Conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer predicted on Friday that should President Barack Obama make a misstep when dealing with Syria, he could spark a “major regional war.”
In his column published in Friday’s Washington Post, Krauthammer alluded to the “guns of August,” a reference to 1914 and the build-up that led to the start of World War I. That reference was a comparison to the current situation in Middle East involving Syria and a pending U.S. strike over the use of chemical weapons, and how those seemingly isolated events could unfold into something bigger.
On Friday’s “Special Report” on the Fox News Channel, Krauthammer elaborated on that reference, drawing a comparison of early 20th century Germany to modern-day Iran — a growing superpower that its neighbors do not know how to contain.
“The real problems beginning in the last century was the growth of Germany, how to contain it. Europe didn’t know how to do it,” Krauthammer said. “They ended up with two world wars as a result. The analogy today is Iran in the Middle East. It is a rising power. It is an aggressive one. It’s a have-not power. It wants a place in the sun. It’s acquiring nukes. It scares the hell out of the Arabs. It’s a Persian country. And it now has a client in Syria. The war is being driven by Iran. There’s actual evidence that the Iranian agents, the Revolutionary Guards were involved in the poison gas. Iran controls Hezbollah, which spreads terror in the Middle East and in the region. And Iran is the one driving the war. Iran is looking and it is also developing the nukes, of course.”
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But where Krauthammer said the danger is how Obama is handling it. He warned that Obama’s strike could not have much of a strategic effect but also unleash a major war between all the players in the region, including Iran and U.S. ally Israel.
“The problem is that if you get into this war, even in a limited and I think almost absurd way Obama is doing — he is giving them so much notice that even if we drop all the ammunition on the three or four ships, everything of importance has been moved. Iran is strengthened. The question is — it is going to look as if the U.S. — the U.K. already walked away. Iran is in the driver’s seat. America is slinking away. And the problem is if you make a miscalculation here and you let Iran imagine that it is in charge, it threatens to attack Israel … Israel will respond fiercely it and it could get out of control. So, it isn’t as if Obama imagined — he says, ‘I’ll do a narrow thing, limited thing. It’s not going to be boots on the ground, as if he is pleading with Assad, you know, don’t take it seriously. It’s just going to be a few bombs in the desert. Well, if he miscalculates and the Iranians and Hezbollah react, we could have a regional war — a major regional war.”