Andrew Sullivan on What I Apparently Believe

Andrew writes:

One of the relieving aspects of the Wikileaks docu-dump is that Jeffrey Goldberg no longer has to muddy his newly-discovered support for war against Iran.

This is a flat-out misrepresentation of my position. I am opposed to a military strike on Iran for the foreseeable future. Last week, I wrote, of the Stuxnet virus that has apparently slowed down Iran's centrifuges: "It is too early, obviously, to assess how much long-term damage the virus has done to the Iranian enrichment program, but I think it is possible to say that Stuxnet might be the best thing to happen to the Jewish people since the discovery that Scarlett Johansson is an M.O.T."

I wrote this with great happiness because a) I don't want Iran to have a nuclear weapon, for all the obvious reasons and b) I would much rather see the Iranian nuclear program stopped by a combination of diplomacy, sanctions and subterfuge than by war launched by Israel or America. My position on this issue is unchanged: I endorse the view of Admiral Mullen, who says that bad things would happen if Iran were attacked, and bad things would happen if Iran got hold of a nuclear weapon. I believe, with some relief, that we are farther now from a military confrontation with Iran than we were six months ago, when I wrote my cover story on this subject, in part because of the subterfuge program, and in part because of the sanctions regime put in place by President Obama.

What is pleasing about the Wikileaks dump to me is that it disproves the narrative perpetrated by Andrew, and others, that it is only Israel advocating for war against Iran. This is an argument he has been making obsessively for more than a year. These documents seem to prove that, all the while, the most strident lobbyists for war against Iran have been Arab leaders, not Jews. I can understand why Andrew is so upset.