israel, iran, and us- resolving nuclear threat

8/3/2019 Israel, Iran, And US- Resolving Nuclear Threat

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Iran, Israel and the U.S.Resolving the NuclearImpasseRichard SilversteinRichard Silverstein has heen writing the Tikun 01amblog since 200S. He is a freelance writer who p ublishesin Comment Is Free, AlterNet, and aljazeera.net. Hecontributed a chapter to the book A Time to Speak Out:Independent Jewish Voices on Zionism, Israel and JewishIdentity.Recently, I organized a series of media and publicevents on the Iranian nuclear crisis which featured Muhammad Sahimi, aUniversity of Southern California professor and expert on Iran's nuclearprog ram ; Pr of Ian Lustick, a Un iversity of Penn sylvan ia political scientistspecializing in Israeli polit ics; and Keith Weissman, former AIPAC(American Israel Public Affairs Committee) deputy director.

One hundred and twenty-five people heard the above speakers discuss"Iran, Israel, and the U.S.: Resolving the Nuclear Impasse" at Town Hallin Seattle. What follows is a summary ofthe most important ideas andinformation presented at the event.Prof. Muhammad Sahimi: ''Iran will not attack Israel with nuclearweapons."Projl Sahim i is an Iranian-horn chemical engineer w ith special expertise in the worldenergy industry and a mem ber ofthe Union oj Concerned Scientists. As a scientist hepays especially close attention to the Iranian nuc lear program.

Just after the Islamic Revolution, when he was a young student, hetold me that young peo ple generally chose one of two political tenden cies:the Mujahedin al-Khalq, a mo derate Islamist left grou p, or the C om mu nistTudeh m ovem ent. He supported the Mujahedin as did some of his brothersand cousins. Tragically, one of his brothers and several of his cousins weremurdered. One ofth e cousins who died was a doctor and his "crim e" wastending to the wounds of fellow Mujahedin members.He told this story to establish his bona fides as a critic ofthe Iranian


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not accept Mah mou d Ahm adinejad 's victory in the June election and doesnot call him "p resident." He believes the elections were a sham. No netheless,he finds that som e ofth e argu me nts raised by Iranian officials re gardin g thenuclear program are cogent. First, both reformers and the current leaderssuppo rt this program . So if we are so nave as to believe that we w ill resolveour problem through regime change (short of installing a puppet regime),we are sorely m istaken. Se cond, w e are hypo critical to deny Iran the ab ilityto perform nuclear research that many other W estem nations are pursuing.Third, Sahimi says, there is no evidence so far that Iran currently intendsto build a nuclear weapon, though there is evidence that the country ispursuing research that would lead to its ability to create such a weapon ifit decided to do so.

This is a path that Japan decided to follow in the 1960s. It has nonuclear weapons. But should it feel under attack from one of its neighborsand face a severe national security threat, it could put into place an effortto create such a weapon on short order. Yet you don't hear the worldcomplaining about this.

No matter how deranged Iran's domestic polit ics seem under theclerical regim e, its foreign po licy is cond ucted under different an d far moreprag ma tic term s. Iran kno ws that should it go too far, Israel and the U nitedStates stand ready to vaporize it with their own arsenals. They look aroundthem and see their country surrounded on three sides by U.S. forces inAfgh anistan, th e Persian G ulf (the 5th Eleet) and Iraq. They u nde rstand thelimitations of their power. D espite the claims about "w ild-eyed m ullah s,"they are anything but when it comes to relations with the outside world.

If Iran is pursuing nuclear weapons is it to destroy Israel? In a word.No. Aside from the three-sided net the U.S. has sewn around Iran, severalIranian neighbors like Pakistan and Russia have nuclear weapons, not tomention Israel's warheads that could strike it as well.

On e fact that is insufficiently und erstood is that Iran is deeply wo rriedabout the instability of Pakistan. Within that country, there is deep hatredof Shiism, the dominant form of Iranian Islam. Pakistan is rumored to havefunded and founded an anti-Iranian terror group, Jundallah, that is activeinside Iran along their join t border. Iranians wo rry that an unstable Pakistancould fall to the Taliban or other radical Islamist forces that wil! look onIran as a mortal enemy and feel free to use its nuclear arsenal as politicalblackmail. We must recognize that Iran does have legitimate nationalsecurity concems to preserve its territorial integrity and social stability. Ifwe address these concems and treat them as legitimate, then we may beable to resolve the im passe.


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Prof. Ian Lustick: "Patience in dealing with Iran/'Prof. lan Lustick is former president of the Association for Israel Studies and of thepolitics and history section of the American Political Science Association.

Prof. Lustick also says the Iranians have taken note of the fact thathaving a nuclear weapon has protected countries like North Korea fromoutside attack and regime change. All they have to do is look next doorto see what happens to a leader the U .S. doe sn't like who do es not have anuclear arsenal. This lesson is not lost on Iran.

Iran itself has not pursued an offensive war in 275 yea rs. So the notionthat it will take out Israel is far-fetched in the extreme. Pr of Lustick alsoargues that most Israeli security experts (as opposed to politicians) do notpredict an Iranian attack on Israel.He also notes the similarities between Israel's early nuclear programand the current Iranian posture. Israel maintains studied am biguity regardingits nuclea r capability. It has alwa ys refused to ack now ledg e that it has suchweapons, though experts generally concede it currently has about 400warheads. It has always said it will not be the first to use nuclear weaponsin the Middle East, though it immediately contradicts that statement byadding it won't be the last, either. More studied ambiguity.

