It [the Iran-Iraq war] didn’t sear a terrible wound into the Iranian consciousness. It wasn’t Britain after World War I, lapsing into pacifism because of the great tragedy of a loss of a generation. You see nothing of the kind. ~Benjamin Netanyahu

Via Alex Massie

As Massie says, this makes no sense. First of all, British losses in WWI, like those of all belligerents in WWI, were much higher both proportionally and in absolute terms than Iran’s losses in the war with Iraq, and WWI was far more futile and was, for the British, almost entirely a war of choice. The Iranians were resisting aggression against their country. People will endure remarkable hardship, at least once, to expel an invader from their country. Like France after Verdun, the horrific experience might be great enough to force a nation into a purely defensive posture, but even post-WWI France, which is a better comparison with post-1988 Iran, did not sink into pacifism.

Indeed, the occupation of the Rhineland, security guarantees to central European states and the building of the Maginot Line all point not to pacifism, but to an assumption that another war might come and France should be prepared for it. The Maginot Line came out of the experience of Verdun, which was that the defensive position held the overwhelming advantage in modern warfare; the problem with the Maginot Line was not that it was defensive and therefore somehow “weak” or pacifistic, but plainly enough that it did not guard the entire border.* Another small problem with Netanyahu’s remark is that it seems to show no awareness that Britain did not lapse into pacifism after WWI; British forces kept fighting the Bolsheviks and were busy suppressing colonial uprisings well after Armistice Day. There were practical, fiscal and political limits to the size of the military after the vast expense of WWI, so demobilization halted or reduced a lot of these operations, but it wasn’t for lack of will that Britain pulled out of Anatolia or gave up on the White cause in Russia.

The real gem of Netanyahu’s interview was this:

He continued: “You see a country that glorifies blood and death, including its own self-immolation.” I asked Netanyahu if he believed Iran would risk its own nuclear annihilation at the hands of Israel or America. “I’m not going to get into that,” he said.

Massie comments:

Secondly, why does Netanyahu decline to “get into” a discussion on whether Iran would “risk its own nuclear annihilation at the hands of Israel or America”? Might it be because the obvious answer is that they would not? Otherwise why not just say “yes they would be prepared to risk that”?

Netanyahu might have to acknowledge that all the supposed glorification of “self-immolation” is just bluster and empty rhetoric. Let’s be very clear on this point: the only argument in favor of a preventive war against Iran to destroy its nuclear facilities is that traditional deterrence will not work with the Iranian government, because the “mad mullahs” are supposedly willing to suffer annihilation in exchange for destroying Israel. Not to be too blunt about it, but has it ever occurred to the people who make this argument that they may be making Israel’s fate far more important to Tehran than it actually is? I’m not sure what would offend some people more: the idea that Iran wants to destroy Israel at all costs, or the idea that it doesn’t place enough importance on the fate of Israel to do very much about it. Is Tehran willing to back proxies on Israel’s flanks that can launch rockets on Israeli cities? Yes. Does it follow that this garden-variety proxy warfare and power projection means that the government in question is so dedicated to harming Israel that it would invite nuclear apocalypse? Obviously, it doesn’t, and if I were an advocate of a strategy that takes this ludicrous idea for granted I would try to avoid talking about it in public, too.

* Regarding the Maginot Line, this short description may help the woefully ignorant out there:

Like the Séré de Rivières forts constructed along the line of the rivers Meuse and Moselle after the 1870–71 war, the Maginot Line was designed to keep the Germans out. Constructed between 1930 and 1940, it was the brainchild of the French Minister of War (1929–31), André Maginot. Spanning the entire length of the French–German border – plus a section of the French-Belgian border – it comprised a complete system of defence in depth. There were advance posts equipped with anti-tank weapons and machine guns. There were fortified police stations close to the frontier. But the main line consisted of a continuous chain of underground strongpoints linked by anti-tank obstacles and equipped with state-of-the-art machinery. It was of course hugely expensive and, when put to the test in 1940, proved to be worse than useless: the Germans simply violated Belgian neutrality and drove round the other end of the Line.

Obviously, defensive fortifications that fail to guard the entire border can be outflanked, which is the flaw mentioned in the original post. The Germans’ launch of their offensive through the Ardennes was an acknowledgment that the Maginot Line would have been very difficult and costly to breach, if it would have been possible at all. The Maginot Line was a classic case of preparing to fight the last war, but it had nothing to do with pacifism.