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Don’t Make Iran an Israeli Issue
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More in Forward ForumAs Iran makes steady progress toward achieving its nuclear ambitions, the debate over how best to respond is growing louder. Lately, however, the public discussion has been focused too much on the specific threat that a nuclear-armed Iran would pose to Israel.
Israel’s friends do indeed have reason to worry. Iran’s leaders not only regularly issue inflammatory threats against Israel, they also spend hundreds of millions of dollars a year arming and training terrorist organizations that are committed to its destruction. Given this record of belligerence, Iran’s nuclear program represents a potentially grave threat to the Jewish state.
The singular focus on the threat that Iran represents to Israel, however, obscures the other profound dangers posed by Tehran’s nuclear program. A nuclear-armed Iran would be a menace, not only to Israel, but also to its Arab neighbors and to American and Western interests in the region.
Already, Iran funds, arms and trains violent radicals fighting moderate Arab governments in Iraq, Lebanon and the Palestinian territories. The Islamic Republic has a long history of sponsoring terrorist attacks in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain — a country that hardliners claim is an Iranian province. On all of these fronts, a nuclear Iran could well be more assertive and more willing to risk confrontation. For instance, much of the world’s oil passes the Strait of Hormuz, right by islands disputed between Iran and the United Arab Emirates. A nuclear Iran might feel emboldened to actively control the oil tanker traffic through the strait.
Faced with a more acute threat from a nuclear Iran, the Middle East could experience a nuclear cascade. Experts who have studied this issue warn that, at the very least, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Turkey will think long and hard about whether to develop a nuclear weapons option. And if any one of them goes that route, the pressure will build for others to do the same, if for no other reason than to maintain the balance of power. The prospect of nuclear weapons in the hands of the Mubarak regime or the House of Saud is not a comforting thought, made even worse by the possibility that Islamists hostile to the West could overthrow these not entirely stable governments.
There is also the danger that Tehran could share its nuclear knowledge, or even its nuclear weapons. Iran’s leaders loudly proclaim their willingness to share their nuclear expertise, while being vague about what exactly they have in mind. Indeed, Tehran’s South American ally, Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, has said he wants to acquire nuclear expertise from Iran, which says it will cooperate with him.
Moreover, the possibility that Iran would provide terrorist groups with nuclear weapons cannot be ruled out. After all, Iran’s leaders have provided impressive military technologies to other terrorists: Think of the hundreds of long-range rockets in Hezbollah’s hands or the sophisticated improvised explosive devices used by Iraqi insurgents to kill so many American soldiers. The chances of Tehran behaving similarly with nuclear armaments may seem slim, but given the radical character of the Iranian regime and the seriousness of the stakes, it is nevertheless a frightening scenario.
More broadly, if Iran can get away with violating the Non-Proliferation Treaty — to which it is a signatory — then the whole global system for preventing the spread of nuclear weapons could fall apart. To date, the NPT system has worked pretty well. Several countries that had nuclear weapons programs — or, in South Africa’s case, actual weapons — have dismantled them and joined the NPT.
Outside of the five original nuclear powers — America, Britain, France, Russia and China — the only four countries that have nuclear weapons have been nations that refused to fully join the NPT: Israel, India, Pakistan and North Korea. But if the NPT begins to weaken, quite a few countries around the world may reconsider their nuclear option. Important political leaders in Argentina, Brazil and South Africa have all said that it was a mistake for their countries to abandon the pursuit of nuclear weapons. It would not take much for the world to end up with dozens of nuclear powers.
Proliferation is a complicated issue, hard to explain in a sound bite, so it may never dominate public discussion. But it is something that matters deeply to policy elites in many countries. The Clinton administration fought hard to get Nato to define proliferation as the main global security threat. For France and Russia, their nuclear weapons are central to their claim to be world powers. If, on the Iranian nuclear issue, we want to get Europe to do more to add bite to its bark, and if we want to figure out how to move Russia and China to do more, we are more likely to persuade these governments by emphasizing the risk of proliferation rather than the threat to Israel, a country they do not necessarily care much about.
The menace posed by a nuclear Iran is broad and multi-faceted. Focusing exclusively on a single aspect of the issue — namely, the threat to Israel — is not helpful. Americans are more likely to be concerned about defending their country’s national security than about protecting another nation, even a close ally such as Israel. And the international community is more likely to mount a vigorous response to Iran’s nuclear ambitions when the nature of the threat is not framed as an Israeli issue. Stopping Tehran means making the case that the Iranian nuclear program is a menace, not only to Israel, but to world peace.
Patrick Clawson is deputy director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and co-author of the recent study “The Last Resort: Consequences of Preventive Military Action Against Iran.”
Comments
Dr. Patrick Clawson aruges that Iran's nuclear program is a menace not only to Isreal but to world peace. He is among those poeple who bleive that nuclear weapons in hands of American allies are fine but not others. But if Isreal has nuclear weapons it does not make sense to preach that others in the Middle East should not have it. If he claims that Israel has it for defensive puproses others could make the same claim. Dr. Ahmad Sheikh
If anything started a "nuclear cascade" in the Middle East, it was Israel getting hold of an armory and lying about it for decades.
Iran, however, in the considered judgment of 16 American intel agencies, has no active plans to follow suit.
Of course extremist neocon outfits such as Clawson's, allied to the military industrial complex with its desperate need to invent monsters for the USA to go forth and destroy, talks up imaginary threats to foreign countries: a pretext for keeping the merchants of death in business.
