Iran & Israel, after the bomb

Caroline Glick
Center for Security Policy
29 July '10

The Center for Security Policy's Senior Middle East Fellow Caroline Glick recently spoke on the subject of Iran at Moses Montefiore Anshe Emunah Synagogue in Baltimore, MD. She offered a very sober assessment of the Obama administration's policy of appeasement toward the Mullahs-- and what happens next.



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Delusion instead of solution

Op-ed: Western preoccupation with engaging Iran must make way for tougher approach


Yoram Ettinger
Israel Opinion/Ynet
29 July '10
Posted before Shabbat

Western policy-makers grow increasingly reconciled to coexistence with a nuclear Iran. They assume that notwithstanding the radical rhetoric, the Iranian leadership is pragmatic, cognizant of its limitations, unwilling to expose its people to devastating Western retaliation and considering nuclear capabilities as a tool of deterrence – and not as an offensive means – against the US, NATO and Israel.

However, a nuclear Iran would constitute a clear and present danger to global security and peace, which must not be tolerated. In order to avert such a wrath, it is incumbent to disengage from illusions and engage with realism.

Unlike Western leaders, the Iranian revolutionary leadership is driven by ideological and religious conviction, bolstered by ancient imperialist ethos:

1. Jihad is the permanent state of relations between Muslims and non-Muslims, while peace and ceasefire accords are tenuous.

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Linkage Threat: Will Israel Pay the Price for Obama’s Nuclear Delusions?

Jonathan Tobin
Contentions/Commentary
07 May '10

While the world watches and waits to see what, if anything, Washington will do to stop Iran’s nuclear program, the greatest obstacle to action may not be just the president’s indifference to the existential threat to Israel or the possibility such a development would pose to regional stability. Instead, as it is rapidly becoming evident, one of the fundamental problems here may be something else: the Obama administration’s obsession with pursuing the left’s Cold War agenda against nuclear arms.

As the New York Times’s report (mentioned earlier today by Jennifer) shows, President Obama plans to revive a civilian nuclear agreement with Russia, one that had been spiked by the Bush administration after Moscow’s invasion of Georgia in 2008. When it comes to nuclear issues, the administration’s priority remains the futile pursuit of agreements that will diminish America’s nuclear edge rather than an all-out effort to stop the spread of such weapons. As was the case with last year’s decision to betray past promises to the Czech Republic and Poland on missile defense to appease Russia, Obama’s main concern seems to be conciliating America’s antagonists rather than solidarity with allies. Rather than wait to see if Russia will make good on the vague pledges it has made about supporting the United States on Iran, Obama has gone ahead and handed the Medvedev/Putin regime a major victory in exchange for nothing.

Yet as troubling as this foolish determination to please Russia’s new autocrats may be, it is merely part of a larger agenda in which the administration’s interest in nuclear issues has created a situation that, rather than isolating the rogue regime in Tehran, may serve to harm Israel. As the United Nations’s month-long nuclear nonproliferation conference that began last week has shown, Washington’s push on the issue has been derailed. The president’s much-heralded deference to international opinion and his clear interest in appeasing Russia and China have contributed to a situation where the main topic of conversation is becoming not how to stop Iran but rather how to disarm its intended victim Israel. The fact that Israel’s possession of nukes is purely defensive — after all, it is the only nation marked for extinction by many of its neighbors as well as by the Iranian regime — is more easily forgotten amid the new emphasis given to banning nukes started by Obama. This is reinforced by a statement earlier this week from the head of the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency, Yukiya Amano, who is asking for international input on an Arab-led push to have Israel join the Nonproliferation Treaty, in a move that increases pressure on Jerusalem to disclose more information about its own nuclear weapons.

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Iran, Hezbollah, and the Bomb

William Harris
The Weekly Standard
07 May '10

When Iran gets the bomb, the nuclear club will have a crucial new feature. Without an Iranian bomb and barring regime change in Pakistan, we know that no nuclear power will transfer a device to a private army of the religious elect like Hezbollah in Lebanon. With an Iranian bomb, such assurance instantly ends. This is a looming, tangible state of affairs--in contrast to the hype about loose nuclear materials at the April 2010 Washington nuclear security summit.

