Israel Hayom..
30 July '13..
In the 1930s, The Times of London was the main voice of those in Britain who believed in conciliation, who called to appease the Nazi regime or at least to learn to accept it, because "there is no way to stop it regardless." These days it is The New York Times taking a similar stance pertaining to Iran.
Seventy-four years have passed since the conciliatory approach toward dictators and those who threaten world peace was proven, in all its ensuing cruelty, to be a monumental failure, but it seems that not everyone has learned this lesson.
An editorial in The New York Times calls for a determined stance, not against Iran, heaven forbid, but against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other "hard-liners" in Washington, because they are pushing U.S. President Barack Obama to state clearly to Iranian president-elect Hasan Rouhani that the military option is still on the table if the Islamic republic does not abandon its nuclear aspirations. You can read it again and still not believe it.
And what is this strange objection based on? On a new president being elected in Iran, who unlike his predecessor is full of smiles and sweet words toward the West in general and the United States in particular, and therefore "the United States should reach out to Mr. Rouhani, and with its other partners -- Britain, France, China, Russia and Germany -- it should put together a broader nuclear proposal. … That should include a process for acknowledging Iran’s right to pursue nuclear energy for peaceful purposes."
The article also preaches against imposing further sanctions on Tehran, because doing so "would make negotiations impossible."
The newspaper elegantly disregards the fact that Iran's nuclear program is in no way under Rouhani's purview, rather Ayatollah Ali Khamenei calls the shots, and fails to recognize that in Iran's electoral reality, Rouhani cannot function (and perhaps would not have been elected in the first place) without the overt and covert support of Khamenei and the ayatollahs.
Perhaps more concerning than this specific editorial piece is the fact that over the past few weeks, the international and American media are producing, at a greater rate, more articles, usually penned by "Iranian experts," arguing to adopt the same conciliatory approach expressed in The New York Times.
While it is true that in the past we also heard from professors, who from their lofty academic perches also advised us to come to terms with an Iranian bomb, they were the negligible minority. Now it is difficult to open a paper without seeing articles, for example, like the one by former U.S. State Department official Cliff Kupchan (currently director for the Middle East at Eurasia Group), who believes that the new Iranian president provides a chance for talks to succeed that should not be squandered.
The concerning question that must be asked, of course, is whether a guiding hand is not behind all of this media activity. While Obama vowed publicly that "Iran will not have a bomb," there are those who doubt his determination, and the very fact that until now there has not been one clear American warning regarding the military option, could strengthen these misgivings.
It would be an exaggeration to accuse American policymakers of the same conscious policy of appeasement employed in the 1930s in Europe (and in America as well) toward Hitler, but the possibility that Washington will adopt a policy of "containment" is growing stronger. In other words, the U.S. will accept, in actuality, a militarized Iranian nuclear capability, with the warning that if Tehran uses a nuclear weapon it can expect to receive a decisive counterblow.
We must be very clear that accepting a bomb will be understood throughout the entire region as the end of the American superpower's ability to determine, or at least to influence, matters in the Middle East.
The Israeli prime minister has been unfairly criticized in the past for comparing, allegedly, outgoing Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (and Khamenei) to Hitler. But Netanyahu never actually compared the former to the latter, despite the similarities; rather, he recalled the enlightened world's weak response to the threats and actions of the Nazis toward the Jews. To our great sorrow, this comparison would likely be appropriate if not for Israel's ability, unlike Europe's Jews under Hitler's boot, to defend itself on its own, even against the Iranian threat.
Link: http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=5177
Zalman Shoval is an Israeli politician and diplomat. He is also active in Israel's economic life. He was the Israeli ambassador to the United States in the years 1990–1993 and 1998–2000, and an active member of the Knesset in the Rafi party of Ben Gurion, the State List, and the Likud party.
Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.
.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment