A letter writer in Wednesday’s Wall Street Journal Letters section wrote of the need for cooperation in the American-Israeli war against Iran. He was right that the war would benefit from the cooperation of serious players. He had this, though, on that war:
Making the case to other nations helps legitimize the mission and its necessity.
This is the letter-writer’s misapprehension. The legitimacy of the mission and its necessity is inherent in that mission: Iran is the world’s moneybags for terrorists and terrorist activities, the most significant of which are Iran’s satraps, Hamas, Hezbollah, and Houthis. Iran is bent on acquiring nuclear weapons, which it would promptly use to erase Israel and to peddle to terrorists for use outside the Middle East. Iran is bent on building ICBMs with which to shoot its nuclear bombs at us.
The mission is the elimination of Iran’s ability to build nuclear weapons, the elimination of Iran’s ability to build missiles of any reach, the elimination of Iran’s ability to fund or otherwise support other terrorists anywhere. Those efforts have been badly damaged by the actions of last summer and, so far, the current mission.
This war has cooperation between the serious players: the US and Israel. Natterers, including the British PM and the German Chancellor, though, are not at all serious players.
The responsibility for cooperating with the US and Israel and joining the mission lies solely with those “other nations.” Their decisions to remain absent, to shirk their responsibility to Europe for the restoration of oil and natural gas flows through the Strait of Hormuz, says volumes about their alleged reliability in any crisis.
So far, Japan has signed on to assist with reopening the Strait of Hormuz amid the war with Iran. So, lately, have France, Germany, Italy, and Netherlands after their initial reluctance. The five nations’ joint statement can be read here. The TL;DR is this:
We condemn in the strongest terms recent attacks by Iran on unarmed commercial vessels in the Gulf, attacks on civilian infrastructure including oil and gas installations, and the de facto closure of the Strait of Hormuz by Iranian forces.
…
We express our readiness to contribute to appropriate efforts to ensure safe passage through the Strait. We welcome the commitment of nations who are engaging in preparatory planning.
Whatever “appropriate effort” means. “Preparatory planning” is just a weasel-word phrase meaning “but we’re in no hurry to do anything more than shake our fingers in the strongest terms.”
Japan’s assistance likely will be concrete; the units they send would gain valuable experience when the People’s Republic of China attacks the Republic of China and Japan needs to respond in answer of its commitment to RoC and to protect its South and East China Seas holdings. Those European nations? They’ll be busy hiding behind their definition of “appropriate effort” while they endlessly plan.