Proponents of containing a nuclear Iran in and around the Obama administration conceive of deterring Iran in standard realist style. The Islamic Republic of Iran, however, has become a hybrid of the government of God and ruthless militarized mafias. It is well practiced in long-range subversion, intimidation, and weapons smuggling. It may be confidently expected to shred so-called containment, especially when equipped with a nuclear aura and facing the quivering potentates of Arabia.

In any case, Iran has a strategic extension across the Middle East to the Mediterranean that puts it beyond containment. On February 25, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, and Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah met in Damascus to celebrate their alignment and its achievements. The Syrian-Iranian partnership has enabled the Syrian ruling clique to go from strength to strength in dealing with the West and the Arabs. Syria only looks forward to more gains from the partnership as Iran moves toward the bomb. At the tripartite summit, Assad mocked Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's call for Syria to steer away from Iran.

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Iran and the Costs of Containment

Michael Anton
National Review Online
03 May '10

‘Even as momentum for Iran sanctions grows, containment seems only viable option,” reads a Washington Post headline from April 22. Leaving aside for the moment the dubious character of the first half of that assertion, is it really true that containment is now the “only” option?

It is certainly true that nearly everyone in Washington — from administration officials to the permanent civil service to the foreign-policy establishment — believes that, and has believed it for at least a year, if not longer. The intellectual groundwork was laid long before President Obama came into office, in part as a way of sketching an alternative to an American or Israeli military strike, which seemed a much more likely possibility when the president was named Bush.

In recent days — as one senior administration official after another has either downplayed the significance of an Iranian nuclear weapon or spoken in nigh-apocalyptic terms about the use of military force to prevent one from emerging — it would seem that the triumph of containment as America’s chosen Iran strategy is complete.

The working assumption of containment’s adherents is that it is the low- or lower-cost alternative to tough sanctions or military action. The former are believed to be either impossible to impose (because Russia, China, and other nations won’t go along), undesirable (because sanctions would harm the Iranian people more than the regime and turn popular anger against us), or ineffective (because Tehran is determined to ride out even the most crippling sanctions in pursuit of the bomb). The latter is just dismissed out of hand as the precursor to Armageddon.

But is it really true that containment carries relatively low costs? To answer that, we must first grasp what those costs are likely to be.

It is instructive to begin with a comparison to the lodestar example cited by containment advocates: the decades-long American and allied effort to restrain the expansionist impulses of the Soviet Union. The very term “containment” originated in arguably the most famous foreign-policy essay of all time, George Kennan’s “Sources of Soviet Conduct” [registration required]. Published in Foreign Affairs in 1947, the article outlined a policy that would — short of war — allow America to confront and oppose Soviet aggression.

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What Happens When Iran Gets the Bomb

Jennifer Rubin
Contentions/Commentary
03 May '10

John Bolton writes that we can no longer avoid the obvious: “There are only two options: Iran gets nuclear weapons, or someone uses pre-emptive military force to break Iran’s nuclear fuel cycle and paralyze its program, at least temporarily.” The watered-down sanctions under contemplation by the UN or being slow-walked through Congress are too little, too late. And as Bolton notes, it is virtually inconceivable that Obama will employ military force to thwart the mullahs’ nuclear plans. So where does that leave us? Bolton explains:

That leaves Israel, which the administration is implicitly threatening not to resupply with airplanes and weapons lost in attacking Iran—thereby rendering Israel vulnerable to potential retaliation from Hezbollah and Hamas.

It is hard to conclude anything except that the Obama administration is resigned to Iran possessing nuclear weapons. While U.S. policy makers will not welcome that outcome, they certainly hope as a corollary that Iran can be contained and deterred. Since they have ruled out the only immediate alternative, military force, they are doubtless now busy preparing to make lemonade out of this pile of lemons.

The notion that we can contain a nuclear-armed Iran is preposterous — for we are not containing an Iran that lacks a nuclear capability. For those who perceive a nuclear-armed revolutionary Islamic state as literally “unacceptable” — not merely regrettable, as the Obami seem to — Bolton suggests that it is time to begin marshalling support for Israel’s military action:

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Three major working assumptions clouding the policy debate

Dr.Aaron Lerner
IMRA
Weekly Commentary
22 April '10

The first step towards effectively addressing dangerously faulty policy recommendations is to understand the underlying assumptions that drive them.