And with the possibility of a Democrat in the WH, the neocons who have hitched their Trotskyite/ultra-Zionist wagon to the GOP, are now shamelessly telling an indifferent world that Iran's your problem, too, if the mad mullahs get nukes (unlike, say, Pakistan, which has 'em, has been selling the knowhow, but is "our guy" if Mrs Bhutto's old man plays ball as Gen. Musharraf did).
The transparency of such hypocrisy is too blatant, too riddled with Israel First chutzpah, to fool many diplomats. If Iran does fund anti-Israel terrorism, what does that have to do with it wanting the same weapons of ultimate defense as N. Korean, India and China? Saudi Arabia does more than Iran to keep fundamentalist terror outfits in business, as does Egypt... ah, but they are in an armed truce with the Chosen 51st State, so we won't agitate about "regime change" of those tyrannies. (Pres. Ahmadinejad, who has no say in Iran's foreigh policy, was democratically elected and may well be democratically whipped next summer.)
Enough special pleading and dual standards, already. The younger generation of Jews in America is increasingly indifferent to Israel's fate, and bored and embarrassed by the shilling of Clawson for the elderly billionaires' club that keeps neoconnerie alive. Our casino kings may want a thermonuclear Masada; the sensible and corrupt mullahs who run Iran don't.
1) Israel, Pakistan and India did NOT sign away their right to have nuclear weapons by NOT signing the NPT. Iran, Iraq, and over 186 other countries did do so, and so did sign away that right. Israel already had ALL the nuclear knowledge it needed in 1949, as most of the great nuclear physicists were Jews. And because Israel DID NOT get a formal treaty of alliance with the US in the 1950s, and because the Arabs refused to make peace, it had no choice but to align at that time with France to get the financing and technology to build its own nuclear deterrent in the late '50s and early '60s long before there was any NP Treaty.
2) If Ahmadinejad wants "democracy" in "Palestine," and by that meaning he wants a referendum whether it should be a Jewish or Arab state, he should consider the fact that there are still MORE Jews west of the Jordan River than there are non-Jews (mainly Arabs). Hence, in any such referendum, if conducted today, the Jews would win. By the way, recent demographic studies show that the "demographic bomb" that supposedly threatens a Jewish majority is exaggerated. I should think someone in Ahmadinejad's entourage should inform him of the real demographic facts in Israel/Palestine. Israel should take up his challenge and conduct such a referendum.
Patrick Clawson is right. It should not be an exclusive Israeli issue. Iranian nuclear weapons have major negative implications strategically for the West. However it is as Clawson knows a much more urgent issue for Israel. And the fact is that others including the Bush Administration are preferring to turn their eyes away, and not really stop Iran. So there is something not quite right about Mr.Clawson's recommendation as it in effect is telling Israeli supporters to lay low on the issue. And this when that would be the right thing to do were others to understand the issue as Clawson does. But they do not. And they are not taking real action to stop Iran. Thus while Israeli supporters should spin it as Clawson suggests they should not relent on this issue, at all.
Iran isn't Russia's proxy. Iranian nuclear programm is against a Russian menace too. Iran, especially, nuclear Iran could be very useful US ally against Russian policy of grab. And don't use Hitler's argument. Nasser once was Hitler, Arafat was Hitler and so on... The Hitler's argument inflate the Holocaust, such a thench on Holocaust denial.
20,000 New York Jews just made Iran an Israeli issue, by making it clear that pro-Israeli Christian Americans are not welcome to be their allies. Just remember, when your children are corpses lying in the street, limbs twisted in agony and lungs choked with poison moslem gas from Tehran, it wasn't Sarah Palin who did this to you. Cheers.
Robert Erikson, don't watch many horror movies. They affect your mind as it had been shown in your comment. Demonizing Iranians won't help the West much. The peoples of the Middle East are in favor of strong Iran against Israel. Those puppet Arab rulers don't represent their peoples. So don't be fooled by the government-owned media in that region which dipects Iran as a threat to their thrones; on the other hand interpreted as a sign for the Israelis that these puppets are with us against Iran. When war breaks out, US and Israel may face unpredictable consequences. Mr. Clawson is known as a pro Israeli activist, so his article is more inflammatory more than analytical.
One essential problem with your reasoning, Dr Clawson, is that in today's geopolitical context the interests of Israel, US and Europe are fundamentally diverging.
While Israel interests are in containing and pushing back any nascent power in the Middle-East, Europe has an urgent need of diversifying its energy routes and diminishing her reliance on the Russian power, and US, particularly after the collapse of the Bush doctrine in the greater Middle-East, is in dire need of a powerful ally in South-West Asia in containing her continental adversaries, China and Russia.
Because of that only, it will be hard to define the non-proliferation as the common denominator with which to hammer Iran politically. One state solution might remain the only solution for Israel.
Israel will have to face Iran alone for the benefit of humanity. Iran is useful to Russia and China as a proxy against the US. Without Russia, Iran would not have a nuclear program. Europe still has wet dreams about completing Hitler's compelling vision of a world without Jews. Iran could do the job, getting its hands dirty, leaving Europe with plausible deniability. A nuclear Iran serves the interest of European liberals who see the US as a bigger threat than Iran. This explains the strange alliance of liberals and radical Islam, just like the Nazi-Soviet nonaggression pact