By Dov Waxman
The Democratic National Convention has been packed with prominent speakers and musical interludes that all focus on unity and moving forward into a more hopeful future.
But this cheerfulness is shadowed by a split within the Democratic Party related to Israel’s war in Gaza. There have been calls by some delegates for Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris to support a halt in U.S. military aid to Israel.
While the pro-Palestinian protests surrounding the convention have been much smaller than some expected, Chicago police arrested at least 72 pro-Palestinian protesters on Aug. 20, 2024.
These activists are calling for a U.S. arms embargo on Israel, which the Democratic Party’s new national platform does not include.
The Conversation U.S.’s politics editor Amy Lieberman spoke with Dov Waxman, a scholar of Israel studies, to better understand what is behind the U.S.’s relationship with Israel and the strategic reasons why an arms embargo is, at best, a remote possibility.
Dominic Gwinn/Middle East Images/AFP via Getty Images
Do you think that Kamala Harris is likely to agree with the calls for an arms embargo on Israel?
I do not think she will agree with those calling for an arms embargo on Israel.
For one thing, as vice president and before that as a senator, Kamala Harris has consistently supported providing U.S. military aid to Israel. This position is typical of most Democratic Party members, as well as most Republicans.
Opponents of U.S. military aid to Israel often argue that this help is solely a function of domestic politics and reflects the power of the pro-Israel lobby, particularly AIPAC. I think that this view is myopic and exaggerates the power of the pro-Israel lobby. It ignores the fact that the U.S. has its own economic and strategic reasons for supplying that military aid. It is a U.S. national interest, not simply a favor for Israel, and that’s why there is broad, bipartisan support for continuing this military aid.
Although an arms embargo is unrealistic, there are other things short of an arms embargo, like conditioning or restricting military aid, which are more realistic – and there is a growing debate among Democratic lawmakers over that.
What are some of the ways that U.S. aid to Israel helps the U.S. domestically?
When the U.S. gives military aid to Israel, the Israeli government is not putting that money in its pocket. The vast majority of the money that the U.S. allocates to Israel each year must be spent on American weapons. That is true, in general, for American military aid to other countries, such as Ukraine.
Those American weapons that Israel purchases are produced in factories across the U.S. So, many American lawmakers have an interest in sustaining that aid because that money ends up flowing into their own states and providing local jobs.
What has U.S. aid to Israel historically been like, before the Gaza war?
Historically, Israel has received more U.S. foreign aid than any other country. In total, the U.S. has provided Israel with over US$300 billion, with this amount adjusted for inflation.
Initially, for the first decade after Israel’s establishment in 1948, the U.S. provided Israel with only economic aid, but, starting in the 1960s during the Kennedy administration, it began providing military aid as well. The U.S. now gives only military aid to Israel.
After Israel’s victory in the Six-Day War of 1967, when Israel demonstrated its ability to decisively defeat Soviet allies in the region, the U.S. significantly increased its military aid to Israel. This was a turning point in many ways for the U.S.-Israel relationship, because since then the U.S. has seen Israel as a valuable ally.
Another major increase in U.S. military aid to Israel occurred under the Nixon administration in the late 1960s and early 1970s. This is worth noting because Nixon was not a great friend of Jewish people. But he increased U.S. aid to Israel because of its strategic interest to the U.S.
Since then, U.S. military aid has continued to steadily increase over the years, and in the past year it has risen following Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attacks in Israel, and Israel’s subsequent invasion of Gaza.
I think the primary reason for this continuous military assistance to Israel, under both Democratic and Republican administrations, is that it serves U.S. national interests.
How does U.S. aid to Israel serve America’s national interests?
A militarily strong Israel helps the U.S. counter their common enemies.
During the Cold War, Israel helped contain the spread of Soviet influence in the Middle East. For example, after Israel defeated Egypt in the 1967 and 1973 wars, Egyptian President Anwar Sadat defected from a Soviet alliance to ally with the U.S., ushering in a long period of American hegemony in the region.
After the Soviet threat receded after the Cold War, Israel’s strategic value to the U.S. diminished. But it rose again following the 9/11 terrorist attacks because of Israel’s long experience in counterterrorism and its vaunted intelligence-gathering capabilities.
More recently, over the past decade or so, Israel has worked with the U.S. to counter the expansion of Iranian influence in the region and to slow down Iran’s nuclear program. Although the two allies have disagreed over tactics – particularly over the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran – they both regard Iran’s growing power in the region as the greatest threat to regional stability, and they both want to stop Iran from having nuclear weapons. For the U.S., a militarily strong Israel is seen as necessary to prevent Iranian expansionism.
Don Emmert/AFP via Getty Images
Israel not only has the most powerful military in the region, it is also the only long-standing democracy there – albeit a seriously flawed one, in my view. So, from the U.S.’s perspective, Israel can help the U.S. achieve its strategic goals in the region without the American military actually having to put boots on the ground and do so itself. Israel is also perceived as a more reliable and less problematic ally than the U.S.’s other major allies in the region, such as Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Turkey.
