Following the news that Israel launched missile attacks on Iran’s nuclear sites, killing military leaders and nuclear scientists, the Register spoke with Alberto M. Fernandez, former senior U.S. diplomat and contributor to the Register and EWTN News.

Fernandez served as U.S. Ambassador to Equatorial Guinea and U.S. Chargé d’Affaires to Sudan. He held senior public diplomacy positions at the U.S. embassies in Afghanistan, Jordan, Syria, Guatemala and Kuwait, and in the State Department’s Near East Affairs (NEA) Bureau. He also served as a U.S. diplomat in the United Arab Emirates, Dominican Republic and Nicaragua.

 

How could Israel’s attack on Iran affect Christians in the Middle East?

There are Christian communities, of course, both in Iran and in Israel. Christians are persecuted in Iran. They’re not persecuted by the state in Israel, per se, but of course, there’s the whole Palestinian, Christian, Israeli government angle as well. But you can look at it in this way.

Certainly, we’re entering a period of great instability. That’s not good for Christian minorities in the Middle East. On the other hand, Iran has been a major promoter of instability which has affected Christians in the region, affected Christians in Lebanon, obviously, with Hezbollah, and affected Christians in Iraq and Syria as well. The question is, how do we get out of this? What comes out of this? What is the end game here, which nobody knows as of today, of course?

The problem is, we don’t know exactly where this is going. I mean, it could be — here I’m extrapolating — this could lead to some very good things, right? It could also lead to terrible bloodshed and violence and destruction. Nobody knows. I mean, it’s been less than 24 hours, right?

What are some of the good things it could lead to?

Well, some of the good things that could happen is, obviously, the world’s largest sponsor, or biggest sponsor of global terrorism, which is the Iranian regime, is no more, right? And a better future comes for the Iranian people, a future of tolerance, a future of humanity. That’s the good angle, right? The bad angle is that the regime implodes, the people suffer, there’s death, there’s carnage. We’ve seen this so often in the world — whether it’s Iran itself or other countries —- where revolution and turmoil makes a bad situation worse.

 

Right. Like in Libya or Iraq.

Exactly. Where you have a dictatorship, the dictatorship is overthrown and things get worse. Sometimes they get better. We’ve seen that as well, but sometimes they get worse. I guess that’s the biggest question is, this is already a region filled with turmoil. What we have now is a new element of turmoil, but nobody knows what it’s going to lead to. Is it going to make things worse or is it going to make things better? Have you lanced a boil or have you basically just put oil on a fire which is already raging? Nobody knows that.

You’ll see people saying one or the other. There are people who are saying, “The sky is falling right now” — Chicken Little — and there are people who are saying, “This is great. We’re finally confronting Iran, which is a source of so much evil in the world.” I think for Christians, certainly, it’s a time to avoid those extremes, both of those — that basically, we’re at the dawn of a new and better age or that the sky is falling. We don’t know which one it is, and we need to be careful about that. And cautious about that.

 

Are there any leading indicators, any things we should be looking out for in the coming days? 

There are several. No. 1 is, what does the campaign or the situation on the ground look like? For example, is there internal unrest in Iran? That’s No. 1.

No. 2, does Israel expand its operations in certain ways, which it has not done so far? For example, Israel has not targeted the political leadership in Iran. Nor has Israel targeted Iran’s oil terminals, the source of Iran’s oil wealth, which is a source of its revenue.

On the other side, Iran tried to hit Israel but failed miserably today. No drones got in. It was an utter and disastrous failure. Iran feels that it has to lash out to show that it has power. But early on, do we see anything that leads us to believe that Iran wants a climb down or an off-ramp? You’ll want to look for evidence or elements that show that either one side or the other side or both are saying, “Okay, we’ve done what we were going to do, and now we’re pausing. We’re stopping. Our honor has been satisfied or our goals have been fulfilled, and we’re going to take a break or stop.” That’s what to look for.

Then — this is true of both sides — elements of escalation and de-escalation by both the Iranians and the Israelis. For example, one thing that the Iranians always said was that if this happened, they would strike the Americans. They haven’t touched the Americans. Obviously, to do so would involve the United States in the war. The U.S. is not directly involved in the war. Iran has not attacked American bases or embassies or anything like that. Not yet, anyway. That’s another thing to look for.

Any thoughts on the chances of this situation going nuclear? 

I think, I think it’s very unlikely. Iran, obviously, is moving towards being a nuclear power, but it isn’t there yet. Certainly, from the Iran side, that’s not going to happen. From the Israel side, a country which we all know has nuclear weapons, that’s a last-resort weapon. The only way that would happen is somehow if Iran was able to launch some successful catastrophic attack inside Israel that had such dimensions that Israel would feel somehow so threatened that it had to respond in a nuclear way. I find that unlikely from both sides today. Things could change, but I just don’t see it today happening.

According to news reports Friday, several nuclear scientists were killed in the attack. Does that set back Iran’s nuclear program?

Well, it tries to. What the Iranians have always said is, if you shut down any material stuff like a factory or a plant or anything, we still have the ability in our heads. So whatever you destroy, we can rebuild because it’s in our heads. In other words, our scientists. So what Israel is trying to do is remove those heads, right? People who have that understanding or capability. The challenge for Israel is that they’ve killed some of them, and that knowledge is to be found in more than two, or three, or four or five people.