Discussing the unthinkable

Radio and TV discussions of a so-called 'preventive' war against Iran shrivel my marrow. Iran, formerly Persia, is a nation of about 80 million people, the seat of one of the oldest civilizations of humankind. In the mid-20th century its democratically elected left-leaning government was overthrown in a violent coup supported by the CIA and several European powers with interests in Iranian oil. The Shah was chosen by these western powers to rule Iran. I recall a student at the University of Edinburgh in the late 1960s, who had no fingernails on his right hand. When he was a small boy, Savak, the Shah's vicious secret police, had pulled out his fingernails in front of his father, in an attempt to persuade his father to confess to sedition against the Shah. In 1969 the Shah was overthrown and the Ayatollah Khomeini became the leader of a theocracy supported by revolutionary guards who seem to be as brutal and unpleasant as the Shah's thugs. The Shah had aspired to lead a regional hegemony possessing nuclear weapons, and so it appears, do the current leaders of Iran. Leaders of western nations, the USA, the UK and and the EU have imposed sanctions with the aim of deterring Iran from expanding its nuclear program. The Israelis have assassinated several Iranian nuclear scientists. There is increasingly bellicose talk of waging war against Iran to stave off advances in its nuclear program. Such a war would be ecstatically welcomed by lunatic fringe believers in the fantasy of 'end times' and doubtless by arms manufacturers and other misguided or just plain evil people. Americans who still cherish memories of their humiliation by the Revolutionary Guards who held US Embassy staff hostage, welcome it too. Like the Bourbons, they have learned nothing and forgotten nothing - except perhaps the calamitous fiasco of their campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan.  I wonder if these fantasists who are talking about and probably planning war against Iran have thought through all the likely consequences. Have they considered, for instance, possible Chinese reactions, and the fact that world oil supplies would certainly be disrupted, probably for a long time, with devastating economic effects? Have they considered how Russia and the central Asian republics might react? Among my friends and professional colleagues there are several Iranians for whom I have a high regard and affection. My friend Mohsen Janghorbani, a professor of epidemiology in Isfahan, translated the Dictionary of Epidemiology into Farsi.  I admit that I haven't given deep thought to scenarios involving war against Iran, but I've thought enough to fail to visualize any scenario with outcomes that are in any way happy for anybody. If I believed in prayer, I would be praying for an outbreak of sanity among leaders of the world's nations.