Here is a quick review of some of the major assumptions.

Assumption #1. If Israel withdraws to the ’67 line the Arabs will no longer have any claim against Israel and there will be peace for generations.

Ramifications: Israeli concerns regarding secure borders, enforcement of the demilitarization of the Palestinian state and pretty much any other security issue do not have to be seriously addressed since withdrawal will in and of itself insure Israel’s security.

Assumption #2. The utopian peace derived from withdrawal to the ’67 is an “all or nothing” proposition, with the resulting peace only observable after complete withdrawal.

Ramification: Arab attitudes and activities prior to the completion of Israel’s withdrawal to the ’67 lines are completely irrelevant for the purposes of analyzing post withdrawal scenarios.

Assumption #3. The entire world shares a set of universal values that coincides with “Western” values. All other value systems are no more than cultural window dressing.

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The Obama Administration's Conflicting Messages on Iran

Alan M. Dershowitz
Hudson New York
19 April '10

The Obama Administration is sending conflicting and confusing messages both to Iran and to those who fear an Iranian nuclear weapon. According to The New York Times, defense secretary Robert M. Gates sent a top secret memorandum to White House officials bemoaning the fact that the United States simply has no policy in place to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons. At the same time, it is telling Israel that although Iran has threatened to wipe it off the map, the Jewish state should not take military action to prevent a second Holocaust. Indeed former national security advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski, who has participated in White House discussions concerning the Middle East, has threatened that if Israel tries to destroy Iran's nuclear weapon facilities, the United States is fully capable of shooting Israeli jets out of the air.

Although Gates subsequently denied that his memo, which he acknowledges writing, was intended as a "wake up call," a senior White House official has confirmed that it was just that. There is no evidence, however, that the White House is prepared to confront the grave threat posed by a nuclear Iran. The policy that seems to be emerging from the White House is one called "containment." But what is containment? It is little more than an acknowledgement of failure. Containment implies that the United States will not succeed in preventing Iran from securing nuclear weapons, but rather it will accept such an eventuality and seek to deter the use of nuclear weapons by threats and by the deployment of defensive measures. The analogy that proponents of containment point to is North Korea, which has nuclear weapons but has thus far been "contained" from using them. But there are vast differences between North Korea and Iran.

North Korea is a secular Communist regime that is risk averse and that has no sworn existential enemies. The goal of its leaders is simply to remain in power and maintain their totalitarian control over their people. Iran is a theocratic, apocalyptic regime that believes that it has a religious obligation to destroy Israel and threaten the United States. Iran, unlike North Korea, also operates through surrogates, such as Hezbollah, Hamas and other smaller terrorist groups. They could hand-off nuclear material to such groups, or to sympathetic individuals, for use as dirty bombs directed against its enemies.

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Two Photos That Express Obama Middle East Policy? Well, Yes and No

Barry Rubin
The Rubin Report
17 April '10

Let's begin with what's most important. This may be the most important single point about the world's most important issue and, consequently, the most important thing I write during this decade. In fact, it's so important that I'm going to put it in bold. Read this even if you don't read the rest of the article:

Consider the Obama Administration’s concept of how it will cope with a nuclear Iran.

The plan is to contain Iran by scaring it. The Iranian regime must think the American president is a man of immense power and daring who will smash it if the Islamic regime tries any funny business. At the same time, the relatively moderate Arabs must feel secure, like Lois Lane standing behind Superman as the bullets bounce off of him.

So clear must this be that someone like President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad can be deterred from firing missiles, attacking neighbors, sponsoring massive terrorism, transferring nuclear weapons, or subverting other countries because he fears American strength and believes with certainty that the United States is ready to go to war and crush his regime if necessary. Clear so far?

But wait a minute! How can the current U.S. government do that when its whole theme is to prove itself a nice easy-going fellow, eager to get along with enemies, reluctant to use force, and obsessed with popularity? What does it signal when a president acts ashamed of past American willingness to impose its will? How does this match up with the necessary posture of a fearless giant ready to face down the most ideologically intoxicated, risk-taking, prone-to-miscalculating, ruthless regime it's confronted since Berlin fell in 1945? (Sure, the USSR was far more powerful than is Islamist Iran, but it was also far more reliably rational and cynical as well.)

