"The irony of the Israeli
push to
sanction and
threaten Iran over its alleged nuclear weapons program – a program,
by the way, which our own
intelligence community believes was
abandoned in 2003 – is that it has focused unwanted attention on the
one country in the region which already has nukes: Israel. With 600
nuclear-tipped missiles,
at a
minimum, armed and aimed at god-knows-who, Israel has
stubbornly
refused to even acknowledge the existence of such a formidable
arsenal. There is a certain hollow ring to the outrage of Israeli leaders
as they accuse Iran of violating the terms of a
treaty
Israel has
steadfastly refused to
sign."
A Realist Breakthrough?
Maybe
by
Justin Raimondo,
May 03, 2010
Now don’t get all excited, or anything, but there is a real chance that
the Obama administration may be on the way to a general Middle Eastern
peace settlement, one that bypasses the relatively narrow
Israeli-Palestinian question, and cuts right to the chase.
As reported
in the Wall Street Journal:
“The U.S. is negotiating with Egypt a proposal to make the Middle East
a region free of nuclear weapons, as the U.S. seeks to prevent Iran from
derailing a month-long U.N. conference on nuclear nonproliferation that
begins Monday. U.S. officials familiar with the move call it an important
step in assuring countries that Washingtoncriticized by some for its
silence about Israel’s undeclared nuclear arsenalwill equitably address
weapons proliferation across the region, as Iran seeks to shift focus
away from its own nuclear program.”
The irony of the Israeli
push to
sanction and
threaten Iran over its alleged nuclear weapons program – a program,
by the way, which our own
intelligence community believes was
abandoned in 2003 – is that it has focused unwanted attention on the
one country in the region which already has nukes: Israel. With 600
nuclear-tipped missiles,
at a
minimum, armed and aimed at god-knows-who, Israel has
stubbornly
refused to even acknowledge the existence of such a formidable
arsenal. There is a certain hollow ring to the outrage of Israeli leaders
as they accuse Iran of violating the terms of a
treaty
Israel has
steadfastly refused to sign.
In spite of how many times the Obama administration tries to console and
appease the Israelis,
reassuring them of our unflinching and nearly unconditional support,
Obama the campaigner had to eventually become Obama the
commander-in-chief – i.e. the defender of US interests worldwide. Having
sworn
eternal allegiance to the Lobby when in campaign mode – remember the
humiliating
ritual they put him through? – the president must now uphold his oath
of office to protect and defend the United States – not Israel – first
and last.
When our emissaries return to Washington and report that our support in
the region is slipping-to-nonexistent, as the sainted General
David Petraeus
recently
did, the president must act. The US tilt toward Israel is so
exaggerated that it is almost a caricature of
al-Qaeda’s propaganda, and nowhere is this more glaring than in the
realm of nuclear brinkmanship.
The US has no leverage, and no standing, to push for the preemptive
dismantling of a
nonexistent Iranian Manhattan Project, when it follows Israel’s lead
in never even referring to their nuclear arsenal. The one Obama
administration official who did
mention it was viciously attacked, and hasn’t said boo about it
since, but – unless you’re under the age of three – pretending something
doesn’t exist won’t make it go away. Israel’s nukes cast a long shadow
over the region, and the costs of denying it continue to rise.
The Israelis kvetch that even the possibility of an Iranian nuclear
weapon poses an
“
existential threat” to the Israeli people – evoking images of a
second Holocaust – and yet every Arab population in the region is already
living that nightmare. Can you
imagine Prime Minister
Avigdor Lieberman pushing the button, and vaporizing, say, Tehran, or
Cairo? I can. This is a guy who once said Israel ought to
bomb the Aswan dam, a former bouncer who is now the Foreign
Minister of a nuclear state.
Israel is one of the few countries on earth which, along with North
Korea, refuses to join the NPT. Unlike the crazed
North
Koreans, however, who boast about their nuclear capabilities, the
Israelis insist on this ambiguous fig leaf – and the US goes along with
it, albeit with increasing reluctance. Imagine you’re Gen.
Petraeus, and you have to traipse around the Middle East wearing this
skimpy attire: it’s embarrassing.
It’s also contrary to US interests, which lie in preventing not only the
Iranians but also the Israelis from reducing the region to a radioactive
desert. If the US truly wants to see Iran come around, forswear nukes
forever, and submit to a credible regime of inspections and full
disclosure, then they must not only acknowledge but also seek to disarm
the Israelis. Israel, in short, must sign the NPT.
This is the only possible meaning of the nuclear-free zone concept as
applied to the Middle East: peripheral noise about how “Washington also
reassured Israel it won’t foist a nuclear-free zone on the region until
all parties agree to it and significant progress has been made on Mideast
peace” is just a lot of static. “Mideast peace” can’t be achieved unless
and until the threat of an Arab holocaust is lifted.
As the United Nations
convocation on the NPT
convenes this Monday, with an address by Iranian President
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the US and Israel are handing him a club to beat
them over the head with. This is a price the Israelis are perfectly
willing to pay, since they
don’t have to
care about world – and particularly Arab – opinion. The US, however,
is in a different position entirely, and here is where the supposedly
identical interests of the two nations radically diverge.
