-dare game with Iran that would risk igniting a nuclear holocaust that would make all the horror of all the wars ever fought up to now look like child's play if the noble Persians didn't have the human decency to keep from being drawn into such an obvious trap.
The Arab Spring is going to be the time the Arab Christians will come into their own! The Antiochian Patriarchate actually by right should take precedence over Rome! When I started going to the Catholic Church and the St. Andrews Missal was in use, they had 2 identical Masses, St. Peter's Chair in Rome, and St. Peter's Chair in Antioch, the latter being earlier than Rome as to the time of its founding. Antioch also was where they were first called Christians (Acts 11:12) so Antioch together with Alexandria, constituted the 2 pillars of the early Church, Rome was factored in later, and only on the basis of her political clout. I mean, St. Peter was the first among the disciples, but the first Patriarchate St. Peter founded was actually Antioch, not Rome, which came later.
And Pat. Kirill of Moscow just returned from his visit to the Antiochian Patriarch, whose see is in Damascus since Antioch was taken over by the Ottomans, and now is in Turkey. The Patriarchate in Damascus is, however, on the "Street Called Straight" to which St. Paul was directed after his miraculous conversion, see Acts 9:10-19. Pat. Kirill has been doing his visits according to the diptychs, first he went to Istanbul, then to Alexandria, and this year to Antioch.
Well, we will just wait and see how it all rolls out from here.
Herewith my e-mail which preceded the above, the response to which motivated me to write it:
PREFACE:
Actually, the preface is so long, I’m going to append it at the end instead of wearying you at the very beginning.
STATE OF THE QUESTION:
Sunday, Nov. 13, 2011
Was Israel Behind a Deadly Explosion at an Iranian Missile Base?
By Karl Vick / Jerusalem
Israeli newspapers on Sunday were thick with innuendo, the front pages of the three largest dailies dominated by variations on the headline "Mysterious Explosion in Iranian Missile Base." Turn the page, and the mystery is answered with a wink. "Who Is Responsible for Attacks on the Iranian Army?" asks Maariv, and the paper lists without further comment a half-dozen other violent setbacks to Iran's nuclear and military nexus. For Israeli readers, the coy implication is that their own government was behind Saturday's massive blast just outside Tehran. It is an assumption a Western intelligence source insists is correct: the Mossad — the Israeli agency charged with covert operations — did it. "Don't believe the Iranians that it was an accident," the official tells TIME, adding that other sabotage is being planned to impede the Iranian ability to develop and deliver a nuclear weapon. "There are more bullets in the magazine," the official says.
The powerful blast or series of blasts — reports described an initial explosion followed by a much larger one — devastated a missile base in the gritty urban sprawl to the west of the Iranian capital. The base housed Shahab missiles, which, at their longest range, can reach Israel. Last week's report from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said Iran had experimented with removing the conventional warhead on the Shahab-3 and replacing it with one that would hold a nuclear device. Iran says the explosion was an accident that came while troops were transferring ammunition out of the depot "toward the appropriate site." (See why ties between the U.S. and Iran are under threat.)
The explosion killed at least 17 people, including Major General Hassan Moqqadam, described by Iranian state media as a pioneer in Iranian missile development and the Revolutionary Guard commander in charge of "ensuring self-sufficiency" in armaments, a challenging task in light of international sanctions.
Coming the weekend after the release of the unusually critical IAEA report, which laid out page upon page of evidence that Iran is moving toward a nuclear weapon, the blast naturally sharpened concern over Israel's threat to launch airstrikes on Iran's nuclear facilities. Half the stories on the Tehran Times website on Sunday referenced the possibility of a military strike, most warning of dire repercussions.
But the incident also argued, maybe even augured, against an outright strike. If Israel — perhaps in concert with Washington and other allies — can continue to inflict damage to the Iranian nuclear effort through covert actions, the need diminishes for overt, incendiary moves like air strikes. The Stuxnet computer worm bollixed Iran's centrifuges for months, wreaking havoc on the crucial process of uranium enrichment.