Ultimately, although Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians and its war in Gaza have alienated and angered many Democrats, particularly progressives, most Democratic policymakers, including Harris, still believe that supporting Israel is in the interests of the U.S. And providing Israel with military aid is still seen as the best way for the United States to do that.
The real question is whether the U.S. should exercise greater oversight or control over how American weaponry can be used.
Dov Waxman is Rosalinde and Arthur Gilbert Foundation Professor of Israel Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles
Joe D says
Israel for generations has been a stabilizing force in a Middle Eastern region frequently HOSTILE to American interests. Loss of Israel as a US Ali, could encourage other Arab nations to make military and political alliances with other Countries hostile to US interests (Russia and China).
Unfortunately the current Israeli President is a re-elected ULTRA CONSERVATIVE, who has taken unpopular steps within his own country to weaken the Israeli Courts’ power to interpret or intervene to challenge the Israeli President’s power…it was NOT a popular move with Israeli citizens. All this was happening BEFORE the UNPROVOKED attack on Israel by Hamas last year. Now he has used this attack to bolster support for his views and conservative reforms in the Israeli government.
Although Israel has the right to defend itself against HAMAS, it doesn’t have the right to exterminate the Palestinian people in the crossfire during that process.
It doesn’t help that HAMAS has notoriously and Continually placed its Military Command Centers in or around Schools, Hospitals, long-standing resettlement centers….essentially using their own people as HUMAN SHIELDS. Video and other DOCUMENTATION have shown this to be TRUE.
We are now at an impasse between Israeli leadership who do not want to have to deal with other Hamas attacks in the future, and a Palestinian CIVILIAN population, who just wants the CARNAGE to be over!
International mediators are trying to hammer out a temporary ceasefire…hopefully leading to a PERMANENT ceasefire. Israel has agreed to the latest international proposal…Hamas has as of yet (to the best of my knowledge), NOT RESPONDED.
The biggest loser in this political tug of war (literally), is the Palestinian PEOPLE, who have had their homes, livelihood, and their very LIVES destroyed by being caught in the crossfire of these two WARING factions.
Soon, there won’t be anything left of Palestine to recover…my PERSONAL CONCERN, is that unofficially that’s what the Israeli President WANTS.
The US is walking a tightrope, not wanting to lose one of the biggest Middle East allies it has, without allowing the incitement of a REGIONAL Middle East War, that could drag the US into DIRECT conflict, and not just MILITARY AID.
Hank says
No it won’t, but holding Iran responsible for funding Hamas and other terror organizations is s good place to start.
Watcher says
The distinction that many are unwilling to contemplate/accept/and come to terms with, is that the current Israel was created by the Rothschild family. The current state of Israel was created on May 14, 1948, subsequent to the Balfour Declaration of Nov 2, 1917, in which The Rothschild family was addressed to develop what they have created today, a Zionist society. There’s no such thing as Gaza. Theres no such thing as Israel. The state we have is a Rothschild Production and not the Israel of the bible. The star on their flag isn’t the “star of David”. It’s the star of Rempham (Moloch). The ‘Rothschild’ family name was originally ‘Bauer’ before changing it, along with the family crest in Germany before Israel was formed as a Nation in 1948. The Rothschilds openly take credit for creating Israel.
Ray W. says
I have questions about the current state of Iranian politics, given the fact that Iran’s last president, considered a hardliner, died in a recent helicopter crash in the mountains of northwest Iran.
In a snap election required by Iranian law under the circumstances, three hardliners ran against one perceived moderate, who emerged from the first election with less than 50% of the vote. In the ensuing runoff, he won, if only barely: 53-47%.
President Masoud Pezeshkian, born in 1954, served as a conscript in the Shah’s army. Inspired to a career in medicine, he graduated from medical school during the Iran-Iraq War, which began in 1980; he specializes in cardiac surgery. Like many of today’s Iranian political leaders, whether moderate or hardliner, he came of age during a brutal eight-year war that cost hundreds of thousands of Iranian youths their lives. It cannot be understated that Iran threw everything it had at the Iraqi invasion, yet it never used chemical weapons. After eight bloody years, Iran was forced to sue for peace after Iraq began dropping chemical weapons from aircraft on its cities, instead of via artillery shells, yet Iran never used chemical weapons. President Pezeshkian, a doctor, had to have seen the widespread death caused by the Iraqi use of chemical weapons during that war. Who knows his position on weapons of mass destruction? Other studies I found inform me that Iran went so far as to develope the precursor chemicals for chemical weapons, but the program never took the next step to full development of chemical weapons, as Iran’s Ayatollah, when asked permission to assemble the weapons, issued an oral fatwah against the use of all such poisons, as such weapons fit the category of the Quran’s proscription against use of weapons of mass destruction, as he interpreted it.
