We must brace for years of violence in the Middle East: Steyn

TONY JONES: Now to our guest. He's a commentator and columnist who describes himself as "a one-man global content provider". His columns appear regularly in the Australian and the UK Spectator magazine as well as many other places. And you may remember his occasional debates on this program a few years ago with the writer Christopher Hitchens. They used to disagree on just about everything. That was until the US-led war to depose Saddam Hussein. On that issue they are in total agreement. Both passionately backed the US project to depose the dictator and conduct a democratic experiment in the heart of the Middle East. Well the man described as "one of the world's best-known conservative polemicists" is visiting Australia and he joins us here in Sydney. Thanks for being there, Mark Steyn.

TONY JONES: There are so many places we could have started this the interview, but I saw you told my colleague Mark Colvin, that rather than seek to get rid of Hezbollah, Israel should have actually attacked President Assad in Syria that would have been easier, I think you said, to knock off. Was that a serious proposition?

MARK STEYN: Yes,it was because I think there are reasons why Hezbollah is a very difficult thing to do. For one thing, Hezbollah is massively popular in Lebanon and beyond. Assad in Syria is not popular and in that sense, I meant what I said. He would be easy to just topple with a very little bit of effort and then you would have something new introduced to the Middle East and I'm interested in seeing a new Middle East. Quite what it is, where it ends up, we don't know. But it has to be something other than what it is today.

TONY JONES: We'll come to that in a moment because it seems to me that you have this idea of creative instability in the Middle East, which a lot of people find a little frightening, I have to tell you.

TONY JONES: Let's stick with Syria for a moment. You said that almost anything that happened in Syria afterwards would have been better than what Israel now faces in Lebanon, yet what you are really talking about is a war with Syria, a heavily armed neighbour of Israel, which it has desperately has sought to avoid entering conflict with.

MARK STEYN: The reality is that Syria is at war with its neighbours anyway. Since 2003 it has sent large numbers of so-called insurgents over the Iraqi border. I was up on that border not long after the war. It is a line in the sand. They can cross that line in the sand, have poured all kinds of insurgents who have killed, not just American troops, but also have killed large numbers of Iraqi Muslims. So Syria is at war with its neighbours anyway and Assad has not been reined in. That's not a good idea. There's a pipeline of power through the Middle East that basically runs from Hezbollah through Damascus and back to the ayatollahs in Iran. The ayatollahs in Iran are a terrible thing to have to knock off. That would be a huge project. But Assad is a weak man and I think it would signal that we were serious about Middle East change to encourage his swift retirement.

TONY JONES: The problem is that proposing wars is a very serious thing. I mean, thousands of innocent people would die in a war between Israel and Syria and, yet, you openly contemplate it for the purposes of regime change.

MARK STEYN: Yes. I think you do have to be serious. Israel faces an existential challenge. I'm sympathetic to the idea that the reality of bombing Beirut is that you weaken the chance of reform in Lebanon and that's easy to talk about when you are sitting in Sydney. If you're sitting in Haifa or you're sitting in Tel Aviv and you have a third of the population of Israel living in bomb shelters, you don't have that option. Lebanon is a very weak state. It can't enforce its sovereignty and that basically means that if it's being used for cross-border provocations, then other powers have to enforce its sovereignty for it. The reality is I'm not advocating war. This war is already on and it's just a question of which phase and which direction you take it in.

TONY JONES: Let's contemplate what it actually would mean for Israel to go to war with Syria. The first obstacle, obviously, is Syria's armed forces. Unlike Lebanon, it has 400,000 troops. It has an Air Force, it has Russian tanks, a Bulgarian artillery, it has got North Korean Scud missiles and it also has a chemical weapons arsenal. Now, that's a very serious undertaking. Whether Assad is popular or unpopular, the army is backing him presently, so they would fight.

MARK STEYN: But what is the criticism of Israel in this present war, is that basically you've got a sovereign state trying to pinpoint bomb a terrorist group that hides in little locations, in fellow's basements and people's hospitals, in schools. When you're up against, as you say, the Bulgarian artillery - and I'm glad you're impressed by the Bulgarian's capacity in that field because they don't have a great international reputation for it - but the point about that...

