Latest Tweets:
-By Christopher Hitchens & Comments by Naim Naqvi
With Russia’s ever-helpful policy of assisting Iran to accelerate its reactor programme, allied to the millimetrical progress of sanctions on the regime of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran’s President, and the increasingly hopeless state of negotiations with the Palestinians, there is likely to be no let-up in speculation about an Israeli “first strike” on Iran’s covert but ever-more-flagrant nuclear weapons installations. I have lost count of the number of essays and columns on the subject that have been published only recently. The most significant and detailed such contribution, though, came from my friend and colleague Jeffrey Goldberg in a cover story in the Atlantic. From any close reading of this piece, it was possible to be sure of at least one thing: The government of Benjamin Netanyahu in Israel wants it to be understood that, in the absence of an American decision to do so, Israel can and will mount such an attack in the not-too-distant future. The keyword of the current anguished argument — the word “existential” — is thought by a strategic majority of Israel’s political and military leadership to apply in its fullest meaning. To them, an Iranian bomb is incompatible with the long-term survival of the Israeli state and even of the Jewish people.
It would be a real pity if the argument went on being conducted in these relatively narrow terms. A sentence from Goldberg’s report will illustrate what I mean: “Israel, Netanyahu told me, is worried about an entire complex of problems, not only that Iran, or one of its proxies, would destroy Tel Aviv”.
Why Tel Aviv? It is admittedly the most Jewish of Israel’s centres of population, and it was built only in the course of the last century. It is also the most secular and modern and sexually liberal of Israel’s cities, which might also qualify it for the wrath of the mullahs. But it is also home to Arabs and Muslims, as are the coastal towns adjacent to it. And, as I never tire of pointing out, there is no weapon of mass destruction yet devised that can discriminate on the basis of religion or ethnicity.
So why did Netanyahu not say Jerusalem, which he and his party regard as Israel’s true capital? Surely because this would immediately raise the question of whether the Iranian theocracy seriously intends to immolate the Dome of the Rock and the other Islamic holy places along with the poisonous “Zionist entity”. And that’s to say nothing of the number of Palestinians who would be slaughtered in any such assault. There is something sectarian, almost racist, in the way this aspect of the issue is always overlooked.
I tried to raise the same question in print when Israel’s former Prime Minister, Menachem Begin, ordered the bombing of Iraq’s Osirak reactor in 1981. On that occasion, the worst he could find to say about Saddam Hussein’s genocidal ambitions was that they, too, constituted a threat to Jewish survival. Yet every knowledgeable person understands that if Hussein had come into possession of a bomb, he would have used it in the first instance on what his propaganda always defined as “the Persian racists”. (This is why the Iranian Air Force had tried and failed to hit the very same reactor a short time before.) When speaking of the Zionist foe, incidentally, Saddam’s most aggressive public speech promised only that with his chemical and other weapons, he would “burn up half of Israel”. The late dictator was not notorious for speaking of half-measures. It’s possible that even in some part of his brain he understood that Palestine is not populated only by Jews.
The whole emphasis on Israel’s salience in this matter, and of the related idea of subcontracting a strike to the Israeli defence forces, is an evasion, somewhat ethnically tinged, of what is an international responsibility. If the Iranian dictatorship succeeds in “breaking out” and becoming a nuclear power, the following things will have happened:
* International law and the stewardship of the United Nations will have been irretrievably ruined. The mullahs will have broken every solemn undertaking that they ever gave: to the International Atomic Energy Agency; to the European Union, which has been their main negotiating interlocutor up until now; and to the United Nations. (Tehran specifically rejects the right of the UN Security Council to have any say in this question.) Those who usually fetishise the role of the UN and of the international nuclear inspectors have a special responsibility to notice this appalling outcome.
* The “Revolutionary Guards”, who last year stopped at nothing to attain near-absolute power in Iran, are also the guardians of the underground weapons programme. A successful consummation of that programme would be an immeasurable enhancement of the most aggressive faction of the current dictatorship.
* The power of the guards to project violence outside Iran’s borders would likewise be increased. Any Hezbollah subversion of Lebanese democracy or missile attack on Israel; any Iranian collusion with the Taliban or with nihilist forces in Iraq would be harder to counter in that it would involve a confrontation with a nuclear godfather.