So, the question remains: What type of President now holds the executive share of political power in Iran, subject, as always, to the final say by the current Ayatollah? What will be the official policy of that government? Is he a pragmatist? A zealous reactionary? Somewhere in between? I certainly don’t know. But I do know that an entire generation of Iranians came of age in a bloody war they lost after eight years of fighting. Three years later, American forces and our allies took tens of hours to rout that same Iraqi army as it ejected the Iraqis from Kuwait. Iran’s military establishment knows intuitively the difference from their forces and ours, then and now, and the fact that today’s small Ukrainian army, with Western weapons, is holding off Iran’s northern neighbor cannot help but reinforce that intuitive knowledge.
Iran’s past president died when a 1979 Bell helicopter crashed for as yet unrevealed reasons. Their president was flying in a 35-year-old helicopter. Not even Flagler County waits that long to replace helicopters. Metal fatigue has to be a subject of inquiry as to why the helicopter crashed.
President Pezeshkian purportedly ran on a policy of reopening political connections with the West, including with America. He advocated for a return to the 2015 nuclear deal with the West in exchange for the lessening of economic restrictions. Apparently, a significant number of the Iranian people were receptive to that policy point.
One of the several documents I read was a 2017 policy paper by Katariina Simonen, a Finnish lawyer specializing in International Law, written at the request of and for use by her government. She titled it: “Chemical Weapons, Ayatollah Khomeini and Islamic Law.”
Ms. Simonen’s argument to her government was that the Ayatollah repeatedly and openly condemned the use of any weapon of mass destruction, either poison, chemical or nuclear, based on a verse in the Quran: “Fight those who fight against you, but do not transgress limits, for God loves not the transgressor.” The Ayatollah, according to her assessment, repeatedly referred to the Iraqi use of chemical weapons during the war as “crimes against Islam.” She described the Ayatollah as the “ruling jurist”, the “Supreme Leader”, and the “Guardian” of Shia Islamic law. As such, the Ayatollah has the final say in all legal matters, and his say was that Islam forbids weapons of mass destruction.
In a paper on the subject of Islam and weapons of mass destruction published shortly before Ms. Simonen’s paper, the successor to Ayatollah Khomeini, Ayatollah Khamenei, issued his own fatwah against weapons of mass destruction. In that paper, the author argued that Islam has a “law on just warfare”, with four elements: 1. Discrimination in targeting to exclude civilians. 2. Non-use of poison. 3. Prohibition on polluting the environment. 4. Prohibition on causing unnecessary suffering. Ms. Simonen repeated the four prescriptions of just Islamic warfare in her paper to the Finnish government.
I am not arguing that Iran will never develop a nuclear weapon. Two fatwahs do not a permanent proscription make. People evolve. Minds change. But it is no secret that enriching uranium for medical purposes, such as cancer treatments, involves processing to a 3% level, and that enriching uranium for energy purposes involves processing to a 20% level. Nuclear fuel requires enrichment to 90%. If Iranian technicians already know how to enrich uranium for medical and energy purposes, there can be no doubt that their scientists also know how to enrich uranium to weapons-grade.
A third paper reveals that the U.S. provided nuclear technology to Iran during the Shah’s regime, including plans for nuclear electricity reactors. Indeed, a supply of medical-grade uranium was delivered to the Shah’s medical community. That supply is long gone and current and long-standing sanctions by the West prohibit the sale of medical-grade uranium to Iran even for treatment of cancer. According to that source, thousands of Iranians suffer from cancer and cannot receive commonly accepted radiation therapies.
Make of this what you will.
Ray W. says
In an update, today Ayatollah Khamenei in a televised speech suggested to the Iranian people that he did not oppose negotiations with the United States, per Newsweek:
“We do not have to pin our hope to the enemy. For our plans, we should not wait for approval by the enemies. … It is not contradictory to engage the same enemy in some places, there is no barrier.”
DaleL says
I think this was a well written article by Dov Waxman. The question I think is how to get out of the unholy alliance that Netanyahu and Hamas have. A lot of the support for Hamas comes from the callous disregard for civilians in Gaza and the vigilante actions of “settlers” in the West Bank. Much of Netanyahu’s support comes from the murderous terrorist attacks on Israeli civilians by Hamas.
Israel’s military (IDF) just freed another hostage. Hamas could overnight end most civilian deaths in Gaza by releasing the last hostages and agreeing to a ceasefire.
As Professor Waxman wrote: “The real question is whether the U.S. should exercise greater oversight or control over how American weaponry can be used.”
Ray W. says
Today’s edition of the Times of Israel carries an editorial column from Shimon Sheves, a senior aide in the Rabin administration until Rabin’s assassination by a Jewish religious extremist.
He writes, in part:
“In the early days after October 7th, it briefly seemed that, out of the horror, we had rediscovered our true selves. ‘Brothers in Arms’ and religious organizations, the kibbutz movement and development towns, Jews and Arabs — everyone united to rescue, assist, adopt, and host those in need. People gave their time and money to support the displaced. I witnessed soldiers and commanders fully committed, stepping up and giving of themselves, often at their own expense. I wholeheartedly believed that the true spirit of the people of Israel had been revived, rising up in defiance of the attempts at dismantling from above.