Lustick also notes another historical parallel between Israel's and theU.S. ' deep-seated fear of a nuclear Iran, and the Soviet Union's similarresponse in 1965, when they learned from an Israeli spy that his countrywas a few years away from developing a nuclear weapon . The Soviets w ereso hysterically opposed to this that they did their best to provoke the 1967war. They even based their most sophisticated F oxbat MiG fighter-bombersthere in preparation for an all-out assault on Israel's Dimona facility. Theyfelt they needed the cover of a war in order to launch such an attack. Weshould leam from the mistake that the Soviets almost made in 1967 andnot repeat it through the same overreaction.Lustick argues that the reason Israel is so vehement about stoppingthe development of an Iranian nuclear weapon is not because it fears beingattacked, but rather because it fears the loss of nuclear hegemony and theconstrictions on its own behavior as a result. Israel has always followedthe dictum of Ze'ev Jabotinsky's "iron wall" theory, which argued thatIsrael needed to use massive, overpowering force to defeat the Arabs sothey would eventually see reason and accept Israel on its own tenns. Thisexplains the "madman" strategy behind the Lebanon and Gaza wars. IfIran gets the bomb, then Israel can no longer muster that overwhelming


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more likely that Israel will have to accommodate its opponents than theother way aroun d. Such co nstraint upon its courses of action is u naccep tableand "sends shivers down the spines of Israeli leaders."

Lustick and Sahimi both argue that the fear of Israeli militaryvulnerab ility w ill also encoura ge a net migration outflow from Israel to theDiaspora. In such an event, the flrst to go would be the best educated, thewealthiest, and those with intellectual, scientific and technical back grou ndswhich Israel can ill afford to lose. Those who choose to remain will bethe poor, the elderly and those with the least likelihood of succeedingoutside Israel. So the real threat from an Iranian bomb is the debilitatingpsychological impact and instability it will instill.

This also plays into the deep traum a instilled in Israel by the Holocaust.So when the Iranians speak in terms that resonate in Israeli minds with theNazis, it also provokes an atavistic survival-mode response. While someIsraelis will dig in their heels and say they'll fight to the end, many otherswill refuse to live under the threat of a potential Iranian nuclear attack,since it brings to mind memories of the Holocaust. They will not wanttheir children to face such a fight and may choose to emigrate. In fact, inthe past seven years there has been significant em igration and a net outflowof population.

Lustick calls for patience in dealing with Iran and recognition of thefact that the mixed messages emanating from there about various nuclearapproaches and compromises, offered and then rescinded, indicate anintemal political situation in a state of flux. Instead of posing paranoidtheories about Iran seeking regional dominance and mistrusting everystatement made by the Iranians, we should take a step back and viewdevelop men ts in pure intemal p olitical terms. The reformers a re vying forpower with the hardliners. Neither is in complete control.

In fact, the reformers are the ones who are taking a harder line thanAhmadinejad regarding the nuclear talks with the West. So if we reallysupport the former and want them to succeed, we have to recognize thepossibility that the nuclear debate is a secondary issue to the m ore importantquestion of who will control Iran in the long term. If we cry about the axisof evil and use other hyperbolic phrasing, we only stand to make thingsworse.

The current crisis also enables one to broach the idea that all nuclearstates should be on the same terms, and the same dem ands should be ma de ofal! of them . They all should join the Non-P roliferation Treaty (N PT) (Israelis not a member). They all should accept inspections by the Internationa]


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Standards and sign the same agreements. There needs to be transparency innuclear affairs and not the current state of opacity represented by Israel'sapproach.Israel's supporters point out Iran's support for neighboring forces like

Hizbuliah and Hamas who wreak havoc on Israel's northern and southernflanks. They use this as evidence that that country harbors expansionistmotives and seeks to sow seeds of discord into regional politics. Lustickargues that the best way to defuse this threat is a comprehensive peaceagreement among Israel, Syria, Lebanon and the Palestinians. In fact,former president Mohammad Khatami said: "It's not up to us to be morePalestinian than the Palestinians." If they accept an agreement, Iran willas well. That is the best way to end these proxy battles.The University of Pennsylvania professor invoked a new book,Iranophohia: The Logic of an Israeli Obsession by Haggai Ram, whichargues for deep parallels between the Israeli Zionist historical narrativeand the Shah's tale of an ancient Persian empire revived via his PeacockThrone. In each mythology, an ancient people was returning to its aneienthome to claim its historical birthright. The goal of both Zionism and theShah was to tum this ancient regime into a modem, Westem one that wasan important political, economic and military state. Israel and Iran saweach other as kindred spirits in this project. So when the Shah was toppledand was replaced by what some Israelis called a "Levantine dunghill," itshattered Israel and made it realize in some deep way, if it could happen tothe Pahlevis, it could happen to it as well. , *

Keith W eissman: ''Sanctions cannot replace a comprehensive settlementof issues."Keith Weissman, a former deputy director of AIPAC, spoke aboutthe ineffectiveness of sanctions. He said he wrote the first set of legislative

sanctions for Congress in 1995. and experience has shown that they havefailed. Unilateral sanctions don't work. The only instance in which sanctionshave ever worked was South Africa, and the circumstances there were muehdifferent from what we face today. In fact, sanctions are a "placeholder"policy because they stave ofa cry for military attack, which no one in theObama administration wants to face.Sanctions are not a policy in and of themselves. They don't advancean agenda but merely prevent a worse outcome. They cannot replace the

need for a comprehensive settlement of the outstanding issues with eachparty's needs and interests being considered as legitimate.


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israel, iran, and us- resolving nuclear threat

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