TONY JONES: These facts were sort of dutifully put down on the State Department's website when they described the extent of the power of the Syrian military. They are a formidable force. The Israelis are better armed, but you're talking about a major war if you go to war with Syria.

MARK STEYN: No. The advantage of that is you can have the kind of war that Israel is conducting now and getting criticised for now, but instead of going in and trying to bomb the terrorist hiding in the basement of the old folks' home, you can go in and bomb the base at which the Bulgarian artillery is. In a sense, the problem for Israel and for America and Australia and the United Kingdom and all of the countries involved in this present conflict is that we're not really very good at, as we see from the way Hezbollah manages to manipulate publicity in the West, we're not very good at fighting pinpoint targeted wars against terrorist groups. Actually knocking off a Syrian dictator with a regular army and Air Force would be much easier for Western powers to do.

TONY JONES: You are talking about Western powers now, so presumably you want not only Israel but the West to get involved in a war.

TONY JONES: We've just had a war in Iraq and it hasn't worked out very well so far.

MARK STEYN: I would disagree with that. The think that the fact that Saddam Hussein has gone - Saddam Hussein, who promoted himself as the new Saladin and gave every Palestinian suicide bombers' family $25,000, I think the fact that that guy is gone is good news.

TONY JONES: Let's concede that fact, but to create yet another war in Syria and contemplate the fact that the rest of the Arab world would probably come and support Syria against an attack by Israel, of all countries, is almost too awful to imagine.

TONY JONES: You don't think Iran would, given the very close ties between those two countries, just to start with?

MARK STEYN: Iran is doing its best to provoke America and other countries on every possible front. In Iraq at the moment, in Lebanon at the moment, through its clients in Syria and elsewhere. The other regimes in that part of the world, Jordan and Egypt and Saudi Arabia, have no interest in getting involved in any kind of shooting or at least of all on behalf of the regime in Damascus who they basically regard as on the side of Iran anyway. That's actually the point there.

TONY JONES: But I'm taking you seriously. The point is that Israel would have to come up with up with a reason for attacking Syria. It couldn't simply say we have intelligence, they are sending weapons into Lebanon to Hezbollah and it couldn't simply say, for example, that they are sending terrorists into Iraq. So what would be the reason for Israel to go to war with Syria, the stated reason for war.

MARK STEYN: I think the stated reason for war is the fact that they are part of the pipeline that supplies Hezbollah and that's the reason. You know, the reality is Hezbollah didn't look for any kind of justification in international law when it decided to start kidnapping Israeli troops to start randomly lobbing rockets into Israeli residential areas. Syria didn't look for any rationale in international law when it decided to send in insurgents across the border into Iraq. The fact of the matter is these guys are hung up on the kind of details that will get you past the tribunal at the United Nations. And if we stick to that kind of very narrow definition, not just Israel, but the United States, Australia and all kinds of other countries are going to be in a much worse situation five years down the line.

TONY JONES: But think about it for a moment. The weapon of last resort for the Syrians is chemical weapons on top of Scud missiles. The weapon of last resort for the Israelis which they claim they would use if chemical weapons were used against them, is nuclear weapons. I mean, the stakes here are a nuclear war in the Middle East.

MARK STEYN: The stakes in the world we live in are nuclear war. The reality of this situation is the Israelis did not know how sophisticated the weapons that Hezbollah has been using. They didn't know they had half of that stuff. The reality is that Iran is talking about Armageddon, about genocide and it has had a 27-year pattern of exercising its power to the fullest of its capability. When it gets nuclear capability, it is going to use it, either directly use it by nuking somebody, or use it for nuclear blackmail. So in a sense...

MARK STEYN: Yes, but we're in a nuclearised Middle East already. We're living with the fact of a nuclearised Middle East. That's the issue. The issue that has really been on the table since September 11th is that the so-called stable Middle East in which so many people have invested has been a disaster. It's been a disaster for the people in that region and it's been a disaster for people all over the world. You know, 3,000 people died in the United States because the so-called stability of the Middle East reached out and destabilised the twin towers in New York. The Middle East has to change.