And in Sunday's editions, the Hebrew press coyly listed what Yedioth Ahronoth called "Iran's Mysterious Mishaps." The tallies ran from the November 2007 explosion at a missile base south of Tehran to the October 2010 blast at a Shahab facility in southwestern Iran, to the assassinations of three Iranian scientists working in the nuclear program — two last year and one in July. ""(See photos of the semiofficial view of Iran.)
At the very least, the list burnishes the mystique of the Mossad, Israel's overseas spy agency. Whatever the case-by-case reality, the popular notion that, through the Mossad, Israel knows everything and can reach anywhere is one of the most valuable assets available to a state whose entire doctrine of defense can be summed up in the word deterrence. But it doesn't mean Israel is the only country with a foreign intelligence operation inside Iran. The most recent IAEA report included intelligence from 10 governments on details of the Iranian nuclear effort. And in previous interviews, Western security sources have indicated that U.S. and other Western intelligence agencies have partnered with Israel on covert operations inside Iran. Sometimes the partner brings specific expertise or access. In other cases, Iranian agents on the ground who might harbor misgivings about Israel are allowed to believe they are working only with another government altogether.
Saturday's blast was so powerful it was felt 25 miles away in Tehran, and so loud that one nearby resident with combat experience thought he had just heard the detonation of an aerial bomb. "Frankly it did not sound like an arms depot from where I was because when one of those goes off, it is multiple explosions over minutes, even hours depending on the size of the facility," the resident says. "All I heard was one big boom. I was sure from the quality of the noise that anyone in its immediate vicinity was dead. Something definitely happened, but I would not trust the [Revolutionary] Guards to be absolutely forthcoming as to what it was."
— With reporting by Aaron J. Klein / Tel Aviv
RESPONSE:
Covert Warfare Raises Risks of Retaliation, and Conflagration
Posted by TONY KARON Monday, November 14, 2011 at 11:27 pm
If Iran's leaders actually believe their official insistence that last weekend's blast at the Bid Ganeh Revolutionary Guard Corps missile base was an accident, the event is unlikely to make any difference to regional stability. But if Iran, instead, believes claims -- and widely held suspicions in Tehran -- that the blast, which killed 17 Iranian guardsmen including a senior commander, was the work of Israel's Mossad security agency reported by my TIME colleagues Karl Vick and Aaron Klein and a growing chorus of innuendo in the Israeli media, the region could be in for a sharp uptick in turbulence.
Iranian analyst Kaveh Afrasiabi notes that officials in Tehran suspect foul play not only in the Bid Ganeh blast, but also in the death under suspicious circumstances in a Dubai hotel of the son of a prominent former Revolutionary Guards commander, and suggests that if these are deemed hostile events, pressure will grow on the Iranian leadership to retaliate.
Iran has over the past couple of years absorbed a series of covert warfare blows directed against its nuclear program -- assassinations of its scientists, sabotage of facilities and, most damaging, the Stuxnet computer worm that invaded and hobbled its uranium-enrichment centrifuge system -- which Tehran's leaders believe were largely the work of the Israelis, possibly in conjunction with other Western intelligence agencies. And tensions are rising as Israel threatens military action to stop a program whose potential military dimension was highlighted last week by the IAEA.
Thus far, however, Tehran has declined any significant retaliation for actions it clearly perceives as provocations. Some of the spin in Washington had floated the idea that the recent used car salesman-embassy bombing plot was, in fact, an instance of Iranian retaliation, but there are far too many grounds for skepticism over those allegations to suggest that Iran's capabilities had been reduced to such buffoonery. A more prudent explanation might be that Iran has until now restrained itself from retaliating for covert actions against its nuclear program, sensing that these might, in fact, be designed to provoke Iranian acts of retaliation that would, in turn, serve as a pretext for a full-blown military attack on Iran and its nuclear facilities.
"The Iranians believe that the recent assassinations have been at the hands of Israel," Dr. Trita Parsi, president of the National Iranian Council and author of A Single Roll of the Dice: Obama's Diplomacy With Iran, explained by email on Monday. "Yet, curiously, Western officials tell me that there have been no signs of any Iranian retaliation. Is it because they can't retaliate (unlikely) or because they are deliberately avoiding an escalation that they may believe to be a trap?"