Using Egypt as the intermediary, the Obama administration is tentatively
advancing a rather vague proposal to convene a conference on a
nuclear-free zone in the Middle East at some unspecified future date.
This proposal is supposed to go “beyond what the US has been willing to
do before,” according to a “senior US official” cited by the
Journal. Whether this means putting everyone’s cards on the table,
and pressuring the Israelis to come out of the nuclear closet remains
doubtful, because some in the administration are seeking to attach a
fatal precondition: “Mideast peace,” i.e. a comprehensive conclusion of
the Israeli-Palestinian peace process:
“U.S. officials stressed, however, that they didn’t believe that would
happen without first achieving major advances in Arab-Israeli peace
talks. ‘We are concerned that the conditions are not right unless all
members of the region participate, which would be unlikely unless there
is a comprehensive peace plan which is accepted,’ said Ellen Tauscher,
undersecretary of state for arms control and international security.”
Tauscher, the
exemplary DLC “moderate” during her tenure as a Bay Area congresswoman,
has been decidedly immoderate in her stubborn refusal to break the “see
no nukes” injunction, never once – despite repeated
questioning – admitting Israel possesses “weapons of mass
destruction.”
Why do we continue to play this game?
An increasingly influential group of
realists within the Obama administration is pushing the nuclear-free
zone initiative, but they need help from the grassroots. The Lobby is
already
all over this, because it represents a threat to their hegemony in
Washington. Should it succeed, the nuclear-free zone intiative would
signal a fundamental shift away from the
Israel-centric policies of
the past – exemplified to the nth degree by the Bush administration – and
toward a policy that puts America and American interests
first.
It is surely in our interests to pursue a peaceful resolution of the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but to make this a precondition for any
progress on the nuclear issue is not. Israel has spent the last few years
claiming
Iran’s alleged pursuit of nukes represents an “existential threat,” but
what will they say to a proposal for general and complete nuclear
disarmament? If the threat were real, they’d agree immediately. Since
there is no such threat, however, existential or otherwise, and since in
reality the threat comes from nuclear-armed Israel, and not (as yet)
Iran, the Israelis have absolutely no interest in giving up their nuclear
trump card. After all, they may have to play it some day.
When the Israeli historian
Benny
Morris wrote an op ed piece for the New York Times justifying
an Israeli nuclear first strike, I took it seriously. His illuminating
essay reflected, I thought, more than just his own view, but fairly
represented a current of opinion with increasing influence in Israeli
ruling circles. As I have documented in this space for years, the growth
of political and religious extremism in Israel is one of the most
dangerous trends in existence, precisely because the Israelis enjoy
unquestioned military dominance, rivaling the US in their ability to
project power in the region.
It is the growing influence of extremist elements in Israeli society that
is sabotaging any prospects of settling the Palestinian question. The US
is not going to impose a settlement on the Israelis, or threaten to
withhold aid: that’s politically impossible for the Obama administration,
and Tauscher knows it. To make “Mideast peace” a precondition for
de-nuclearizing the region is to invert the process. The idea is that you
first ensure the physical survival of the people of the region, and then
get down to the details of just how they’re going to live together.
That’s just common sense – but it’s been a very long time since something
as plebeian as common sense set the standard in the making of American
foreign policy.
The nuclear-free zone was first advanced by the
Syrians
, in 2003: at the
time, only Arab media outlets and
Antiwar.com
noted it. As I wrote back then:
“The hallmark and guiding principle of U.S. policy in the region is
simple: one standard for the Arabs, and another one for the Israelis.
Bashar
al Assad found this out when tried to explain to Colin Powell why
Israel, too, must get rid of its WMD. Powell’s response to the Syrian
suggestion that the U.S. back their proposed UN resolution to rid the
entire Middle East of nukes and other WMD, submitted to the Security
Council on Friday, was to reject out of hand the principle of
evenhandedness: ‘Clearing such weapons from the region is a long-standing
U.S. goal, but now is not the time to address that matter,’ is how
Ha’aretz characterized his attitude.”
Will the Obama administration go beyond Bush-ism in the Middle East? That
remains to be seen. But the mere hope should give impetus to a
broad-based grassroots movement to make the Middle East a nuclear-free
zone. This movement will put pressure on all parties, including but not
limited to the Israelis and the Iranians, to agree to give up their
nuclear aspirations. In the case of Israel, we have the added obstacle of
getting them to even acknowledge the existence of their nuclear arsenal,
let alone persuading them to forswear a first strike.
Make no mistake about it. An Israeli first strike against a perceived
threat – a perception that is perhaps based on mistaken intelligence – is
entirely within the realm of the possible. If indeed the Iranians are
trying to build a nuclear deterrent, we are well along the road to a
conflict of horrifying proportions. The United States has a moral and
practical interest in preventing such a nightmare scenario. That is why a
nuclear-free Middle East must be taken up by the United States government
without hesitation or preconditions.
This is a project that the peace movement should take up: it doesn’t do
to just sit on the sidelines and complain. It is all well and good to
critique the administration’s policy, but the point is to make a
difference, and in this case we can. A grassroots movement, petitions,
lobbying Congress to pass a resolution – all these activities will
support those in the administration who are fighting for a more realistic
policy in the Middle East.
http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2010/05/02/a-realist-breakthrough/
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