TONY JONES: I want to come to that, but you've slipped out of the grasp of my argument if you know what I mean.

TONY JONES: We were talking about Syria and how Israel would go about attacking Syria. What rationale it would have for doing that and what it would face once it did it and you slipped over to Iran.

MARK STEYN: I don't think anyone in Syria is going to want to wage - if you're worried about a full-scale conventional war against Israel, I don't think anyone in Syria, aside from a few people around President Assad, are in the mood for that. I think President Assad is highly vulnerable to being toppled relatively easy.

TONY JONES: You talk about arguably not by Israel because the idea of Israel creating regime change for its own purposes in the Middle East would be anathema to so many countries and in fact one of the reasons they don't attack Syria at the moment is because they're actually very worried if they destabilise Assad they could end up with Islamist regimes in Syria and other places in their region with their own neighbours.

MARK STEYN: Yes, but the reality is the pan-Islamist identity is already on the rise in the Middle East. This is in a way Israel's first non-Arab war. It's not a war between Israel and Arabs. It's a war between Israel and Persian proxies and not just the Shiites in Lebanon, but Sunni young men in Jordan and Sunni young men in Egypt have decided that in fact the pan-Islamist identity promoted by Tehran - President Ahmadinejad is the new strong horse of the region, as Osama bin Laden put it - that that is actually more appealing to them. In effect, they already have the problem. They're already at war with this Islamist identity. I don't believe, by the way, that is the regime that would be the successor regime in Damascus, but it is still worth taking on.

TONY JONES: That's one of the reasons why they aren't doing military actions, it's been reported, against Syria right now.

MARK STEYN: That was a very good idea and it's something that the United States should have been doing in 2003.

TONY JONES: OK. You've obviously thought this through because if the clear enemy of stability - in fact, you don't like stability, do you?

MARK STEYN: (Laughs). Stability is the enemy. Stability gave us 9/11 and nuclear Iran and Saddam's invasion of Kuwait. The stability of the present Middle East has been a disaster for the world.

TONY JONES: Alright. If you maintained the real problem, let's put it that way, is Tehran, what can be done about it realistically because the United States is talking about sanctions, while Iran is simultaneously rebuilding or building with greater energy its nuclear capacity and it is attempting to build a nuclear weapon. That's obviously clear.

TONY JONES: Are you suggesting there has to be military conflict in order to stop that?

MARK STEYN: I think at some point it will come to that and so I think if you know you're going to be eventually in a military conflict with a certain power, then all you can do is try to control the timing as much as you can to your advantage. I don't think anyone in the United States is eager to go to war with Iran right now. At the same time, they understand that Iran has always believed in exporting its terrorism beyond its jurisdiction. Iran has never been a conventional nation state, as we understand it. The Ayatollah Khamenei always saw the revolution as speaking for Muslims all over the world and, in a sense, every little story we've seen in the last couple of years from the Danish cartoon crisis to this nuclear thing, vindicates his view of the situation that in fact you can universalise Islam as an identity and make a whole heap of trouble for people.

TONY JONES: But how do you go to war with Iran? It is literally beyond the capacity of the United States at the present moment. There's no other country that can do it. So how do you actually do that if that really is the end that you see coming?

MARK STEYN: I think what you have to do - I think there are things that the Administration should be doing more seriously, and that is destabilising Iran from within. Everyone talks about Iraq - the Sunni triangle is this quarter of Iraq that's caused all of this trouble. It is full of bombs. American troops can't walk around there. Why is it not possible for the hyperpower to in effect give Iran a Sunni triangle of its own? There's a Sunni minority in that country, why can't you destabilise that part of Iran? Why can the administration not funnel huge amounts of money, just walking around money, to get the Iranian request discontent that the people have with their rulers, just to get that a bit more motivated and a bit better equipped? There are all sorts of things that can be done.

TONY JONES: That's like then doing what you are accusing Iran of, which is using proxies to fight a war?

TONY JONES: They can also use proxies in Iraq and that for the US is the biggest risk at the moment, isn't it?