Parsi argues that the Iranians may believe their nuclear program can't be seriously disrupted by sanctions and covert attacks. "If so, retaliating against the assassinations and risking an escalation may be less attractive to Tehran compared to continuing a status quo where Iran faces painful sanctions and pressure, but can still outpace the problems these punitive measures inflict on their nuclear program. However, this calculation may not hold as the intensity of the sabotage campaign increases. And that may just be the Israeli gamble."
It would certainly be more difficult for the leadership in Tehran to refrain from answering a painful slap at the IRGC, the military core of the regime's strength, than it has been to insist on restraint in the face of Stuxnet and the murder of scientists. If, indeed, the blast at Bid Ganeh was more than an accident, its purpose -- besides ""striking a minor blow at Iran's ability to project power -- would be to provoke retaliation. And, of course, any steps that Iran took in retaliation would likely provoke further escalation -- both overt and or even covert -- from those targeted by Tehran. As the unnamed diplomat who briefed my TIME colleagues noted, there may be more attacks in the works -- or, in his words, "There are more bullets in the magazine."
Despite their obvious glee at the results of the explosion -- "may there be more like it," enthused Defense Minister Ehud Barak on being asked for comment -- Israeli officials are not claiming responsibility. Still, among those in Israel's security establishment most opposed to air strikes on Iran, the alternative usually includes covert action. And although the Israelis insist they have given the U.S. no assurance that Washington will be informed ahead of any Israeli air strike on Iran, any escalation of covert warfare entirely sidesteps the debate in Washington and other capitals on whether to launch an unprovoked conventional military assault on Iranian nuclear facilities. Right now, despite keeping the threat of bombing Iran's facilities proverbially "on the table", the Obama Administration -- guided by its military -- appears loathe to pursue a course of action that it believes would, at best, only delay the Iranians by up to three years, but would risk substantial costs to U.S. and Israeli interests, and global oil supplies. And Israel's closest European allies on Iran, Germany and France, have come out strongly against Israel initiating hostilities.
But if the Iranians started a war -- or were perceived to be starting a war -- that calculus could change. Two years ago, Aluf Benn, now the editor of the Israeli daily Haaretz, suggested that an act of provocation might be Israel's route to a military strike on Iran: "It is usually assumed," Benn wrote, "that Israel will seek to repeat the 1981 bombing of the nuclear reactor in Iraq. This is only one scenario and not a likely one. There are other possibilities to consider: a war in the north [between Israel and Hizballah in Lebanon] that drags Iran in, or a strike against a valuable target for the Iranian regime, which leads Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and Ahmadinejad to take action against 'the Zionist regime.' If Iran attacks Israel first, the element of surprise will be lost, but then Israel's strike against the nuclear installations will be considered self-defense."
That reasoning may prompt some within the corridors of power in Iran to counsel restraint even if Tehran concludes that Israel was responsible for the blast at Bid Ganeh. But there will be others who may not be willing to let Israel continue unanswered emptying "the magazine" described by the Western diplomat in TIME's story.
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta last week reiterated the Pentagon's skepticism of the call for military action against Iran, stressing that at best it could delay the Iranians by up to three years, but would touch off a potentially far more damaging immediate conflict. "You've got to be careful of unintended consequences," Panetta warned. Indeed. But that warning may prove to apply as much to covert warfare as to overt warfare
Read more:
http://globalspin.blogs.time.com/2011/11/14/israel-and-iran-covert-warfare-raises-risks-of-retaliation-and-conflagration/#ixzz1dtYFXDCH
PREFACE:
Behind Iran's Nuclear Quest:An Ancient Civilization's Pride and Insecurity
Posted by KARL VICK Sunday, November 13, 2011 at 10:00 pm
Every nation has its pride, but the feeling runs especially deep in Iran. There, the sense of nationhood extends back 2,500 years, to the time of Darius and Xerxes and other names that Americans might possibly have heard of somewhere — maybe in the action movie 300 — but which anchor modern Iranians to a stream of history that predates every Abrahamic religion, including Islam, and carries real implications for the nuclear issue. For outsiders, it makes the issue a lot tougher.
