-Caveat Lector-
http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/0,2763,643734,00.html
Israel thrusts Iran in line of US fire
As Bush weighs up the 'axis of evil', one country is bringing its
full influence to bear
David Hirst
Saturday February 2, 2002
The Guardian
America's campaign in Afghanistan is winding down, but who will be
its next big target in the "war on terror" remains in the realm of
conjecture. Of the three chief members of the "axis of evil" that
George Bush identified in his state of the union address - Iraq, Iran
and North Korea - he dedicated most of his wrath and spoke most
threateningly of that hardiest of Washington's villains, Saddam
Hussein.
Yet, if Israel gets its way, the next target could be Iran. President
Bush was forthright in his address: he told Tehran to stop harbouring
al-Qaida terrorists and added the heavyhanded threat that if it did
not, he would
deal with Iran "in diplomatic ways, initially".
Israel has long portrayed the Islamic republic as its gravest long-term threat, the
"rogue state" at its most menacing, combining sponsorship of international terror,
nuclear ambition, ideological objection to the existen
ce of the Jewish state and unflagging determination to sabotage the Middle East peace
process.
Israel classifies Iran as one of those "far" threats - Iraq being another - that
distinguish it from the "near" ones: the Palestinians and neighbouring Arab states. As
the peace process progressed, the near threats were s
teadily being eroded.A vital benefit of the 1993 Oslo accord was said to be that it
would fortify Israel for its eventual showdown with its far enemies.
The closer their weapons of mass destruction programmes come to completion, the more
compelling the need for Israel - determined to preserve its nuclear monopoly in the
region - to eliminate them.
For a long time, the strategy of enlisting the growing Arab peace camp against Iran
and Islamically-inspired extremism from afar seemed to be working. Committed, under
Oslo, to fight all forms of Palestinian violence agai
nst Israel, the Palestinian leader, Yasser Arafat, came to blows with Hamas and
Islamic Jihad, and the anathemas he hurled at Iran, their ideological mentor, were all
but indistinguishable from Israel's.
But now both threats have converged, malignantly, as never before. This, for Israel,
was the deeper meaning of the Karine-A affair, the 50-ton shipment of Iranian-supplied
weaponry destined for Gaza, which it seized last
month. It was a "most dangerous axis", said the Israeli chief of staff, that
threatened to "change the face" of the Israeli-Palestinian struggle.
As well as supplying arms and finance, Iran, the Israelis say, is developing a
supervisory role over the Palestinian "terror" through the exploitation of its
existing assets in the arena, mainly the Lebanese Hizbullah, an
d its new ones, a direct link with Mr Arafat and the Palestinian Authority, and a
recently created Palestinian Hizbullah of its own.
Had the Karine-A cargo made it to Gaza, and thence to the West Bank, it could have
made at least a dent in Israel's enormous military superiority. The Palestinians would
no longer have been entirely helpless in the face o
f Israeli armoured incursions into their self-rule areas. The weapons would also have
brought whole population centres within range.
Though Mr Arafat and Iran denied any part in the arms shipment, there were compelling
reasons why these former friends-turned-enemies should have resumed their
collaboration of old. Mr Arafat's desperate need is obvious.
The ever-growing violence of the conflict and the complete failure of any country to
come to the Palestinians' aid present a golden opportunity for the Islamic republic,
at least for the conservative, clerical wing of its
leadership, which has exclusive, unaccountable control over underground aspects of
foreign policy, such as support for Islamist "revolutionaries" like Hizbullah and
Hamas.
Iran's president, Mohammad Khatami, and most of the reformist camp may seek to dilute
the extreme anti- Israeli orthodoxy, but Tehran's foreign policy is very much an area
of competition between the country's rival politi
cal wings.
The simplest way to thwart the growth of such a Palestinian-Iranian alliance would be
to deny it its essential raison d'être by restoring a peace process that has some
prospect of success. But it has become clear that pea
ce is just what the Israeli prime minister, Ariel Sharon, does not want: Palestinian
violence serves him much better.
Persuasion
For him, the Karine-A incident provided further, dramatic justification for the
undeclared but ill-disguised agenda he is pursuing in the name of retaliation and
self-defence - to destroy the whole notion of self- determi
nation on any portion of Palestinian territory.
But the Israelis took particular alarm at the words of the former Iranian president,
Hashimi Rafsanjani, who said recently that if Israel continues "its hellish policy of
expanding its nuclear arsenal, it will eventually
draw the Islamic world into the race. Then it will be Israel, a small and illegitimate
country, which will lose out and be destroyed."
Impressing on the US the gravity of the Iranian threat is a continuous Israeli
preoccupation. It "must understand", said the Israeli defence minister, Binyamin
Ben-Eliezer, "that this is not only a threat to Israel, but t
o the whole world". Tehran would have a nuclear bomb within three years and was also
developing missiles which could target any point in Europe.
There is no issue on which the Israelis, through their extraordinary influence in
Congress and elsewhere, have proved better able to shape US policies than this one.
Quite simply, said one analyst, James Bill, the US "views Iran through spectacles
manufactured in Israel". For Mr Bush, judging by his state of the union address, the
weapons of mass destruction-cum-missile peril is regai
ning ground on that of the post-September 11 terrorist one. And in that department,
Iran clearly outweighs President Saddam.
It has long been a built-in, unquestioned US assumption that Israel has a right to
preserve its nuclear monopoly, and to pre-empt any regional power's efforts to
challenge it. This is a unique indulgence by a superpower o
f its favourite protege.
Yet Israel often hints that the US is not indulgent enough. And a
touch of blackmail about what might happen if Israel does not get its
way is apt to come with the hint. Thus a leading columnist, Nahum
Barnea, wrote in Yediot Aharanot that ona visit to Washington this
month, Mr Ben-Elizier will try to persuade the administration that,
Iran being "the real strategic threat", they must "deal with it
diplomatically or militarily, or both. If they don't, Israel will
have to do it alone."
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2002
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believe in anything merely on the authority of Teachers, elders or wise men.
Believe only after careful observation and analysis, when you find that it
agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all.
Then accept it and live up to it."
The Buddha on Belief, from the Kalama Sutta
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A merely fallen enemy may rise again, but the reconciled
one is truly vanquished. -Johann Christoph Schiller,
German Writer (1759-1805)
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It is preoccupation with possessions, more than anything else, that
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"Everyone has the right...to seek, receive and impart
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Universal Declaration of Human Rights
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