MARK STEYN: The reality is this war is on. The fact of the matter is this war - the Iranians blew up a community centre in Buenos Aires 10 years ago. A couple of Iranian Cabinet ministers were directly indicted for that. You think about that. Cabinet ministers are directing the bombing of community centres in Buenos Aires on the other side of the world. With the best will in the world, even if you are sympathetic to the Palestinian problem as anyone. Buenos Aires doesn't have a lot to do with it. If you get up in the morning and go to a community centre in Buenos Aires, you don't expect to be blown up by Iranians. The fact of the matter is they have always acted ex-territorially and this crisis in Lebanon is just another example of that.

TONY JONES: We have to conclude, we are out of time pretty much, but it does sound like your idea of creative instability is going to lead to constant and many more wars in the Middle East. So if your description is correct, we should brace ourselves for decades of violence.

MARK STEYN: We do have to brace ourselves for decades of violence anyway, so we might as well at least try and direct where and when it occurs because the present stability, another 25 years of the ayatollahs another 30 years of Mubarak and 70 years of the House of Saud. It's not a question of what the Middle East will look like after that, but what the world will look like after that.

TONY JONES: Mark Steyn, that's a pretty grim picture. That's a grim view of the world you have.

MARK STEYN: Happier times when we were talking about George W. Bush with Christopher Hitchens.

TONY JONES: But how do you go to war with Iran? It is literally beyond the capacity of the United States at the present moment.

No it isn't.

We have perhaps 5% of our total combat capability engaged at the moment. If we had the political will we could reduce the militaries of both Iran and Syria to rubble, pink mist, and ashes inside of 30 days using nothing but conventional means.

"A serious and irrefutable commentary by Mark Steyn. The interviewed couldn't seem to clue in to the fact we're already at war."

I agree with all of his viewpoints except him saying we could create an Iranian Sunni triangle. The mullahs would easily crush this revolt brutally as the Chinese did in Tieneman in 1989. We have to face reality and that is you need boots on the ground in Syria and Iran to topple these regimes. Bombing them to take out their nuke capability guarantees a major terrorist retaliation with dirty nuke bombs at best, but probably a full mushroom cloud or massive biological attack in NY or LA.

If we are not going to go in on the ground to topple these regimes then let's devote our resources to the following:

1) Energy independance so we can begin disengaging militarily from the Middle East.

2)Massive intelligence expenditures so we don't have a nuclear terrorist incident. We have not fully understood the warring factions of Islam and how to use that to our advantage in the Middle East.

3) We certainly should provide Iran a message that we have a spine using a covert operation that destroys a building right next to where the mullahs meet such as a barracks. That would tell them we have not forgotten about the 280 Marines slain by their hands and that they are not untouchable as they believe they are.

4) Make public statements that we will not hesitate to use a full nuclear attack on the entire nation obliterating them if any nuclear or biological attack occurs by any connection of Iran or Hezbollah.

"MARK STEYN: The stakes in the world we live in are nuclear war. The reality of this situation is the Israelis did not know how sophisticated the weapons that Hezbollah has been using. They didn't know they had half of that stuff. The reality is that Iran is talking about Armageddon, about genocide and it has had a 27-year pattern of exercising its power to the fullest of its capability. When it gets nuclear capability, it is going to use it, either directly use it by nuking somebody, or use it for nuclear blackmail. So in a sense...

TONY JONES: I'll come to that, but we were talking about Syria, not Iran.

MARK STEYN: Yes, but we're in a nuclearised Middle East already. We're living with the fact of a nuclearised Middle East. That's the issue. The issue that has really been on the table since September 11th is that the so-called stable Middle East in which so many people have invested has been a disaster. It's been a disaster for the people in that region and it's been a disaster for people all over the world. You know, 3,000 people died in the United States because the so-called stability of the Middle East reached out and destabilised the twin towers in New York. The Middle East has to change."

The Middle East has to change. I agree totally. It won't be hard, but we have to try. It will be a long term project. Unfortunately, surrender monkeys like the Democrats and French just don't understand.

We have to face reality and that is you need boots on the ground in Syria and Iran to topple these regimes. Bombing them to take out their nuke capability guarantees a major terrorist retaliation with dirty nuke bombs at best, but probably a full mushroom cloud or massive biological attack in NY or LA.

And boots on the ground wouldn't ?

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