Ordinary, rank and file, workaday Iranians want a nuclear program. Even those who dislike their government – likely a majority – crave the prestige afforded by atomic power, at the least. A few years ago I spent an afternoon exploring the question with Iranians while taking in the ruins of Persepolis, the ancient capital city of the Persian empire that was razed by Alexander the Great. One man pointed to a stone frieze showing a long line of supplicants bearing tribute to the Persian emperor from lesser lands. "These are Armenians," he said, pointing to a group of three. "They were bringing gifts to the king of Iran 2,500 years ago. And now they have a nuclear power plant. Do you want to see the Indians?" he went on. "They didn't have shoes. Now they have nine nuclear plants."
Polls suggest a significant minority of Iranians – 38 percent in a 2010 University of Maryland survey – also think Iran should have The Bomb, even those aligned with the opposition Green Movement. It's not nearly as clear that Iran's religious rulers share that view: Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who as Supreme Leader has far more power than President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad, has repeatedly said religious teachings proscribe weapons of mass destruction, and some of the savviest analysts, including Juan Cole, advise taking the mullah at his word. (Which doesn't mean the government isn't working hard to master the technology that could produce a nuclear weapon, as the IAEA reported last week. It's entirely possible Iran merely wants the world to know it has the option of building one on short notice, as, say, Japan has.)
When Khamenei talks to his countrymen about nukes, the issue is framed in terms of progress, technology and, most importantly, development. The United States and its ilk, he says, “do not want an Islamic and independent country to achieve scientific progress and possess advanced technology.” He refers to the effort to master the nuclear fuel cycle as the work of “our own young experts” and “the talented Iranian nation.” Even if the findings of the IAEA show that, in fact, Iran's nuclear program has drawn from Pakistani plans, North Korean parts and specific technical advice from a Ukrainian, the point in question is essentially emotional. Khamenei's rhetoric strikes a sensitive chord in a country that feels stuck in the mid-1970s — and knows the world has passed it by. Never mind the images that pour in from satellite television; Iranians travel. They don't even need a visa to visit neighboring Turkey, which with the same population and even fewer resources has more than twice the per capita income.
Being left behind sits poorly with the descendants of a Persian civilization responsible for much of the Golden Age of Islam, the strides in medicine, astrology and mathematics that piled up while Europe was mired in the Dark Ages. And Iranians will be sure to let you know that Persians were inventing things long before the arrival of Islam, an import carried there in 637 AD by invading Arabs, a desert people the plateau-dwelling Persians always thought of themselves as above, and not only topographically. Today a particularly tart put-down of the mullahs is dismissing them “those Arabs,” lumping the clerics with the nomads that brought a faith started elsewhere, and imposed it on a civilization that had after all gotten to monotheism before anyone else: Zoroastrianism, which divides the world between light and dark, good and bad, was state religion of the Achaemenid emperors.
The list goes on. In a Tehran carpet shop, a salesman told me the tragedy of Persian history explained the shape of the paisley, or boteh, which originated in Iran; it looks a bit like a cypress tree. The tree was Iran, he said, and it had stood upright until Islam was laid on top, bending to one side the weak top branches. For a while, after taking power in the 1979 Revolution, the mullahs objected to naming babies for ancient pre-Islamic monarchs – Cyrus, Darius. After all, the reviled Shah had explicitly invoked their legacy with a famous, decadent 1971 ceremony by the ruins of Persepolis. The mullahs also discouraged observance of Nowruz, the spring festival of the new year, because it also predates Islam. In both cases, the people simply ignored them.
None of which is to suggest that Iranians are not devout Muslims. A very great many are, and they — along with the world's 1.5 billion other believers — may well take an attack on Iran's nuclear facilities as an attack on Islam. But for most Iranians, their religious identity rests atop a national one, and that's the identity that guarantees ferocious popular ire against Israel, or America, or any other nation with the capacity to bomb the place, however they feel about the government ruling it at the moment. In fact, as analysts such as Karim Sadjadpour tirelessly point out, a military attack likely would give the theocratic government an unprecedented mandate for power, fusing the regime to the defense of the nation with a fire the clerics can no longer produce on their own.
http://globalspin.blogs.time.com/2011/11/13/behind-irans-nuclear-quest-an-ancient-civilizations-pride-and-insecurity/
Pride is behind both Iranian public appetite for nuclear program and fallout of any military strike on the motherland - Global Spin - TIME.com