You cannot have it both ways. The U.S. government will not be able to have it both ways. Is that clear? Your enemies either tremble with fear, at your scary power, or with laughter, at your diffident desire not to offend anyone.

How you can bow down, disclaim your leadership role, and let everyone push you around one day, but then face down a nuclear Iran the next day.

Now for the background to demonstrate why the above is true.

On one level, the two pictures above tell the story of the Obama Administration Middle East policy; on the other hand, they are very misleading.The most obvious interpretation is that the president's position is one of antagonism toward Israel and servility toward Saudi Arabia. But let's look more deeply and see why that's not completely right.

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To only say Iranian nukes are unacceptable is to accept them

William Kristol
Washington Post
28 March '10

In March 1936, Hitler occupied the Rhineland. The French prime minister, Leon Blum, denounced the act as "unacceptable." But France, Britain and the rest of the world accepted it. Years later, the French political thinker Raymond Aron commented, "To say that something is unacceptable was to say that one accepted it."

In March 2010, as Iran moved ahead with its nuclear weapons program, the American secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, speaking at the policy conference of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee last week, said no fewer than four times in one paragraph that a nuclear-armed Iran would be "unacceptable." It would be unacceptable simply, "unacceptable to the United States," "unacceptable to Israel" and "unacceptable to the region and the international community."

Then, perhaps sensing the ghost of Raymond Aron at her shoulder, Clinton hastened to add: "So let me be very clear: The United States is determined to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons."

But this attempt at reassurance merely conjured up (at least for me) another ghost: that of Richard Nixon. Didn't Nixon always say, at moments of utmost insincerity, that he wanted to make something very clear?

In March 2010, as Iran moved ahead with its nuclear weapons program, the American secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, speaking at the policy conference of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee last week, said no fewer than four times in one paragraph that a nuclear-armed Iran would be "unacceptable." It would be unacceptable simply, "unacceptable to the United States," "unacceptable to Israel" and "unacceptable to the region and the international community."

Then, perhaps sensing the ghost of Raymond Aron at her shoulder, Clinton hastened to add: "So let me be very clear: The United States is determined to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons."

But this attempt at reassurance merely conjured up (at least for me) another ghost: that of Richard Nixon. Didn't Nixon always say, at moments of utmost insincerity, that he wanted to make something very clear?

(Read full article)
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Can the US Contain a Nuclear Iran?

Emily B. Landau
INSS Insight No. 171
24 March '10

With any hope of a new round of UN Security Council sanctions on Iran now postponed until June, and the understanding that if at all, these will be weak and ineffective measures, Obama's diplomatic initiative is slowly grinding to a halt. Taking into account Iran's steady progress in developing fissible material, its work on producing a nuclear warhead, and its ever-improving missile capabilities -- together with low expectations that anything in this dynamic will impress upon the Obama administration the need to ultimately take military action -- part of the discourse on this topic is changing track. Instead of focusing on the stinging failure to curb Iran's nuclear ambitions, some are arguing that it's now time to move on. They say that in the likely scenario that Iran becomes the next nuclear state, the US will simply resort to its ultimate strategy that has worked in other cases: it will contain a nuclear Iran.

But will the US indeed be able to contain a nuclear Iran? The answer to this question involves two levels: first, US credibility vis-à-vis Iran, and second, what the US will be seeking to contain. On both counts, there is little room for optimism.

Containment (and deterrence) of an adversary necessarily depend on a state's ability to transmit to the adversary credible threats of consequences for certain behavior on the part of the adversary. In this regard, the idea that the US can contain Iran cannot be divorced from what has transpired over the past year vis-à-vis the diplomatic initiative that Obama has pursued from his first day in office. The lesson that Iran has learned from the Obama administration is that while there has been no shortage of threats of consequences, there have been little to no actual consequences. Iran has seen that the US sets red lines and deadlines that in practice are virtually meaningless. The US has undermined its own ability to present a credible threat by saying outright that it has no intention of taking military action because it is overstretched in Iraq and Afghanistan. And it has clarified through its actions that broad multilateral agreement is more important than demonstrating resolve to Iran in the economic realm as well. Why should we assume that the US will be any more successful in projecting credibility toward Iran when this state becomes a nuclear state than it has been in the period before Iran crossed this line?