“And now, after losing 1,700 of our brave citizens and soldiers, with another ten thousand physically injured and countless more emotionally scarred, with many still in captivity due to the failures and policies of this government, it’s clear that we are no longer on the same side. It’s not just the Declaration of Independence that has been altered without consent; it’s the entire country.
“Without hesitation, they continue the government coup that led us to disaster. They keep targeting IDF commanders, dismantling the police, and viewing judges — who protect them from prosecution in the Hague — as enemies. They even denigrate the families of the hostages, treating them as nothing more than a nuisance.
“Imagine this picture in your mind. The south is scorched, the north is ablaze and abandoned, and in Jerusalem, the members of the government and their emissaries sit, ensuring that whatever remains is burned to the ground. We are all conquered. We are all hostages. Why? Because, in their view, there is no longer a State of Israel — at least not one that has the right to exist without them. They are determined to make sure it reflects their image — or it won’t exist at all.”
Ray W. says
I have waited months for the right opportunity to post this comment, for a variety of reasons.
First of all, I was not ready. Since October 7th, I have been looking more deeply into various facets of the Israeli-Hamas slaughters, searching for things that might help fill gaps in my knowledge and understanding. I knew I lacked a sufficient basis of knowledge on a number of issues. I probably still lack sufficient knowledge to clearly see some or many of the myriads of issues that have plagued the ceaseless unmitigated hatred between the two indigenous peoples of Palestine for millennia, and the reasons why.
Second, what I am about to post is far too lengthy for any one comment, but summarizing the author’s points lessens the importance of what he has to say. I have decided to break it up into five different comments. I accept that many FlaglerLive commenters are not interested in lengthy explanations of events and why they may occur. And I accept the long-taught idea of closing arguments that juror minds wander. It is oft-written in the juror evaluation sphere that the average juror has a 90-second concentration rate. When talking to 12 people, a lawyer is taught that after 90 seconds at least one of the juror’s minds will begin to go off-focus. I have to think it possible that normal FlaglerLive readers have a “lose concentration” expiration time, too.
One vivid trial memory involves a defense attorney apparently nodding in agreement with me as I pivoted from facing the jury to point to the defendant as I intoned the argument that the evidence was sufficient to convict. Of course, I still have no idea whether he was agreeing with me as he nodded his head up and down. For all I know, he was thinking of the pot roast his wife had promised him for dinner that night after trial, or that he was looking forward to his weekend with his family. All I knew was that he was nodding his head up and down in apparent agreement with my argument that his client was guilty. The jury convicted on all three counts.
What I am about to post comes from John Ghazvinian’s “America and Iran. A History, 1720 to the Present.” Vintage Books (2021). The passage details the state of American, Israeli and Iranian politics as they existed circa 2011, not as they exist today. Thirteen years can be an eternity in politics.
Born in Iran in 1974, years before religious fervor swept out the Shah, in 1975 Mr. Ghazvinian immigrated with his family initially to London and, eventually, America. Many moderate Iranians who wanted a restoration of the old Constitutional Majles (Parlaiment) of that era left Iran as opponents to the Shah, particularly the Shah’s hated Savak secret police. That doesn’t mean they were followers of Khomeini. Educated at Brown University, he earned Masters and Doctoral degrees in History from Oxford University.
As for the book itself, John Limbert, one of the American hostages in Iran and later a Deputy Secretary of State for Iran during the Obama administration called the book “history in the hands of a master.” He also said, “Ghazvinian leads us far beyond the mindless shouting of recent decades to tell a story of friendship, sacrifice and discovery. Should be required reading in both Tehran and Washington.”
Ray W. says
Part 1 of 5, on the state of American, Israeli and Iranian relations, circa 2011, per John Ghazvinian.
“In May 2011, Netanyahu made yet another high-drama trip to the United States, and this time he made no effort to disguise his leverage over the American president. At a deeply awkward White House press briefing, he lectured Obama on Israeli history and, looking directly at him, said Israel ‘cannot go back to the 1967 lines. These lines are indefensible.’ It was a reference to a speech Obama had made just a few days earlier, in which he had called for Israel to respect its UN-mandated 1967 borders during peace talks with the Palestinians — an uncontroversial restatement of more than forty years of White House policy. But such was Netanyahu’s rising star in Washington that within hours, Obama had been raked across the coals for ‘creating daylight between America and Israel.’ Adding to the president’s problems, congressional leaders then invited Netanyahu to address a special joint session of Congress for the second time in his career — an honor that in the past had been reserved for the likes of Winston Churchill and Nelson Mandela. During the speech, members of both political parties leaped to their feet and interrupted Netanyahu with twenty-nine deafening standing ovations — more than Obama had received during his last State of the Union address.
“Netanyahu’s triumphant reception in Washington gave Israel the confidence to speak out about Iran in terms even more strident than in the past. For the rest of 2011, Israeli leaders raised the volume on their warnings of the ‘Iranian nuclear danger,’ often indulging in apocalyptic language that came close to suggesting Iran should be wiped off the map. ‘Think Amalek,’ said one of Netanyahu’s advisors when asked about the prime minister’s attitude toward Iran — a reference to a biblical story (1 Samuel 15:3) in which the Israelites were commanded by God to ‘smite’ and ‘utterly destroy’ their enemies. Israel’s deputy prime minister, Moshe Yaalon, was less dramatic, but much more direct. ‘We believe that in order to stop the Iranian military nuclear project,’ he said in December 2011, ‘the regime in Iran should face a dilemma — whether to have a bomb or to survive.’
“In America, much of the media acted as stenographers, dutifully repeating the claim that Israel was on the verge of ordering a massive military strike, and that the only way to prevent such a calamity was for Washington to adopt a more forceful policy against Iran in order to ‘assuage’ Israel’s ‘concerns.’ In September 2010 the journalist Jeffrey Goldberg — a former corporal in the Israeli military who maintained close ties to the Israeli security establishment — penned a lengthy cover story in the Atlantic titled ‘The Point of No Return.’ The message relayed by Israeli officials through Goldberg was that if the Obama administration did not bomb Iran, Israel would be forced [to] do so on its own. Adding to the impression of an impending crisis, Goldberg reported that his sources were telling him such an Israeli strike was likely to take place by 2011.”
Ray W. says
Part 2 of 5.
… “Virtually unnoticed amid all this were sober, evidence-based assessments of the state of Iran’s nuclear program. Russian prime minister Vladimer Putin, speaking to CNN’s Larry King in December 2010, stated bluntly: ‘We have no grounds for suspecting Iran of seeking to possess nuclear weapons.’ For the most part, American pundits dismissed such statements as typical of a Russian foreign policy that had grown anti-American in recent years. But these same pundits rarely wondered why Russia should be so complacent about Iran’s nuclear program. As a close neighbor of Iran, Russia had more reason than either the United States or Israel to fear mad ayatollahs with nukes on their doorstep. And yet for whatever reason, Russian intelligence seemed confident this scenario was not very likely. Russia’s political class, in turn, seemed to trust the intelligence it was being given.
“A very different situation prevailed in the United States, where the serious and sober assessments made by America’s own intelligence community were ritualistically ignored. Sixteen U.S. intelligence agencies had already declared that they did not believe Iran was trying to build a bomb, and in 2011 they stood by that assessment. In recent months, in fact, U.S. intelligence officials said they had been ‘throwing everything they had at the Iranian program’ — acquiring fresh radar imagery, eavesdropping on telephone conversations between Iranian officials, and flying dozens of spy drones over Iranian airspace, as well as debriefing IAEA inspectors following their experiences in Iran. The United States even found ways to place clandestine ground sensors, which could detect electromagnetic signals associated with nuclear activity, near suspected Iranian facilities. And still after all this, the verdict was the same: Iran did not appear to be building a bomb.
“Perhaps the most interesting of all, Israel’s intelligence assessments came to the same conclusion. In March 2012 The New York Times revealed that ‘even while Israeli leaders have been pushing for quick, aggressive action,’ Mossad actually ‘agrees with the American intelligence assessments’ that Iran was not building a bomb. But this inconvenient fact rarely made it into the public discussion. Instead, what was given airtime was Israel’s ‘concerns,’ its ticking ‘timeline,’ and its internal ‘debate’ about whether to take military action.”
Ray W. says
Part 3 of 5
… “What was also never pointed out was that Israel had a long history of hyping the Iranian threat. As far back as 1992, Netanyahu had warned that Iran would be armed with a nuclear bomb ‘within three to five years.’ In 1995, Israel warned that Iran would have a nuke ‘in more or less five years.’ The following year it told the UN Iran would be producing weapons ‘within eight years.’ The year after that, Israel ‘confidently’ predicted an Iranian bomb by 2005. In 2003 and again in 2005, the chief of Mossad testified that Iran was nearing ‘the point of no return.’ By 2009, the same Mossad chief was saying ‘the Iranians will have by 2014 a bomb ready to be used.’ And so the Israelis continued — always hinting strongly that their patience was not unlimited, and that military action was a serious possibility.
“The constant warnings had created an atmosphere in which the world was always being told it was ‘running out of time’ to prevent a ‘nuclear Iran.’ And by 2011 this atmosphere had turned into a convenient political device. Every time Israel sensed the moment was right politically, it would make a veiled threat of war — knowing that Obama would not want to be seen publicly smacking down Israel. In order to be taken seriously, Israel had to make these threats sound as credible as possible — and so American audiences were regularly treated to terrifying headlines about the ‘looming possibility of war in the Middle East.’ This, in turn, drove the markets crazy and wrought havoc with oil prices — something Obama could not risk during a fragile economic recovery. Every time Israel hinted at war, senior American officials would fly over to Jerusalem, hoping to convince their friends to tone down the rhetoric. In return for this ‘restraint,’ naturally, Israel expected some concrete measure of gratitude from the United States — which usually meant yet another White House signature on yet another congressionally mandated set of sanctions.
“The big secret was that Israel had absolutely no intention of bombing Iran. Most of Israel’s security establishment knew full well that the consequences of such an attack would be disastrous and the benefits minimal. They knew Iran was not building a nuke. And they knew that bombing Iran’s nuclear facilities would, at most, merely set back the Iranian program by two or three years. Iran had dozens of facilities spread throughout the country, and no swift, surgical airstrike could take them all out. Nuclear expertise, moreover, could not be bombed out of existence. The Iranians already knew how to enrich uranium. They had blueprints for centrifuges, dozens of nuclear physicists, and research departments at their universities — none of which was going to go anywhere. In the event of an Israeli attack, Iran would regroup and return to its nuclear work — and Israel would find itself back at square one, contemplating how long it had before it would have to strike again, and then again.”
Ray W. says
I decided to split the final two segments into three.
Part 4 of 6.
… “Set against this modest gain for Israel was a daunting list of negative consequences. For starters, any attack on Iran was almost certain to result in a decision by Tehran to unleash the dogs of war — in the form of Hezbollah and possibly also Hamas. An Israeli attack would also drag America into the fight, embroiling the United States in yet another war with a Muslim nation, and further inflaming regional opinion against the West. Iran could retaliate against U.S. targets in the region, of which there were plenty. It could attack the U.S. Navy in the Gulf, or encourage Shia militias in Iraq to attack U.S. forces, or cause trouble in Afghanistan, or shut down the Strait of Hormuz, provoking an overnight doubling in the price of oil. In short, any attack on Iran — whether by Israel or by the United States — would unleash a regional conflagration that no Israeli government would be equipped to deal with. And as if this weren’t enough, it would rally the Iranian people behind their leaders, ensuring the reinvigoration of the Islamic Republic for at least another generation.
“Again and again, therefore, American officials made it clear they did not wish to be sucked into military adventurism of this kind. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, in February 2010, put it as bluntly as anyone: any strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities, he said, ‘would only delay Iran’s plans by one to three years, while unifying the Iranian people to be forever embittered against the attacker.’
“The Israelis privately agreed. In February 2011, away from the cameras, Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi, chief of the general staff of the Israeli Army, told his American counterpart, Adm. Mike Mullen, that the war talk coming from Netanyahu was ’empty words,’ because ‘Israel has no military option.’ In May 2011 former Mossad chief Meir Dagan called the idea of an Israeli strike on Iran ‘the stupidest thing I have ever heard.’ At a conference in Tel Aviv, Dagan added that Israel ‘didn’t have the capacity to stop the Iranian program, only to delay it.’ Moreover, he said, ‘If anyone seriously considers [a strike], he needs to understand that he’s dragging Israel into a regional war that it would not know how to get out of. The security challenge would become unbearable.’ Wikileaks cables revealed that as early as 2005, Israel had ‘ruled out’ any possibility of a military strike on Iran. American diplomats that year reported that their conversations with Israelis indicated there was ‘no chance’ of a military attack.
“Perhaps the best reason for Israel not to bomb Iran was the fact that everyone — absolutely everyone, including every single Israeli politician and military commander — knew that Iran did not pose a military threat to Israel. The idea that the ayatollahs were on the verge of launching a nuclear attack on a nation with more than two hundred nuclear warheads and an instantaneous second-strike capability that could wipe Iran off the map in seconds was simply ludicrous. And this was even assuming Iran was interested in obtaining a nuke, which every piece of intelligence suggested was not the case. Even if all that intelligence turned out to be wrong, moreover, and Iran actually decided to go for a bomb, the world would have plenty of warning. Iran would begin by switching off the IAEA cameras and kicking out the inspectors, and then — even then — it would take months to assemble a crude nuclear device. There was literally, categorically, no problem here. No crisis. No emergency. So what could Israel possibly have to gain from starting a war?”
Ray W. says
Part 5 of 6.
… “Whenever any of this was put to Netanyahu, his response was to go into Churchillian mode. As prime minister of Israel, he said, he could not take chances with the safety and security of his countrymen — especially when they were faced with a threat as unpredictable and maniacal as that of Iran. Invoking the memory of the Holocaust on a regular basis, he constantly reminded Western audiences how dangerous it would be for the world to ignore the lessons of history. As the guardian of the Jewish people, he had to take into consideration the central anxiety that resided in the hearts of a civilization that had been threatened with annihilation less than a century earlier. At the UN General Assembly in 2011, Netanyahu held up a blueprint of the Nazi death camp Auschwitz to help make his point. ‘As the prime minister of Israel,’ he said, ‘I speak for a hundred generations of Jews who were dispersed throughout the lands, who suffered every evil under the Sun, but who never gave up hope of restoring their national life in the one and only Jewish state.’
“According to Netanyahu, any Israeli prime minister who did not take seriously the existential threat Iran posed to the Jewish people was not doing his job properly. The Iranian regime, he said, was too unpredictable, too irrational to be ‘contained’ or to be trusted to behave according to rational norms. Yes, looking at the situation from a purely logical perspective, the Iranians would never be foolish enough to launch a nuclear attack on Israel. But the leaders of Iran were not logical people. They were religious fanatics, full of wild-eyed rhetoric and an obsession with martyrdom. In 2009, Netanyahu referred to Iran’s leaders as a ‘messianic, apocalyptic cult’ that could not be reasoned with. Like a suicide bomber, prepared to accept his own annihilation in order to strike at his victims, Iran was busy strapping explosives to itself and preparing to detonate in a crowded marketplace. In fact, Iran was something much worse than a suicide bomber. It was a giant, collective suicide nation. — a ticking time-bomb ready to subject its people to martyrdom for the sake of its cause.
“To anyone who knew Iran, such statements had more than a hint of hyperbole. The Iranian ayatollahs were a deeply pragmatic bunch, with a long track record of making calculated, rational decisions. After thirty years in power, they had never started a war or launched a jihad or used weapons of mass destruction against their enemies. They were fundamentalists, yes, and perhaps even fanatics, some of them. But they were not interested in the kind of wild-eyed, uncontrollable murder and mayhem being perpetrated by the likes of al-Qaeda. The were interested, first and foremost, in ensuring their own political survival. And history had shown that they were world-class experts at doing whatever was necessary to secure that survival. Every single time Iranian leaders had faced a choice between tilting at ideological windmills and acting pragmatically, they had shrewdly opted for whatever would maximize their own political longevity.
“Even those members of Iran’s political establishment who were wild-eyed fanatics — and there certainly were a few — had no discernible appetite for building a nuclear weapon and shooting it off in the direction of Israel. Any such action, after all, would have resulted in the deaths of millions of Palestinians. It would have resulted in the instantaneous destruction of Jerusalem — along with the thirteen-hundred-year-old al-Aqsa Mosque and Haram-al-Sharif, the third holiest site in Islam. No Muslim — no matter how suicidal and not matter how obsessed with driving Jews out of the Holy Land — would ever do such a thing. Even the most unhinged of political actors could understand that nuking Israel would accomplish nothing more than the destruction of the very thing he was hoping to protect. And Iran was certainly not led by unhinged actors. It was led by Ayatollah Khamenei, a man who had spent his youth rotting away in the shah’s prisons and had quietly, patiently worked his way to the highest position of power in the Islamic Republic. To the extent that Iran was driven by ideology, its ideology consisted of a desire to claim the moral leadership of the Islamic world. And there would be no worse way to claim moral leadership of the Islamic world than to nuke Jerusalem.”
Ray W. says
I tried to send Part 5 of 6, but it appears it didn’t go through. If it pops up later, I apologize for repeating it.
Part 5 of 6.
“Whenever any of this was put to Netanyahu, his response was to go into Churchillian mode. As prime minister of Israel, he said, he could not take chances with the safety and security of his countrymen — especially when they were faced with a threat as unpredictable and maniacal as that of Iran. Invoking the memory of the Holocaust on a regular basis, he constantly reminded Western audiences how dangerous it would be for the world to ignore the lessons of history. As the guardian of the Jewish people, he had to take into consideration the central anxiety that resided in the hearts of a civilization that had been threatened with annihilation less than a century earlier. At the UN General Assembly in 2011, Netanyahu held up a blueprint of the Nazi death camp Auschwitz to help make his point. ‘As the prime minister of Israel,’ he said, ‘I speak for a hundred generations of Jews who were dispersed throughout the lands, who suffered every evil under the Sun, but who never gave up hope of restoring their national life in the one and only Jewish state.’
“According to Netanyahu, any Israeli prime minister who did not take seriously the existential threat Iran posed to the Jewish people was not doing his job properly. The Iranian regime, he said, was too unpredictable, too irrational to be ‘contained’ or to be trusted to behave according to rational norms. Yes, looking at the situation from a purely logical perspective, the Iranians would never be foolish enough to launch a nuclear attack on Israel. But the leaders of Iran were not logical people. They were religious fanatics, full of wild-eyed rhetoric and an obsession with martyrdom. In 2009, Netanyahu referred to Iran’s leaders as a ‘messianic, apocalyptic cult’ that could not be reasoned with. Like a suicide bomber, prepared to accept his own annihilation in order to strike at his victims, Iran was busy strapping explosives to itself and preparing to detonate in a crowded marketplace. In fact, Iran was something much worse than a suicide bomber. It was a giant, collective suicide nation — a ticking time-bomb ready to subject its people to martyrdom for the sake of its cause.
“To anyone who knew Iran, such statements had more than a hint of hyperbole. The Iranian ayatollahs were a deeply pragmatic bunch, with a long track record of making calculated, rational decisions. After thirty years in power, they had never started a war or launched a jihad or used weapons of mass destruction against their enemies. They were fundamentalists, yes, and perhaps even fanatics, some of them. But they were not interested in the kind of wild, uncontrollable murder and mayhem being perpetrated by the likes of al-Qaeda. They were interested, first and foremost, in ensuring their own political survival. And history had shown that they were world-class experts at doing whatever was necessary to secure that survival. Every single time Iranian leaders had faced a choice between tilting at ideological windmills and acting pragmatically, they had shrewdly opted for whatever would maximize their own political longevity.
“Even those members of Iran’s political establishment who were wild-eyed fanatics — and there certainly were a few — had no discernible appetite for building a nuclear weapon and shooting it off in the direction of Israel. Any such action, after all, would have resulted in the deaths of millions of Palestinians. It would also have resulted in the instantaneous destruction of Jerusalem
— along with the thirteen-hundred-year-old al-Aqsa Mosque and Haram-al-Sharif, the third holiest site in Islam. No Muslim — no matter how suicidal and no matter how obsessed with driving Jews out of the Holy Land — would ever do such a thing. Even the most unhinged of political actors could understand that nuking Israel would accomplish nothing more than the destruction of the very thing he was hoping to protect. And Iran was certainly not led by unhinged actors. It was led by Ali Khamenei, a man who had spent his youth rotting away in the shah’s prisons and had quietly, patiently, worked his way to the highest position of power in the Islamic Republic. To the extent that Iran was driven by ideology, its ideology consisted of a desire to claim moral leadership of the Islamic world. And there would be no worse way to claim moral leadership of the Islamic world than to nuke Jerusalem.”
Ray W. says
Part 6 of 6.
“Israeli leaders, knowing the political mileage that could be gained from painting apocalyptic scenarios, did everything they could do to distract from these kinds of arguments. When they were not busy describing the Islamic Republic as an al-Qaeda-style terror network, they often described it as a latter-day manifestation of the Third Reich, bent on committing genocide on a scale unimagined since the Second World War. In the speeches of Israeli leaders, it was always Munich in 1938, and the Iranians were always preparing to pack Jews off to the Final Solution. In place of cattle trains and gas chambers, however, this new generation of Nazis were planning to use a nuclear bomb. ‘What Iran is trying to do right now is not far away at all from what Hitler did to the Jewish people just sixty-five years ago,’ said Silvan Shalom, Israel’s deputy prime minister on the occasion of Holocaust Remembrance Day in 2009. Anyone who doubted this, or suggested it was possible to do a deal with Iran, was playing the role of Neville Chamberlain — the great appeaser of history who had foolishly believed it was possible to make peace with Nazis.
“All this made for a gripping political narrative and was frequently recycled on U.S. cable news networks. But it had one problem: it bore absolutely no relation to reality. Iran’s own Jewish population was twenty-five thousand strong, the largest and most vibrant Jewish community in the Middle East outside Israel. Tehran had eleven active synagogues, along with Hebrew schools, kosher restaurants and banquet halls that regularly hosted bar mitzvahs and Jewish weddings. Iran’s Jews were represented by their own member of parliament — a right guaranteed by the Iranian constitution. Along one of Tehran’s busiest thoroughfares, a giant mural — complete with Hebrew lettering — honored the thirteen Jewish-Iranian soldiers killed in the war with Iraq. To those who wanted to depict Iran as institutionally anti-Semitic, all this raised an uncomfortable question. If Iran’s leaders were truly bent on annihilating the Jewish people from the face of the earth, would they not begin with their own population? Would they not begin, as the Nazi’s had done, by announcing boycotts of Jewish businesses or by using propaganda to warn citizens about the ‘enemy within’?”
Make of this what you will. Me? I looked for information about Iran’s Jewish populace. In my opinion, things cannot be as clear-cut as Mr. Ghazvinian writes for Iran’s Jews, as any populace that drops from some 100,000 in 1979 to 25,000 now has to mean that discrimination sufficient to prompt some to leave exists in Iran. On the other hand, Ayatollah Khomeini is on record as saying that the Quran, the Bible and the Torah are all holy books. Any member of the three faiths who is dutifully observant to their book is of equal faith with any other member. I found one reference to the wisdom of Jewish leaders immediately after the Revolution. Supposedly, two rabbis and two business leaders travelled to Qom to meet with the Ayatollah. As they entered the meeting, one carried a platter of silver and gold, under which precious metals was a check for $10 million. According to this version, the next day, the Ayatollah issued an order that the Jews of Iran were to be treated as one of the faithful. Even if the story is true, the peace has been kept for 45 years. Yes, some Jews have been arrested in what appears to have been intermittent crackdowns and a few have been tried for treason (spying) and an even smaller number executed. Then again, Iranian Muslims who protest government policies have been arrested and executed. Keeping one’s head down and mouth shut seems to apply equally to everyone in Iran. Such is the way of certain autocracies, religious or not. Just ask the families of Russian dissidents.