* The same powerful strategic ambiguity would apply in the case of any Iranian move on a neighbouring Sunni Arab Gulf state, such as Bahrain. The more extreme of Iran’s theocratic newspapers already gloat at such a prospect, which is why so many Arab regimes hope — sometimes publicly — that this “existential” threat to them also be removed.
* There will never be a settlement of the Israel-Palestine dispute because the rejectionist Palestinians will be even more a proxy of a regime that calls for Israel’s elimination, and the rejectionist Jews will be vindicated in their belief that concessions are a waste of time, if not worse.
* The concept of “nonproliferation”, so dear to the heart of the right-thinking, will go straight into the history books along with the League of Nations.
These, then, are some of the prices to be paid for not disarming Iran. Is it not obvious that the international interest in facing this question squarely, and in considering it as “existential” for civilisation, is far stronger than any political calculation to be made in Netanyahu’s office?
Latest Comments
Submitted by
Naim Naqvi on Wed, 18/08/2010 - 12:58pm.
The author seems to suffer from political paranoia of so-called Israeli might. He feels that bombing Iran would be a cake walk for Israel. Using the words ‘disarm Iran’ so casually reflects that attitude. “If the Iranian dictatorship succeeds in breaking out and becoming a nuclear power, the following things will have happened: International law and the stewardship of the United Nations will have been irretrievably ruined. The mullahs will have broken every solemn undertaking that they ever gave to the International Atomic Energy Agency.” Since when has Israel begun to respect international law and stewardship of United Nations? Israel is the only vagrant recalcitrant country till date which has refused to follow all the norms and laws that deal the civilised world.
“The power of the guards to project violence outside Iran’s borders would likewise be increased. Any Hezbollah subversion of Lebanese democracy or missile attack on Israel; any Iranian collusion with the Taliban or with nihilist forces in Iraq would be harder to counter in that it would involve a confrontation with a nuclear godfather.” Hezbollah is the only entity in the world which has taught a lesson and Israel has learnt a hard way - you can’t tame committed people who have brains. Hezbollah is not led by corrupt and opportunist leader like Yasir Arafat and today they are honorable part of Lebanese democracy in all lexicons that define parameters of democracy. Israel knows that it had burnt it fingers whenever it had tangled with Hezbollah.
“The same powerful strategic ambiguity would apply in the case of any Iranian move on a neighbouring Sunni Arab Gulf state, such as Bahrain.” This small island has majority of shia community which is ruled by corrupt and autocratic Khalifa family. The minority rulers are backed by Wahabbi rulers of Saudi Arabia. Bahrain was a part of Iranian empire. With all the differences between the rulers and ruled, Israel never comes near in any reckoning.
“There will never be a settlement of the Israel-Palestine dispute because the rejectionist Palestinians will be even more a proxy of a regime that calls for Israel’s elimination, and the rejectionist Jews will be vindicated in their belief that concessions are a waste of time, if not worse.” Again the same arrogant language. What are rejectionist Jews looking for ? Giving concessions! Usurpers are ultimately thrown out by force and they do not given concessions. Cacphony of all occupations and symphony of struggles of liberations bear testimony to the final victory of truth and justice.
Israel would always face the problems of existence as long as it keeps the territories it had captured in 1967. The Saudi royals had once offered it the way out to live, survive and prosper with its neighbours hospitably which it had refused to heed. No amount of force would give full protection to a country which keeps the three sides of its borders hostile. Even the ever-present and ever-ready US help is related to the economic lordships of the US. Iran is refusing that it is building the nuclear bomb. What about the stockpile of Israeli nuclear bombs? Even the so-tamed Arabs have started to raise collective scruples on this issue.
Let us imagine a situation where US or Israel decide to Bomb Iran. Iran is a mountainous country of 70 million human beings. The connivance of Arabs for Israeli and US air strikes on Iran is always possible. However, they can‘t forget the lessons they had learnt over North Vietnam — or from the Battle of Britain or in the bombing of Germany and Japan before the use of nuclear weapons. Air campaigns can’t forrce nations to capitulate or change their policies. United States is a tired soldier and fatigue is writ large on the walls. It has not been able to extricate itself from Iraq and Afghanistan. War against Iran would be a totally different story. There is Gulf of Hormuz and there is Hezbollah sitting in the neighborhood. There is Iraq and there is Afghanistan. One wise act of Bush presidency - his impulse to use force against Iran.
Despite all the brouhaha and show of belligerency against Iran President Barack Hussain Obama is not going to attack Iran. Any Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities would create a havoc that Israel won’t be able to negotiate.