(Read full report)
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Iranian Website: Iranian Nuclear Bomb Spells Death to Israel

Graphic: Stephen Hughes
MEMRI
23 February '10

On February 18, 2010, the Iranian website Asr-e Iran posted an editorial stating that Iran's possessing nuclear weapons will threaten Israel's existence and lead to its elimination – even if they are never used. The editorial explained that Israel's raison d'être is the illusion that it can provide absolute security for the Jewish people, and that it has security supremacy. Once Iran possesses nuclear weapons and shifts the balance of power in the Middle East, it states, this will be end of Israeli society.

The following is the translation of the article:

"The Zionist Regime Must Continue to Preserve this Illusion of 'Absolute Security' within the Borders of Israel"

"Since its establishment in 1948, the central pillar on which Israel is founded has been 'creating a secure territory for the Jewish people, in order to protect it from any possible danger.' This issue is so important to the elected officials of the Israeli regime that in the country's 62 years of existence, they have dealt harshly with any element, [even] the most minor, that could possibly strike at or harm 'the famous Paradise.'

"In order to continue to be a safe haven for Jews from all over the world, and to continue to draw human, economic, and other capital from all over the world, the Zionist regime must continue to preserve this illusion of 'absolute security' within the borders of Israel (i.e. occupied Palestine).

"For this reason, and driven by this strategy, in the 1960s Israel produced dozens of nuclear warheads (as the Western countries looked the other way, and some even collaborated, such as France) – so that it would, or so it thought, attain absolute supremacy in the Middle East balance of power.

"The truth is that for Israel, not just insecurity, but even the mere sense of insecurity is deadly poison. That is why this regime focuses all its efforts on preventing what it sees as the nuclearization of Iran.

"Israeli officials are well aware of what nuclear weapons mean and of the scope of their deterrence. They know well that using nuclear weapons as deterrence in a first strike capacity means mutual destruction if the other side has them as well. Thus, it cannot be assumed that a country that has nuclear weapons will use them against another country (particularly if that country also has them).

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What Is To Be Done About Nuclear Iran?

Roger L Simon
Pajamamedia.com
11 February '10

Click here to watch the second part of Roger’s interview with Israeli ambassador to the United States. (View Part One here.)

A transcript of the entire interview appears below:

MR. SIMON: Ambassador Oren, thanks for taking time out of your busy schedule for PJTV. And before we get into the real subject of this discussion on Iran, I can’t resist asking you to comment on the events yesterday at UC Irvine. Was it really as bad as Judean Ramallah or not as bad?

AMBASSADOR OREN: First of all, pleasure to be here, Roger. As to what happened yesterday in UC Irvine, I was giving a presentation on the state of US Israel and Israel-Middle Eastern relations, and a group of several hundred students kept on disturbing me, calling out rather, you know, various curses and expletives, none of them deleted, and basically, violating the most fundamental law on an American campus, indeed, outside of American campus in this country, and that’s the right of free speech. And from my perspective, it was a great squandered opportunity for them. Here, they had an opportunity to hear a different perspective, perhaps not a perspective they agreed with or like, but — and a chance to exchange ideas, and that, I think, is what universities are about, but they’ve blocked this. And unfortunately, this has happened at several campuses to several Israeli speakers, but not only to Israeli speakers. Last week, down at Georgetown campus, General Petraeus was subject to the same type of interference. So I think it’s the beginning of a trend that we have to watch very, very carefully, a trend to sort of bring the Middle East, where there is no freedom of expression, onto American campuses. And I think we have to be very vigilant, indeed, to prevent that from happening.

MR. SIMON: It’s not just American campuses, though, unfortunately. My nephew is a student at the London School of Economics, and the same thing happened there. And he wrote about it for Pajamas Media. But let’s move on to Iran, here.

(Read full transcript)
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