Iranian Miscalculation Fans the Winds of War

Joshua Muravchik argued yesterday in the Wall Street Journal that Iran is underestimating the will of the United States to defend its interests -- a miscalculation that is fanning the winds of war. Here's the introduction:

Several conflicts of various intensities are raging in the Middle East. But a bigger war, involving more states--Israel, Lebanon, Syria, Iran, the Palestinian Authority and perhaps the United States and others--is growing more likely every day, beckoned by the sense that America and Israel are in retreat and that radical Islam is ascending.

Consider the pell-mell events of recent weeks. Iran imprisons four Americans on absurd charges only weeks after seizing 15 British sailors on the high seas. Iran's Revolutionary Guard is caught delivering weapons to the Taliban and explosives to Iraqi terrorists. A car bomb in Lebanon is used to assassinate parliament member Walid Eido, killing nine others and wounding 11 more.

At the same time, Fatah al-Islam, a shady group linked to Syria, launches an attack on the Lebanese army from within a Palestinian refugee area, beheading several soldiers. Tehran trumpets further progress on nuclear enrichment as President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad repeats his call for annihilating Israel, crowing that "the countdown to the destruction of this regime has begun." Hamas seizes control militarily in Gaza. Katyusha rockets are launched from Lebanon into northern Israel for the first time since the end of last summer's Israel-Hezbollah war.

Muravchik notes that Iran is taking its "death to America" slogan very seriously, but more troubling is that Iran's provocations lack strategic logic. Backing Hamas is simply digging the grave for Palestinian democracy; sponsoring assassination in Syria is a short-term fix that hardens Lebanon's hatred for the Iranian state, and builds support for a strenghened Lebanese army; and taking American and British hostages simply tests the patience of the Western democracies. Muravchik concludes with some international relations theory: Democracies are hesitant to start wars (and they don't fight other democracies), but they rarely lose:

Democracies, it is now well established, do not go to war with each other. But they often get into wars with non-democracies. Overwhelmingly the non-democracy starts the war; nonetheless, in the vast majority of cases, it is the democratic side that wins. In other words, dictators consistently underestimate the strength of democracies, and democracies provoke war through their love of peace, which the dictators mistake for weakness.

Today, this same dynamic is creating a moment of great danger. The radicals are becoming reckless, asserting themselves for little reason beyond the conviction that they can. They are very likely to overreach. It is not hard to imagine scenarios in which a single match--say a terrible terror attack from Gaza--could ignite a chain reaction. Israel could handle Hamas, Hezbollah and Syria, albeit with painful losses all around, but if Iran intervened rather than see its regional assets eliminated, could the U.S. stay out?

Read the whole thing. History show that appeasement can embolden a revisionist state into conflict. History also shows, of course, that it's not a good idea to raise the hackles of Democratic nations, who wage wars to the end, in defense of democratic institutions and values. (Recall that George Kennan argued long ago to be careful of the "wrath of democracies.")